As part of Maddyness’ “Summer Op-Ed” series, Shabir Vasram offered a glimpse into the future of society with this contribution.
One Figure: $80 Billion, according to the Financial Times.
That’s the projected business volume of Shein, the fast-fashion giant, in 2025 for its potential IPO. But more than that, it symbolizes the contradictions of today’s fashion industry.
First, an ecological contradiction: according to a study by Ademe, the textile industry is the world’s third-largest consumer of water (after wheat and rice cultivation) and could account for 26% of global GHG emissions by 2050 if current consumption trends continue.
It’s also a social contradiction: an investigation by Public Eye exposed the working conditions of factory workers in Guangzhou supplying Shein, where shifts can stretch up to 75 hours per week. And everyone remembers the recent events in Bangladesh — still the second-largest supplier for European brands — where garment workers earn just $0.32 per hour.
And yet, I like to believe that Shein’s projections are misguided, and that fast fashion is about to give way to sustainable fashion:
- because pressure from consumers and governments (for example, France’s AGEC law) is intensifying, and above all,
- because brands now have, thanks notably to technology, the means to drive this industry toward more responsible production and consumption.
Traceability as a Starting Point
With globalization, the textile industry’s value chain has become increasingly complex, and the number of stakeholders per brand has multiplied. Take the example of a pair of jeans sold in France: its cotton may be grown in India, the fabric woven in China, the buttons sourced from the DRC, the zipper from Japan, and final assembly done in Tunisia.
To improve the environmental footprint of a product or the conditions under which it is made, brands must first measure their impact. Startups like Carbonfact or Fairly Made specialize in tools for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of textile products, working upstream in the supply chain to obtain the most granular data possible.
Rethinking the Production Process
Materials in the industry either rely on polluting sources (polyester is petroleum-derived) or consume vast amounts of water (cotton, for instance). That same pair of jeans may require 7,000 to 10,000 liters of water to produce.
Alternatives are beginning to emerge:
- Startups like Ecovative develop textiles from mycelium,
- Everdye has created a dyeing process at ambient temperature using bio-sourced pigments (in contrast to conventional dyeing, which involves heated water baths with complex chemicals like formaldehyde or phthalates).
New solutions also help brands improve product durability and quality. For example, Portuguese startup Smartex uses sensors and AI-based image recognition to ensure quality control during production. Beyond production, solutions also enhance second-life opportunities: upstream, by using materials or designs easier to recycle and repurpose, and downstream, by organizing resale directly through platforms like Faume, which free brands from operational burdens tied to second-hand activity.
Encouraging second-hand usage is essential, because brands cannot sustain the current pace of production (global clothing production doubled between 2004 and 2014!). To do more with less, they must rethink their business models — especially by integrating resale into their product portfolios.
Towards the Platformization of Sustainable Fashion
There are dozens of other solutions worth mentioning — covering traceability, new materials, durability, or circularity. For now, these solutions mostly operate in silos, but we are convinced this ecosystem will move toward platformization, creating a more seamless experience for brands and benefiting from the network effects of shared data.
For example, calculating LCAs or assessing product durability will require access to sales data across first, second, and even third-hand markets.
Platformization is also crucial for strengthening the relationship between brands and their customers — guiding them through new product usages, providing greater transparency on impacts and working conditions, and ensuring trust.
This platformization is what will allow responsible brands to compete with the Sheins of the world. It ushers sustainable fashion into a new phase: after experimentation, the era of adoption has arrived.
