The sustainability director of Chanel, Guy Morgan, views the work that brands are having to do to meet eco-design and other legislative requirements as an opportunity to tell a much more meaningful sustainability story.

In 2022, fashion and textile organisations from across Europe joined forces to set up the European Fashion Alliance (EFA). Its aim is to provide “a strong common voice” for the industry and to work to accelerate the transition of European fashion towards a more sustainable future. Last year, the alliance started work on a first ‘Status of European Fashion’ survey and it revealed preliminary results from the study at a recent conference in Brussels.

It conducted the survey by disseminating questions on sustainability, education and digitalisation across the European industry through the national and regional fashion councils that make up its membership. On presenting the preliminary results, EFA confirmed something we talk about frequently: around 99% of the companies in the fashion industry in Europe are tiny; almost half of them (47%) have fewer than ten employees. Small and medium enterprises submitted the bulk of the responses to the survey but, as we shall see, the messages they have submitted are also on the agenda of major brands as well.

Education push

Among the stand-out messages that the preliminary results of the study deliver, EFA has shared that 66% of respondents believe the public has a largely negative view of fashion. Respondents think that the main reason for this is a perception among consumers that the rise of fast fashion has come at the expense of sustainability. The alliance says education is the best way to counter this and it advocates funding for awareness campaigns to help drive home a more positive message.

At the same time, it has picked up on the contribution that existing initiatives can make to this educational effort. It insists that implementing new regulations, including the new eco-design requirements that the European Parliament approved at the end of 2023, can help too. The eco-design proposals include so-called digital product passports to enable consumers to make informed purchasing choices.

Keep it simple, but not too simple

The sustainability director of luxury brand Chanel, Guy Morgan, one of the speakers at the EFA conference in Brussels, says there is a key question at the centre of his company’s thinking about all of this. It is working hard to calculate the environmental footprint of its products and of the materials it uses to make them, and it wants to incorporate its findings into the way it communicates with its customers. Its efforts extend to contributions it has made to broader work on the product environmental footprint (PEF) for apparel and footwear in Europe and to the category rules (PEFCR) that will underpin it. “We’ve been heavily involved,” the sustainability director says, “through France’s Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (one of the member organisations of the EFA). We’ve been part of the technical groups that have been feeding into the technical secretariat for the PEF, discussing the category rules associated with different materials.”

But, he says: “The question that drives us is how we can ensure that sustainability is simple, but not simplistic.” These two adjectives look similar and in current English usage people often write or use them as though they were synonyms. But simplistic does not mean exactly the same as simple. The true meaning of simplistic is to oversimplify something, or explain it in a falsely simple way, frequently by missing out the more complicated aspects. “If you think about the holistic sustainability of different product categories,” Mr Morgan continues, “it is really complicated and you cannot just boil it down to one measure, just to the environmental side, for example.”

The company wants to examine the extent to which the rules are truly reflective of the reality of its business and of the wider luxury leathergoods sector. Guy Morgan explains that Chanel recognises the need to find a way to explain effectively what the answer to the question is, but he wants to take into account “all the nuances”. The needs and perspectives of luxury brands will be different from those of premium brands, he suggests. And the needs of premium brands will be different from those of High Street brands.

Durability confusion

He believes that durability represents a good example. As we reported in World Leather December 2023-January 2024, industry commentators have expressed concern about some of the early discussions regarding durability that have taken place around the eco-design requirements. Under the proposals, products across all categories will need to have digital product passports in place by 2030, but policymakers have included footwear among the priority categories for the new regulations. This means footwear will be one of the first market segments to have to put this measure in place.

There are reports of 100 wears possibly being enough for a pair of shoes, made from any material, to be presented as long-lasting. According to the same reports, manufacturers of leather shoes will be allowed to claim that their products can last for 145 wears. This has caused alarm because leather shoes can often last for thousands of wears and their longevity is an important factor in convincing consumers that it is worth paying extra for leather. Paying more would seem less worthwhile if the message to consumers was that more expensive shoes may only be wearable for an extra 45 times. 

For clarity, a spokesperson for the European Commission has said these details “are definitely not contained in the framework legislation that has been agreed on”, but it is still interesting to note that this sentiment, that 100 wears can constitute durability, was prevalent during the discussions. It is almost as though some of the policymakers fail to understand that consumers can love, cherish and keep a product in use for years if it is made from a long-lasting material such as leather.

The confusion around this serves to confirm another point Guy Morgan makes. He says there is physical durability and emotional durability and he thinks it would be good to be able to reflect this “in a quantitative way” in the stories brands tell about their products. “This would help consumers make the right choices,” he concludes.

Heartbeat of the sector

In the survey, only 27% of the creative companies that took part said they were measuring social sustainability as part of their impact. This, too, needs to be integrated into the way companies measure the performance of their products, Mr Morgan argues, and it is here that the importance of the small and medium companies that make up almost the entire industry comes to forefront again. “Think of all the savoir-faire and all the artisanship,” he says. “This is the heartbeat of our sector.”

The need for brands and manufacturers to collect detailed information for the PEF, the eco-design requirements and digital product passports is intensifying. To comply, companies are going to have to compile and make available on a web portal everything consumers need to know to be able to choose one product over another, or one material over another.

This is hard work, but he is certain that it also represents a huge opportunity. “We can talk about social issues, durability, traceability, transparency and all the other elements of sustainability that I have touched on,” he says, “but we can also give the context, the sustainability narrative of our artisan shoemakers in Italy and of our weavers in Lille or in Lyon. These stories need to be integrated into the way we talk about our products and the way we put the digital product passports together.”

For him, the PEF reflects “relative sustainability” and he wants to take this further and have conversations about “sustainability in absolutely terms”, about value as well as volume. He wants what he calls real-life stories to be at the heart of this.

Chanel wants to include the real-life experiences of artisan shoemakers in Italy and of weavers in France in its storytelling strategy.
Credit: Chanel

Share this story: