Since then, the idea of the fashion designer as a celebrity in his or her own right has become increasingly dominant. With a background in environmental policy, Delphine is passionate about transforming the fashion industry into a fairer, more equitable and environmentally-conscious sector. Delphine’s work includes the Fashion Transparency Index and focuses on promoting accountability at all levels of the supply chain from a social, economic and environmental perspective. Previous to working for Fashion Revolution, Delphine worked in sustainability auditing for clients in various sectors as well as sustainability communication for a luxury fashion company. The research is based entirely on information which is in the public domain that has been published by major fashion brands and retailers, which often goes through their legal departments and sometimes goes through third party assurance processes. Our ambition is that the Index will help governments see the need for stronger legislation on human rights and environmental impacts in the fashion industry, including mandatory public reporting.
Manon has worked across the sustainability communications industry, from sustainable fashion to CSR and now cleantech. With a background in communications and PR, Manon’s work focuses on promoting sustainable business practices and projects that benefit both communities and the environment. Anyone anywhere should be able to find out how, where, by whom and at what social and environmental costs their clothes are made. This requires greater transparency across fashion’s global value chain. Because more big brands have published their supplier lists in the past few years, several instances of human rights abuses in brands’ supply chains have been flagged and resolved. See a selection of case studies on pages 24 and 25 in the full report on how worker advocates have been using transparent disclosure to address abuses and hold brands to account.
Even a brand scoring 100% would not be ‘done’; they would need to maintain up-to-date disclosure on evolving issues. The human rights and environmental risks in fashion are in constant flux – and so to maintain transparency, disclosure would need to be continuously updated too. Transparency is the public disclosure of information that enables people to hold decision makers to account. For the fashion industry, it means sharing information about supply chains, business practices and the impacts of these practices on workers, communities and the environment.
Where necessary, they could call out shortcomings or malpractice and track to see if these are addressed. In fact, currently the highest brand score this year is OVS at 78% – the only brand out of 250 falling in the 71-80% range and the average score across all brands is just 23%. Brands receive points for information that has been publicly disclosed on the brand or parent company website, through self-published annual reports and via third parties where there is a link between the company’s website and the third-party disclosure.
Even though the terms are often used together, fashion differs from clothing and costumes — “clothing” describes the material and technical garment; “costume” has come to mean fancy-dress or masquerade wear. “Fashion,” by contrast, describes the social and temporal system that “activates” dress as a social signifier in a certain time and context. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben connects fashion to the current intensity of the qualitative moment and to the temporal aspect the Greek call Kairos, whereas clothing belongs to the quantitative, what the Greek call Chronos. Whereas a trend often connotes a peculiar aesthetic expression, often lasting shorter than a season, fashion is a distinctive and industry-supported expression traditionally tied to the fashion season and collections. Style is an expression that lasts over many seasons and is often connected to cultural movements and social markers, symbols, class, and culture (ex. Baroque, Rococo, etc.). According to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, fashion connotes “the latest difference.”
In cities throughout the world these magazines were greatly sought after and had a profound effect on public taste in clothing. Talented illustrators drew exquisite fashion plates for the publications which covered the most recent developments in fashion and beauty. Perhaps the most famous of these magazines was La Gazette du Bon Ton, which was founded in 1912 by Lucien Vogel and regularly published until 1925 . Concern and protest over U.S involvement in the failing Vietnam War also influenced fashion .
