By Valentine Fabre
Researching a total of 250 of the world’s largest fashion brands, Fashion Revolution has observed the efforts those companies have made toward public transparency, and the results are not encouraging. A staggering total of 18.
This is the number of brands that scored 0% in Fashion Revolution’s Transparency Index 2023, making the results one more than last year. However, for the first time since its launch in 2017, two brands have scored 80% and over, namely OVS at the top of the list with 83%, followed by Gucci with 80%. But what does this mean? Is the fashion industry becoming more or less ethical? Well, the answer is not that simple.
Firstly, it is important to remember that the research does not focus on impact but rather on clarity, as specified in the index “We cannot fix what we cannot see.” The index aims at exploring the ways in which major fashion companies are making information available across five key categories: Politics and Commitment, Governance, Supply Chain Traceability, Know, Show & Fix, and Spotlight issues (gender and race equality, sustainable sourcing, water, and chemical use, etc). Credit can only be accorded when the information is publicly disclosed either by the brand and/or external and third parties and parent companies. Here is a breakdown of some of the important numbers.
26% is the average score overall for the 250 researched companies, representing a mere increase of 2% compared to 2022. In between both years, the number of brands scoring between 0% and 5% went from 38 to 41. It was noticed that overall, while some more major brands were willing to share their commitment and policies, they were significantly less inclined to show the result of said policies.
52% of major brands have shared their first-tier list of suppliers for the first time since 2017. Amongst the 250 that were also reviewed last year, nine have disclosed their list for the first time, which has led to an overall increase in scores, specifically amongst luxury brands with an increase of up to 17%, Jil Sander for instance (who had previously scored 0%.) Whilst this is an overall promising increase, this only includes first-tier manufacturers, giving a very partial understanding of how the clothes are made. In truth, what Fashion Revolution has noted is that 45% of brands score between 0-1% in the section Supply Chain Traceability. The highest score being 96% which was awarded to Gucci.
There is no doubt that there is still a very long way to go as 88% of researched brands have yet to disclose their annual production volumes, specifically as overconsumption is a significant problem in the industry. Even more worryingly, Fashion Revolution has found that 99% of the brands had not shared a commitment to reduce the production of new items. And water waste, chemical use, living wages, and overall actions taken against climate change (only 1% shared the number of workers paid a living wage in their supply chains) have yet to be made public access. The fashion industry seems to be stagnating in its effort to become more transparent, and inevitably more ethical. No surprise when only 44% of the brands publicly define what they mean by ‘sustainable’.