Sustainable Fashion Summit Turns Sweet 16, But Dark Reality Bites
Last week, Global Fashion Agenda (GFA), a non-profit aiming to 'accelerate impact' and 'spearhead the fashion industry towards a more sustainable future,' held its annual Global Fashion Summit, in this, its seventeenth year.
GFA's industry vision is 'Net Positivity,' and the annual Summit unites brands, manufacturers, policymakers, and other global stakeholders under its strategic guidance and impact-reduction initiatives.
However, fashion's negative impacts are increasing, not decreasing, and annual production volumes continue to rise. Global fiber production increased by a record 7% in 2023 to 124 million tonnes, a rate at which it will hit 160 million tonnes in 2030.
Such growth is wiping out incremental gains from sustainability initiatives. Stand. Earth's 2025 Fossil Free Fashion Scorecard shows that in 2024, only three brands reduced emissions in line with a 1.5°C pathway, while 17 brands increased their carbon footprint compared to their baseline. 2024 was also the first year that average temperature increases breached the 1.5°C threshold.
Sustainability demands absolute impact reductions. To borrow Yoda's wisdom, it's a case of 'do or do not—there is no 'try'.'
As the industry's sustainability shepherd, what is GFA to do after 16 years of sustainability talk and with 'net positivity' further from reality than ever? Under the banner of 'Barriers and Bridges,' in their latest annual report, GFA named three strategic action areas for 2025: Circular Economy, People, and Planet.
On the 'Circular Economy,' GFA will 'lead a harmonization effort of global Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations' that are under development in the European Union. Such work is critical since EPR fees ostensibly underpin investment in circular infrastructure in Europe, such as textile repair and recycling. These efforts should increase the utility of clothing and (in theory) reduce the demand for new fibers and new clothes – levers for decreasing production whilst generating revenue from existing resources).
On 'Planet,' GFA (somewhat unspecifically) says it will 'continue to emphasize the need for decarbonization and collective investment in Renewable Energy Initiatives.'
Fashion's emissions mostly arise from production in Asia, and its textile factories are in the crosshairs for decarbonization of energy sources, since they are the principal emissions, water, and chemical hotspots.
'People' is the GFA's third (and most detailed) area of focus in 2025, naming two research initiatives led by the non-profit:
This revelation begs a pause. Europe? The region where just a fraction of global fashion production is done, the highest rates of pay equity, and the lowest climate vulnerability on the planet? Why the sudden departure from GFA's historical focus on the industry's impact hotspots (in Asia)?
"Italy was never in the picture [at GFA], and I waited until we were sure we had enough [coverage of other] areas of the world to [then] look at Italy," explains the non-profit's CEO, Federica Marchionni. "We have to consider other countries and other brands–we're not 'global' if we don't include European countries."
Regarding GFA's previous work: 'The biggest impact programs [are in Asia] for sure, that's what we did for 15 years [but] the brands that define culture are European–you can't ignore that. They are somehow very well known [and] Europe has to be in the mix for that reason,' says the CEO.
European brands are undoubtedly economic powerhouses, and luxury brands have been implicated in several lawsuits in Italy over the past year due to systemic migrant worker exploitation in its supply chain. It's undeniable that these issues in Italy (also an inherent feature of global supply chains) be squarely addressed.
"[European] brands have the responsibility to lead by example not only on quality [but on] future-proofing their businesses. If I want to speak on behalf of the industry, we need to include Europe," stressed Marchionni.
Regarding putting Europe 'front-and-center' in GFA's strategic research efforts, what is the environmental rationale, since the industry's sustainability success depends on climate adaptation and decarbonization in Asia?
"We need to solve a global issue with sustainability, and the way I am trying to do it is to go into the settings where those conversations are most relevant – at the UN, in Davos [for example]."
"Our work was too focused on South Asia–we have the renewable energy initiative that was done in Bangladesh, the post-industrial circularity in South East Asia [where]
Marchionni is referring to a few of GFA's many multi-stakeholder initiatives, namely the Global Circular Fashion Initiative (where they convene stakeholders under a Circular Fashion Partnerships scheme deployed by funding bodies, brands, manufacturers, and recyclers); as well as an offshore wind energy in Bangladesh. But are these Asia-based efforts "done"?
Despite GFA announcing the Bangladesh offshore wind energy project at COP28 in 2023, a feasibility study into the project's potential to exist has not yet commenced.
On the same subject, a straw poll of journalists at the Summit revealed they were under the impression that the Bangladesh wind farm was already being built, thanks to funding from fashion brands.
