“This report provides a methodology for how we want to work with the fashion industry, but nothing has actually happened yet,” adds Kouloumpi. It’s now partly up to the UK fashion industry to engage with the plan, and bring it to life. Bringing fashion stakeholders together in one vision is no easy task. Groups consulted by Circle Economy and IPF between April and July 2022 included academics, brands, collectors, consumers, designers, digital innovators, government, institutions, industry bodies and third sector, investors, logistics providers, manufacturers, reprocessors and retailers.
Over the next three years, IPF will be conducting workshops on regenerative and circular enterprise design with selected businesses; hosting annual “labs” with stakeholders and policymakers to identify gaps and recommend new regulation; and designing pilot projects and helping successful pilots scale. “This is a multi-year, revolutionary endeavour, which will consider the UK’s net zero ambitions and the levelling-up agenda through the government’s 10-point plan,” says IPF programme lead Shailja Dubé.
The BFC hopes its city-level approach will accelerate change, especially as global stressors, from the war in Ukraine to supply chain delays, roll on. “Everybody is feeling squeezed on all fronts,” says Rush. In theory, different cities will prioritise innovation in different areas, and then share learnings with others. “Hopefully, having support networks to collaborate and accelerate the work rather than do it in siloes, will keep people on track with sustainability.”
Defining success
The focus on circularity came about from roundtable discussions with BFC members, highlighting their interests as well as common challenges, says Rush. “Some of the biggest roadblocks British brands have in meeting their environmental targets relate to circular principles: waste management, new business models around rental and resale, creating infrastructure for a post-use ecosystem. That needs to be collaborative, but there wasn’t a clear vision for what that looked like or what role each stakeholder should play.”
Reaching scale will take a lot more than conversation. “We need to look at how circular design is being taught in academia, upskill people in the industry to work in this way, and build our capacity to enact change,” she continues. “We also need to think about how people are remunerated for their work, and how we incentivise them to hit environmental targets.”
How to measure success is still up for debate, but will become clearer as mindsets shift in line with the methodology. “In traditional business models, the main priority or metric of success is to show economic growth,” explains Kouloumpi. “A circular fashion ecosystem would need many indicators to measure success, social and ecological. As well as broad indicators, it would have indicators specific to the locality. There’s no one golden answer with the doughnut, you have to bring four dimensional thinking: local, global, social, ecological comes into every decision. More than anything, it’s a thinking compass.”
For businesses, this means re-assessing governance, finance and ownership. “Part of our work will be to work with pioneering businesses, but also different stakeholders that understand these ‘deep design’ elements. In a circular design ecosystem, we need to move from the traditional model of making enterprises grow no matter what, to making enterprises thrive and support thriving people and the planet. It’s a fundamental shift,” says Kouloumpi. She points to outdoor clothing brand Patagonia handing the reins to an environmental non-profit and specially-created charitable trust, declaring the Earth its “only shareholder” as one example. Others might include cooperative structures, collaborative ownership or stewardship communities.
IPF plans to work with more progressive brands first, creating case studies to convince more traditional brands of its merits, says Kouloumpi. “It’s all very far-out compared to the current state, but it’s needed.”
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