In this Op-Ed by Meg Pirie, she delves into what the fashion sector can learn from Westwood’s fearless activism. Can the business of fashion ever truly measure up? With comments by Kate Fletcher, Professor at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen.

“We are over producing and over wasting at the same time. We really need to readdress this and almost have to go back to basics to understand the new vision because if you just can do a bit of this and that but the whole industry needs to change.”

What else can we do to help ease the impact of climate change? The answer is closer to home than you think; in fact, it’s inside your wardrobe.

A study by Environmental Research Letters, a Finnish Scientific Journal, has been causing quite a stir in the industry after The Guardian reported on hidden environmental costs of rental fashion, suggesting in its headline that even landfill may be greener. But renting fashion is still seen as a positive move by sustainable advocates as we make a collective effort to move away from the traditional and wasteful linear model towards alternative systems like the sharing economy. We take a closer look at both sides of the debate…

This week the UK’s leading sustainability charity, WRAP, launched the ‘most ambitious ten-year programme for clothing and textiles in the world’, with established high-street brands such as M&S, Next, ASOS, Boohoo and Primark having signed up to this vital agreement.

With non-essential retail set to re-open next month, Meg Pirie takes a look at the plethora of issues facing the charity shop sector. From the waning quality of donations and influx of loungewear, to an anticipated £10bn funding shortfall, shop closures and 60,0000 job losses due to Covid.

As Fashion Roundtable seeks evidence for their policy paper on 'Cleaning Up Fashion’, this latest session focused specifically on the Uighur Crisis and the broader issues of labour exploitation, modern slavery, opaque global value chains and the legislative action that the Government and Firms in the UK can take to mitigate suffering in Xinjiang.

Amy Nguyen, Founder and Editor of Sustainable & Social, explores the current fashion gaming landscape and weighs in on its power to encourage sustainable practices. Through recent brand case studies and a discussion with fashion innovation specialist Marta Waydel, she examines the nexus between gamification and sustainability commitments.

Sojo is on a mission to help make our relationship with fashion more sustainable by ensuring that getting our clothes altered or repaired is a hassle-free process. Deliveroo but make it fashion.

When it comes to sustainable development in the fashion sector, education equals empowerment. The current fashion landscape is experiencing pervasive greenwashing where ‘sustainability’ has become a buzzword used by marketeers to tout supposed ‘ethical’ credentials. But what do these words really mean?

“One of the most prominent issues with Topshop’s business model was that they didn’t shift their values to match what Gen Z were demanding as consumers. Unlike my generation, where your identity was largely reflected by what brand you wore, fashion for this particular generation has been more about aligning with brands that reflect their own identities and less about buying the latest It-bag. These shoppers are value-oriented and are far more open to alternative fashion systems…”