Regarding the Circular Fashion Partnerships (CFP), the successful Bangladesh pilot led by BESTSELLER and Reverse Resources (and implemented by UNIDO) proved the business case for post-industrial recycling there, and the need for policy changes to support its industrial deployment. However, GFA is still recruiting brands (who pay to participate in the CFP program) for the Cambodia and Indonesia pilots.
Is it really time to shift strategic focus to Europe?
The devilish reality, as always, is in the details, and the 'sustainable fashion' movement at large has claimed 'intent' as 'action' for years. Science-based target (SBT) setting is one example, where fast-fashion brand Shein recently had its SBTs approved despite increasing its emissions by 176% from 2021 (its baseline year) to 2023, with no detailed explanation as to how reductions will be tracked or achieved. What is clear is Shein's publicly announced goal to achieve $60 billion in revenue by 2025 (compared to $32.5 billion in 2023), and that that will equate to higher production volumes (and emissions).
What does this 'sustainability sentiment' and 'intention' actually cost? Well, what you don't measure, you can't know.
To Marchionni's point, Europe has experienced intense industry scrutiny in the past year, with increased EU-based but global regulation and a slew of court cases in Italy that exposed sweatshop-like conditions, including at workshops manufacturing for brands Dior, Giorgio Armani, and Alviero Martini. Just ahead of the Summit, the Italian courts put Valentino under judicial review due to exploitation in its supply chain there.
GFA began worker-focused research in Italy in 2024, in partnership with PwC and Camera Della Moda, to survey perceptions of gender pay equity.
The results, presented on stage at the Summit, found that 80% of factory owners don't believe their company has a gender pay gap, while 67% of HR representatives in those companies think they do.
Perceptions aside, Europe has the highest gender pay parity in the world, with women earning, on average, 12.7% less per hour than men. Italy fares better, with women earning just 2.2% less per hour compared to men (as of 2023).
Leading industry-specific pay equity research by the Anker Research Institute found gender gaps of up to 22% in Bangladesh, 4-7% in Turkey, and 5-15% in Morocco.
The Italian (and soon-to-be French) focus seems unusual: not only does Europe have the world's highest gender pay parity, but several organizations publish actual gender pay gap data. Why research pay gap perceptions?
"It's a sensitive topic," says Marchionni, since Italian manufacturers may not be used to people questioning them (via surveys, in this case) in their factories. The CEO also pointed out that this delicate work is "not easy" for her since she is Italian but does not shy away from it.
During the Summit, Erika Andreetta, Senior Partner at PwC Italia explained that most manufacturing units in Italy are micro-sized (10 or fewer employees) and fall below reporting and regulatory radars, so there can be hidden inequity. As such, their ongoing research with GFA will focus on gender pay equity in Italy and then France.
Worker exploitation was a topic of discussion on stage at the Summit, but mainly focused on Bangladesh's below-living wages and gender-based violence problems, as explained by Kalpona Akter, Founding member and Executive Director of the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity.
From an Italian perspective, a video was broadcast during the Summit, pre-recorded by Luca Sburlati, the President of Confindustria Moda–a Federation that aims to protect and promote the interests of the sector and its members and represents the entire Italian supply chain nationally and internationally.
In the video, Sburlati spoke on behalf of Italy's sector, representing '500,000 people, more than 40,000 companies, and a total turnover of about 100 billion yearly.' The President did not mention Italy's worker exploitation problem directly but referred to the new voluntary Accord: "Last week, we signed an important protocol to defend the legality [of our industry]
"Together we want to defend and preserve the legality of what 99% of the companies [in Italy] are doing today," he said, repeating several times in the 5-minute video the need to preserve and defend 'the uniqueness of our [supply] chain,' and concluding "we will..fight for our companies."
Atilla Kiss, Gruppo Florence
GFA
Attila Kiss, CEO of Gruppo Florence (an industrial project that promotes Italian manufacturing excellence in the luxury sector) spoke on the Summit's Ignite Stage about the recent "scandals we had in Italy," saying they were due to "pressures from the market."
He describes the situation thus: The markets are placing pressure on brands, and brands are, therefore, pushing suppliers (which are small family-owned companies that are quite weak in relation to the brands). In turn, the suppliers find a production solution that "is socially not correct."
Kiss describes Italy's micro-enterprises as being "pushed to find illegal solutions" due to pressures from brands. Overwhelmingly, the language from both speakers on the topic frames the recent exploitation as an external assault on the industry rather than a problem within it.
But 'market pressures' could simply be stated as a decline in demand for a brand's products—an expected consequence of economic downturn and geopolitical instability. Rather than producing fewer products and gaining higher-margins through efficiencies or other legitimate means, the supply chain in Italy struggles to adapt (following years of decline) leading to adoption of illegal practices.
