Once the audience is hooked or even just compelled to listen, we can begin to answer some of their un-answered questions. Questions such as:
1. Help us understand the facts, the truth – is it really that bad?
2. Who do we need to educate to drive long-term change?
3. If we want to learn, is there training available?
Education and empowerment for sustainability
Beyond seeking the empathy of the citizen and apparel consumer that is in each of us, professionals of the industry, to ignite a strong will for change, we need to empower people to make the change happen. Let’s dive into the last 2 questions.
The ‘Who to educate to drive long term change’ one is like a real chicken and egg situation. Who do we need to educate to drive long term change? Is it the business leaders of today, the young designers new to our industry or the consumer? It’s all of them, but surely, we need to prioritise and establish who has the biggest role to play in driving the sustainability agenda?
Importance of training
Understanding the facts is critical as a lack of knowledge drives mistrust and inhibits progress, but how does that play out in our industry today? The fashion industry is changing rapidly, propelled by the new era of digitisation.
Conceptually, businesses are starting to ask the right questions, designers are more informed about sustainability and aware that they hold the key. It’s a well-known fact that 60-80% of the product impact on sustainability lies in the choices made at design and development stage. However, without technical or production knowledge, our ability to deliver a sustainable commercial product is minimised, or negated. We face a real issue, in that very few people now have the right skills to support sustainability initiatives on the ground. Where do we find the textile and production engineers and technical designers who can take a sustainable design concept forward and deliver it in a production or commercial environment? The race for cheaper prices, off-shoring and a move away from traditional technical education has resulted in a skills gap which is now impacting our ability to respond to the sustainability challenge.
From a business point of view, whether we choose to take the line of people or process, the overarching issue is the lack of training; acknowledging and responding to this fact will be a bridge to success. But before we answer the specific question around skills gap, knowledge and sustainability, it’s important to recognise that for any business to be sustainable and sustained today, it’s imperative to have a People strategy.
How we treat our colleagues has a direct correlation with employee engagement, with employees commonly citing the importance of equal pay and opportunities, flexible working hours and diversity as base line expectations. Such factors are now viewed as the minimum standard for any business deemed as a socially responsible employer. However, this approach is merely tactical. What sets aside the progressive, is an ability to truly recognise people as individuals, creating opportunities for career progression and continuous learning supported by the rights tools to do the job. It’s the sensible thing to do if you consider people to be an asset and retention of talent is key to your organisation, but how does this help the bottom-line you might ask?
Well, providing people with the knowledge and know-how to function at their best drives productivity, while continuous learning drives engagement and innovative thinking. Ultimately ensuring retention and providing organisations with a competitive edge, this approach sustains a future for the individual and business alike.
Another key consideration easily overlooked, is the simple fact that employees of today expect a career plan and if they don’t get it, they are likely to work elsewhere. LinkedIn’s 2018 Workforce Learning Report, states ‘a whopping 93% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their careers’ Retention of your people drives business continuity and negates cost with the cost of a vacancy impacting bottom line, which is often cited as being in the hundreds of US$ per day.
As the old saying goes, people are your greatest asset, so nurture them; and if training is a base line for employee engagement, retention and productivity, how do we take this principle and apply it to the fashion industry’s sustainability challenge? What’s happening to educate the industry about Sustainability?
Education and training offering
It’s probably safe to say that specific Sustainability in Design courses have been offered by universities and fashion education bodies for at least 5 years now, offering degrees or certificate programs, and post graduate qualifications, for example:
– The California College of Arts’ BFA in Fashion Design, one of the longest running in the US.
– The ESMOD (Berlin)’s International Masters in Sustainability in Fashion offered since 2011 and cited as “One of most holistic in Europe”.
More and more fashion schools are now threading Sustainability throughout their whole degree programs, an approach that is taken by Parsons which does not have a specific program that specializes in sustainable fashion design preferring instead to build sustainability into “everything they do.” This is when we know something is moving into the mainstream consciousness, when it no longer is a separate course, but is taught throughout all curriculum. So, newcomers to the industry are so much more informed today, a basis to be optimistic.
As the momentum builds, education and training programs are popping up in many forms, not just in academic institutions. Training is being provided by associations or non-profits organisation based on a new type of corporate / academic partnership targeted at people who are already employed in the industry and can thus already make an impact today. Associations such Fashion for Good (Amsterdam), Cradle to Cradle, the Ellen Macarthur Foundation and the Global Fashion Agenda to name a few are all supporting industry in the fundamentals and concepts of operating sustainably.
Motif, as an apparel knowledge and eLearning hub, contributes to educating professionals in the industry by offering a Sustainability in Fashion course taught around the BF+DA’s Sustainable Fashion Roadmap which teaches designers how to think about the whole lifecycle of a product from concept to reuse or recycle stage from a sustainability lense. The course also introduces concepts such as product innovation (multi-function, modular design) low impact materials, manufacturing, optimising product life and end of life strategies.
Although encouraging there’s still so much to do, as generally the level of understanding about sustainability at an executive level within our industry and at a consumer level is still quite poor. There is so much information out there, people struggle to articulate what sustainability means and what to do next.
The concept of circular economy for example involves end to end understanding of the levers which can affect sustainability. Recently I was talking to my fabulous designer friend Della and I asked what were her thoughts on the circular economy. She replied: “Isn’t that an accountancy term”? After a delay of 10 minutes punctuated by a reference to the internet she came back with a marvellous quote “it’s wonderfully idealistic darling and essentially about producing good quality again which the consumer pays more for and doesn’t want to throw away, then recycling it to make the world good again”!
Bravo, we now have our mantra for business and life. In our next article we look at how to translate the idea into a reality as we discuss how to build a strategy for success.