The Conversation Around Fashion Transparency
What is Supply Chain Transparency?
Transparency is visibility which gives insight to consumers, builds trust and enables brands to stand for what they believe in. For brands, it is having control and an understanding of how, where and who is their supply chain. For the consumer, it is a tool showing the value purchases have and the ability to unite humanity through the medium of fashion. 78% of consumers said it is somewhat important or very important of a company to be transparent – today, it’s no longer a period where brands can promote privacy as exclusivity when humanity and the environment are at risk (Fashion Transparency Index).
Millions of people make our clothes. Too many live in poverty, exploitation or danger. We can change that. Join the #FashionRevolution and demand a fair, safe and more transparent industry.
What Does Transparency Look Like?
Brand transparency encompasses traceability. There can be hundreds of hands that touch the garment before it makes it to the inspection department of a brand’s office and little to no awareness of the process it took to get there. When we have transparency, brands know that they are disclosing the various suppliers that went into sourcing, harvesting and dying fabric materials including the textile and the cut-and-sew process. Within big brands, they may be working with hundreds to thousands of suppliers at a given time and not know the locations, names, or conditions of these facilities.
Brands outsource to other companies to satisfy their needs and when they do so it isn’t always clear where and who are involved in the process. With little regulation, this allows a situation when an order for one facility may be subcontracted to another factory further separating the worker from the brand.
The more invisible the worker becomes the greater the risk of human rights’ violations and exploitation of the environment.
In order for brands to be transparent, they need to take account of the impact their business has and map the entirety of their globalized supply chains. Responsibility is the first step in offering transparency and disrupting the industries current way of doing business.
How Is Transparency Implemented?
Publishing policies and the implementation of these policies builds trust between the consumer and the brand. The privacy of brands is not considered private if it takes advantage of the consumer and worker trust.
To sequester the secrecy of the industry, Common Objective has created a simple five-step process to guide brands on ways of implementing supply chain transparency.
Map Supply Chains: This is rolling up their sleeves and getting knee deep in knowing where and who are hired to make their clothes.
Publish Supply Chains: This is making available to consumers and the greater public - the ins-and-outs of the sourcing methods including:
The name of authorized facilities and units
The address of these facilities and units
The parent company of businesses
The type of products that are made
The number of workers at each
Publishing Policies: That is making it public the responsibility and accountability brands are taking in order to ensure their commitment to being environmentally and socially conscious.
Communicating Implementation of Policies: Showing the steps brands are taking to create a positive, impact-oriented, work environment to reconnect the people and planet. Ultimately, this is addressing the issues that are found in supply chains and finding solutions quickly.
Report Social and Environmental Results Along with Financials: This can be a self-auditing system like the B Impact Assessment which is required of Certified B Corps to do every three years, highlighting improvements and changes in favor of ethical practices. In pairing these reports with financials, quarterly assessments must be prioritized.
A Pro-Fashion Movement Disrupting Authenticity
Fashion at a bargain - why not? But what if consumers see the conditions, under which the super cheap clothes are made? A campaign by BBDO Berlin for the Fashion Revolution Day on April 24. The vending machine standing dead in the middle of Alexanderplatz in Berlin is a bright popping turquoise.
In 2015, Fashion Revolution created a global movement as a reaction to the worst tragedy in fashion history, the Rana Plaza disaster. Existing in alignment with their mission “to unite people and organizations to work together towards radically changing the way our clothes are sourced, produced and consumed, so that our clothing is made in a safe, clean, and fair way” (Fashion Revolution).
Calling themselves “pro-fashion protesters” fashion revolution is taking to action to empower everyday consumers to demand more transparency, catalyze conversations and influence policy change.
Fashion Revolution houses information, resources, content, and ways of engagement to educate consumers on the impact of their purchases and the ambiguous reality of fashion practices. Annually, on the anniversary of Rana Plaza—the last week of April—Fashion Revolution Week commences, allocated to having conversations around #WhoMadeMyClothes online and offline. During the week long campaign, brands, retailers and producers are invited to respond with the call-to-action by using #IMadeYourClothes and demonstrate supply chain transparency. In 2018, 2.5 million people participated in the Fashion Revolution movement by attending events, engaging on social media, watching informative videos or downloading resources.
In addition to the campaign, Fashion Revolution has begun measuring impact via their annual Fashion Transparency Index, assessing the 150 biggest brands and retailers worldwide, distinguishing trends towards greater transparency. This year, in their 2018 report out of the 98 brands that were included in 2017 and 2018, there was an overall increased level of transparency by 5% and of those, the most popular brands performed best in having increased transparency. The report recognizes various factors and methodology to suggest inclusion in the fashion transparency index has influenced brands to disclose more. Though as the infancy of change, there is still much more aid to be made as no brand or retailer scored above 60% of the total possible points (Fashion Transparency Index).
Engagement Without Double Standards
There is an old saying, “Do unto others, as you would want to be done unto you”, a guideline to ensuring authenticity, honesty and preventing double standards. In the industry increased access to technology and journalism has made the complexity and toxicity of brand supply chains public. As information surfaces, brands need be the source if they want to ensure brand-consumer trust.
Brands who rethink the trust consumers have in them, act without double-standards. Communicating their values and impact the same while displaying the conditions of the worker and environment. The more information disclosed, the more conscious and responsible brands must become, and the greater the world at large will trust them.
Vote with Your Everyday Dollar
For consumers, using technology to connect and fight for human rights in the fashion industry is leading the change we are seeing today. Using the inter-connected pool of social media to demand #WhoMadeMyClothes and hold brands accountable is pressuring business to comply accordingly is seeing positive change honored by Fashion Revolution.
Five children from Berlin did the unthinkable: They approached international fashion brands voluntarily to ask for a job. Why? Millions of children work in the textile supply chains worldwide. What is commonplace in the developing countries of the world often seems unimaginable in our society.
Fashion Industry! Children in the First and Third World aren’t different. We reject your double standards and we call on everyone to join us.
Voting with our dollars and endorsing brands whose values align with ours is a way of utilizing our purchasing power to protest unethical brands and support positive practices. If we are committed to engaging without double-standards then next time we shop, ask around to find out who made our clothes and where. If this information isn’t made available, look elsewhere, because a purchase in favor of the wrong brand can be a purchase in favor of human and environmental rights violation.
Brought to you by Dhana Inc.