This framing of 'market challenges' is the mechanism by which exploitation occurs across fashion's entire global supply chain, illustrating that Italy's pressures are inbuilt and top-down from growth imperatives. Italy's manufacturing woes, in essence, are those of the worldwide fashion manufacturing sector.
Despite the excellent role the Summit plays in convening and hosting industry stakeholders and sharing valuable global insights, the Strategic focus (and selected Summit snippets) suggest a wider sense of denial–denial of how far the industry is falling short on its sustainability targets, denial of how bad exploitation is in Europe (like in other production countries), and denial of how inbuilt and permanent brands' pursuit of growth is, at any economic, social or environmental cost.
I first attended the Global Fashion Summit in 2017, and I continue to hope for the best; by this year's measure, that would be GFA 'leading and spearheading' the industry, per its mission, by redirecting us onto the abatement path it set in 2020, and overseeing industry measurement of tangible actions and results against climate and social sustainability imperatives; prioritizing the industry's hotspots, and the most vulnerable, first.
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Even Queen Mary of Denmark had nothing to say at this year's Global Fashion Summit, perhaps the industry's most boldface of sustainability conclaves. The longtime patron of the Global Fashion Agenda typically delivers a brief speech to kick things off, usually along the lines of the need for collective action for transformation to occur. Or she might joke about her daughters stealing her shoes as a form of reuse. Somewhere between the opening smooth-jazz jam and a H&M Foundation-helmed panel on operationalizing circularity, however, the royal consort slipped away from her front seat at the Copenhagen Opera House, her exit barely announced by the fading click of her stilettos. More from Sourcing Journal Refiberd Wins Trailblazer 2025 With AI-Powered Textile Recycling Global Fashion Agenda's Innovation Incubator Returns, Opens Call for Solutions What Will a Second Trump Term Mean for Fashion's Sustainability Ambitions? 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Even attempts to put a positive gloss on corporate efforts that were already lagging before the rightwing shift in both Europe and the United States, but could now be actively backsliding, felt more perfunctory than usual. The same week, a analysis of more than 40 apparel companies found that 40 percent increased their carbon footprint versus their baseline, outlapping those on a 1.5-degree Celsius trajectory by a nearly six-to-one margin. In the latest iteration of the International Trade Union Confederation's global rights index, data showed a 'sharp escalation' in violations of fundamental labor rights, including freedom of association and collective bargaining. 'Apparently more was happening in the roundtables,' one attendee said of the closed-to-press executive-level sessions, which had the likes of Kering diving into what a just transition means in the age of climate change, Target speaking about moving production closer to consumer markets and The Fashion Pact hosting a conversation about corporate financial engagement in decarbonization. The more accessible stages—the concert hall, 'action' and 'ignite'—stuck to broader, more anodyne issues such as fiber innovations, resale, regenerative materials and the gender pay gap. The biggest ripple in all that taut placidity was occasioned by Veja co-founder Sébastien Kopp, who described sustainability as a 'bag of vomit.' Kalpona Akter's heartfelt description of garment workers' struggles in Bangladesh produced little response and, by the time the 'celebration dinner' rolled around, no offers of help that might relieve her organization's loss of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID for short. Eileen Fisher's call for everyone to 'show up more and collaborate more' offered a burst of inspiration. Things flattened from there. 'Some feedback I heard is that some people feel the brands are too restrained and they prefer the speakers that are more candid and speak more openly,' an attendee said. But the event's dour note was hardly unexpected. There is simply no way to spin the current climate, whether political, environmental or otherwise, no matter how many times someone insists that there is no business on a dead planet. For brands grappling with the existential threat of tariffs, sustainability has dropped several rungs in priority. The Trump administration's crackdown on so-called 'woke' notions such as climate action or DEI in the United States isn't even the half of it. In Europe, the omnibus package, a series of amendments designed to simplify—and many say water down—the corporate sustainability due diligence directive, the corporate sustainability reporting directive and other legislative instruments, threatens to unravel years of progress holding corporations liable for their environmental and social impacts. It's still unclear how other forthcoming regulations involving extended producer responsibility, greener design requirements and traceability compliance will play out. 'There's a general backlash on sustainability in Brussels,' Lara Wolters, the Dutch politician who was the European Parliament's lead negotiator on the CSDD, said at a pre-game policy masterclass at the Danish Architecture Center. 'None of this is for a good reason, but maybe to take a step back. 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'I spent a good chunk of my flight over breaking through President Trump's proposed 2026 budget,' said Chelsea Murtha, senior director of sustainability at the American Apparel & Footwear Association. 