What's really at the bottom of a fashion supply chain?

A push for transparency within fashion supply chains

By Katie McKenzie 

The fashion industry’s infamously long and inexplicably complex supply chains are very good at hiding environmental and human rights exploitations. With media coverage like the Sunday Times exposé that revealed factory workers in Leicester were being paid £3.50 an hour by fast fashion retailer Boohoo, or the BBC report shining light on the forced labour of Uyghur Muslim people in the cotton industry in Xinjiang, China, this is not an unfamiliar issue.

The Modern Slavery Act 2015 was introduced to attempt to hold organisations responsible for ensuring their supply chains were free from exploitation, but it wasn’t until earlier this year that the government announced financial penalties for those that fail to comply following the Xinjiang scandal.

Campaign group Fashion Revolution’s Transparency Index 2020 Report showed that, although 40% of brands were publishing a list of their first-tier manufacturers (those with whom they have direct business relationships), only 7% publish information on their raw material suppliers. This evidences the fact that the start of the supply chain for raw materials like cotton, leather and wool are the hardest to trace – and they also happen to be where the most environmental damage is done. For example, most cotton cultivation uses many damaging chemiaals, and dyes often only contain further pollutants and hazardous materials.

Basically, the further down the supply chain we go, the less transparent it gets, partially because relationships aren’t so strong with suppliers right at the start of the supply chain, but also because there is usually something to hide, whether that be human rights violations or environmental exploitations.

Therefore, the industry needs to shift and become more open and transparent both internally and externally in order to allow its consumers to make informed decisions about their purchases and protect people, planet, and animals.

This video discusses the need for transparency in fashion supply chains, and why Fashion Revolution was born:

Carry Somers, its founder, has said that 'Transparency is when companies know and share publicly #WhoMadeMyClothes — from who stitched them right through to who dyed the fabric and who farmed the cotton — under what conditions, and with what environmental impacts'. If we want to eradicate the dark secrets of the fashion industry, then, this should be our ultimate goal.

Some brands have begun to listen to this uproar from advocacy initiatives like Fashion Revolution and Remake, but also from their consumers, particularly those from Gen-Z.

If we return to Fashion Revolution’s 2020 Transparency Index, at the top was Italian brand OVS with a score of 78%; second was H&M at 68%, followed by Timberland and The North Face at 66%. OVS uses the ECO VALORE index to provide a summary of the environmental impact of all their garments, whilst in 2013, H&M was the first global fashion retailer to publish a supplier list which today names and addresses all of their manufacturing suppliers.

Although we are seeing innovation and action from some major fashion companies, we are also still seeing inaction and a lack of innovation on the part of many others. Fashion Revolution’s Transparency Index 2021 stated that the fashion supply chain is still 'too slow' for 250 of the world’s largest fashion brands, with only 20/250 scoring 0 this year. There is also a deep concern about worker well-being when 99% of brands don't disclose how many of their workers are being paid a living wage, and while 96% have not produced any kind of a roadmap on how they plan on providing a living wage for all the workers in their supply chain.

This year, there were no UK brands in the top 10 scoreres of the Index, though we in the UK consume the most clothes in Europe. This very much suggests that Britain is falling behind when it comes to fashion supply chain transparency, and that governments, companies, activists, and academics must work together to find a solution at pace and scale.

I believe, in line with Fashion Revolution, that legislative measures are required to ensure transparency and accountability for brands’ impact on people and planet. We need stronger and more forceful legislation than the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and we need it soon. When brands fail, there should be punishments and sanctions for the harm they inflict.

Overall, fashion supply chains are increasingly being discussed and thus also exposed. Although some companies are taking appropriate action, others are lagging behind. The fashion industry must take responsibility for its violations of people, planet, and animals, and it seems that, in order to do so, enforced legislation may be the only way to make meaningful change in every corner of the industry.