An update from Fashion Roundtable
Our CEO Tamara Cincik and Board member Kate Hills at 10 Downing Street
Dear subscribers,
It’s Thursday, the sun is shining for the first time in a long time and we are just about to go into a team meeting. But before we do, we wanted to take a moment to reintroduce ourselves. As we get many new subscribers each week, this is something that we will aim to do monthly so that we can keep in touch and connect with you.
As our community grows, so does our impact and we wanted to thank you for supporting our work.
As fashion’s leading think-tank and change agency, Fashion Roundtable solves the big questions and delivers consistent thought leadership. Our unique team drawn from fashion, industry, economics, academia and politics, offer transformative strategies across the sector’s complex value chain.
We are the only organisation that delivers creative leadership to solve the world’s pressing social, environmental and economic problems, with a focus on creative industry issues, heritage crafts, our industrial legacies, and an innovation-led future. Fashion Roundtable creates policy roadmaps to address these with social-purpose driven solutions. We build active partnerships with industry experts, business leaders and sustainable innovators, developing independent evidence-based data insights, research, and reports.
Our mission
Let’s be clear, the fashion industry is a lot more than catwalk shows, champagne and canapés. Fashion is not just designing for supermodels. When we use the word ‘fashion’ we mean everything from the farmer rearing sheep, to the woollen sweater in your wardrobe, the sustainable brand starting from an entrepreneur’s kitchen table, to a retailer on your high street, or selling via social media on your phone.
That means every business and everyone within that complex supply chain, from farming, milling, delivery drivers, designers, manufacturing, styling, photography, make-up artists, hairdressers, models, creative directors, producers, buyers, merchandising, marketing, advertising, retailers, fashion journalists, illustrators, public relations, to academia and policy.
Fashion is much more than catwalk shows, it is core to culture, craft, creativity and change-making.
We also know that fashion faces huge demands from consumers and policy makers to clean up its act, as we square the circle of escalating consumption, with the need to drive profit while reducing fashion’s impact on people and the environment. As global complexities and sustainability-driven targets increase, Fashion Roundtable is uniquely placed for expert forward-thinking and innovative research and strategy, advocacy and influence across all aspects of the sector.
In fact, we are the only organisation who works in this way.
Through consistent dialogue with governments, business leaders and stakeholders, we ensure impactful change happens at a local, national and international scale.
Our mission shines through our highly-respected policy recommendations, reports, roundtable and network facilitation, as well as our unique and purposeful campaigns, storytelling and events.
Fashion Roundtable is underpinned by five pillars which we instil and evaluate throughout our work.
The pillars are:
Craft and Culture
Creative Wellbeing
Education
Representation and Inclusion
Sustainability and Social Justice
Our Impact
Over the last two years Fashion Roundtable has recorded a 6.6 billion global media reach. We were called upon time and time again, to provide our unique insights across some of the best publications and networks in the UK and globally, including Vogue Business, CGTN, Business of Fashion, BBC News, The Independent, and The Telegraph.
Our CEO represented Fashion Roundtable at many speaking engagements including at a Dumfries House panel with the King’s Foundation; at many SHOWstudio events and at the Fashion Reimagined policy screening. In collaboration with the UN Global Compact Network, we hosted the first Fashion Sector Exchange event. We also supported Make it British at a ‘Meet the Maker’ event, hosted at 10 Downing Street, bringing together UK manufacturers and brands and the Department of Business and Trade, as well as the then PM’s wife. We highlighted our policy aims, such as public procurement for UK-made goods; tax incentives for manufacturers in the UK; and the need to reinstate the VAT Retail Export Scheme.
We launched five new reports, including our manifesto: Delivering a Sector Vision: Recommendations for 2024, which provided a strong overview of the current landscape for UK-based manufacturers, as well as the key challenges and proposed solutions to support the sector to lead on sustainability, social justice, increased social mobility for working-class children, and increased revenue for UK GDP.
We are not influencers, we are change makers. There is a big difference.
Influencers may get short-term likes, but as a change agency we are about long-lasting change for the sector.
We are the early adopters and thought-leaders. We set ideas in motion and change the narrative. This can be seen through our instrumental work on British wool in collaboration with YOOX and the King’s Foundation. Three years ago, nobody was talking about British wool and its unique connection to provenance in the UK. We are the consistent key source of material for media, influencers and policy makers.
From creating the first DEI report for the fashion industry, to championing British wool, what we focus on changes the narrative.
As thought-leaders we understand how to shift the paradigm, and partners achieve increased amplification and stronger success through our leverage.
Our work launching The Great British Wool Revival in collaboration with the King’s Foundation and YOOX Net-a-Porter, was backed by two years of stringent research. The key finding from this space was that wool’s provenance story was the most obviously missed opportunity and an area which merino wool was currently dominating in. The other, was in the lack of joined-up information for designers and brands who wanted to work with British wool, but didn’t know where to begin, culminating in the way in which British wool was spoken about – that it was itchy, unavailable within short-lead times and not at the right micron-count for the fashion sector. This stringent research led to the launch of The Great British Wool Revival in 2024, in collaboration with the King’s Foundation and YOOX Net-a-Porter. This open-source resource continues to support designers and makers who want to work with British wool in a regenerative way, from farm to fabric, with a clear provenance story. The mission remains to build strong, long-term relationships to create a healthy wool fibre ecosystem within the shores of the British Isles.
This is the kind of impact that we are making.
By opening our emails, reading our reports and stories, you are enabling this impact and you know what makes Fashion Roundtable unique. We hold space for the difficult conversations and work across the value chain for maximum impact for the sector.
If you believe in our work, don’t just tell us, support us. Help us ensure that our Substack remains strong and continues to expand by referring us, sharing our work, becoming a paid subscriber or by giving a gift subscription today.