'And, of course, USAID is completely eliminated, and a lot of the functions that it had are not even fully being transposed over to the State Department. The U.S., in particular, was a very large funder of the [International Labour Organization's] Better Work program, and all of that funding is gone now.' The outcome has been a 'sort of paralysis,' she said. Brands, squeezed by higher import costs, are hard-pressed to fill the breach. And while individual states could step up with rulemaking to counter the White House's actions, there's also only so much they can do. 'It's not like they can't step in and do things, but they're constricted in their authorities,' she said. 'They cannot negotiate trade deals, and they can't control imports. They can pass EPR programs, because EPR programs regulate products within their state, but what they can't do is institute something like an export ban.' On the first day of the Global Fashion Summit, themed 'Barriers and Bridges,' Federica Marchionni, CEO of Global Fashion Agenda, didn't mince words, either, calling this an 'extremely challenging time for sustainability' that is hampering fashion's ability to be a 'force for good.' At the same time, she said, the only certainty in an uncertain world is climate change. And a 'strong absence' of leadership requires 'collective courage' to build supply chain resilience. The few suppliers who spoke—their attendance likely, again, constrained by a lack of financial wherewithal—alluded to their struggles. 'The volumes are lower than they used to be a couple of years ago,' said Attila Kiss, CEO of Gruppo Florence, an integrated manufacturing hub in Italy. 'The brands are asking for lower prices because they have pressure on the margins. And from the other side, we have all the ethical issues, the social issues to manage.' In a panel that discussed Arvind Limited and Fashion for Good's plans for 'near-carbon-neutral' textile factory in India that would bring online tested and emergent solutions that could collective slash greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 93 percent, Abhishek Bansal, the former's head of sustainability, said that most of the industry's climate mitigation efforts either involve setting targets or pushing the supply chain to do so. 'Unfortunately, I have seen very little money going into helping build the hard assets that are going to actually reduce emissions,' he said. 'If you honestly ask how many industry stakeholders have set aside funds to build plants or invest in technologies to achieve those targets, I think you can count them on the fingers of one hand.' 'It's a big thing to say,' Bansal added quietly, 'but I don't think we are going to meet 2030 targets.' The dearth of representation—from suppliers, from economists, from investors—was noticeable, more than one attendee said. Speaking to an audience, Tara St. James, senior director of sustainability at the Canadian retailer Moose Knuckles, said that brands could take more responsibility for fostering inclusion by bringing their suppliers to conferences or having them speak on panels with them or in their stead. 'We talk about making changes in our supply chain, which is where most of the impact is, but then we don't invite suppliers into every conversation,' one attendee said. 'And when we do, it's usually farmers and manufacturers, which is great, but I want to hear from a mom-and-pop mill, a dye house. I want more doers on the panels. And that includes more brands.' Yayra Agbofah, founder and creative director of The Revival, an organization that tackles global textile waste in Ghana, including through the Global Change Award-winning Revival Circularity Hub, said there's a difference between being ready—say, for circularity—and showing readiness based on actions. Fulfilling the second part requires reexamining fashion's business model, which he described as a failure because it fails to recognize communities like Accra's secondhand Kantamanto Market as stakeholders. 'We are dealing with the waste we didn't create, and not having a decision on how to deal with this crisis is a big problem,' he said. 'We need to be part of the decision-making. We shouldn't be left out and be an afterthought.' It was during the Q&A portion of Agbofah's panel that Brooke Roberts-Islam, a sustainable fashion journalist and consultant, nearly leaped out of her chair. Just minutes before, Golnaz Armin, vice president of color and materials at Nike, was speaking about the footwear giant's efforts to 'imagine and create meaning' with post-consumer waste. She said that Nike's size was both its advantage and disadvantage. 'Kantamanto is the only example of a scaled circular economy,' Roberts-Islam said. 'It seems so strange to have this framing of 'Why can't we scale this up for Nike because we're such a large organization?' and, you know, a lot of Nike products end up in Accra. Kanatamanto has tens of thousands of businesses that do this. They know the answer, and Nike says you're trying to find the answer, so can you, Yayra, give Nike the answer?' One of the most incisive sentiments of the conference was uttered during the very first session, but it remains to be seen if it made an impression. 'Someone told me once that a wall lying down is actually a bridge,' said Christiane Dolva, head of innovation, research and demonstration at H&M Foundation. 'I think that some of the barriers that a lot of us feel that we're running into, which literally can be like running into the wall, can be part of the solution if we shift our perspective. We need to shift our perspective.'
