If there was one question that reverberated again and again—and again—across fashion discussions throughout New York Climate Week in late September, it was: “Is there a business case for this?”
It’s by no means a novel question, nor is it one that hasn’t already been asked a thousand times. But it was also born of the rude realization that the old kumbaya approach isn’t working anymore. To get the necessary corporate buy-in—it’s the business of business, after all, that generates the vast majority of global greenhouse-gas emissions—sustainability advocates are increasingly using the language of growth, resilience and returns.
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“Three years of selling organic cotton shorts on the internet has taught me one thing: people do not buy shorts to save the ocean,” Garrett Wilson, co-founder of Ryker Clothing Co., a brand that makes 100 percent natural-fiber gym clothing and underwear, said at the Regenerative Textiles Forum, organized by community platform Why Regenerative. “People ultimately buy clothes because, No. 1, they think they look good. And that’s why people buy our clothes.”
Indeed, sustainability is the “gift with purchase” that “makes people feel good” rather than the “ultimate motivator of behavior,” as Kate Sanner, founder and CEO of resale-shopping app Beni, put it at the Building Fashion’s Circular Future: Buy-In, Consumer Behavior and Programs That Scale event hosted at No. 29 Communications’ office.
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