FASHION REVOLUTION | FASHION TRANSPARENCY INDEX 2021
ABOUT THIS INDEX
OUR THEORY OF CHANGE
THE CHANGES WE WANT TO SEE
OUR ROLE WITHIN AND OUTSIDE THE INDUSTRY
At every level, from field to factory, fashion supply chains are both a major contributor to, and impacted by, the climate crisis. The global fashion industry currently relies on extracting finite natural resources, and this contributes significantly to environmental degradation and biodiversity loss.
A systemic overhaul of the global fashion industry
Fashion Revolution is uniquely positioned both ‘within’ and ‘outside’ the fashion industry. We work to achieve change in three main ways: policy change, cultural change and industry change.
The fashion industry is also a major driver of human rights abuses around the world, affecting workers and their communities throughout global value chains. Entrenched imbalanced power dynamics between global buyers, their suppliers and their workers often threaten working conditions, livelihoods and health of the people who make our clothes. Fashion supply chains are highly globalised, deregulated, complex and opaque. Business relationships are murky, and subcontracting is common. This obscures responsibility and accountability when things go wrong, as they so often do. The lack of transparency means we cannot easily see and take swift and appropriate action on environmental and human rights abuses. Without transparency, we cannot protect vulnerable people and the planet. Therefore, transparency underpins systemic change.
At Fashion Revolution, we campaign for a global fashion industry that conserves and restores the environment and values people over growth and profit. We are working towards an industry-wide culture of transparency and accountability across the value chain; a global fashion industry where brands take responsibility for their social and environmental impacts and where there is no time wasted trying to ‘prove’ responsibility and chains of custody. The Fashion Transparency Index is one tool in achieving this vision, and feeds into our manifesto point #8.
Working ‘within’ the system means engaging in a system that is deeply unsustainable, extractive and unjust. Engaging within a system we disagree with is not to condone it. In fact, it is the very opposite - an attempt to fundamentally disrupt and dismantle the structures that uphold injustice and exploitation. This includes opaque supply chains that allow hidden human rights and environmental abuses and obscure who has the responsibility to redress them. We engage within an unjust system because doing so is effective in driving change, although it can sometimes be frustratingly slow and incremental. We are working for industry-wide transparency and accountability that becomes deeply embedded across the value chain. This can only be achieved by involving the biggest players in the industry, such as the brands and retailers reviewed in this
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Index, precisely because they have the biggest negative impacts and greatest responsibility to address and change the problems they have caused and continue to perpetuate. To read more about how we select brands and retailers to review in this Index and why we don’t review smaller brands, which are often more transparent and at the forefront of driving positive and systemic change, please read our Q&As see this link. That said, we simultaneously work ‘outside’ of the system, to educate and mobilise citizens as well as advocate for policy changes in government and legislation. Broadly speaking, we see industry change as work ‘within’ the system, and cultural and policy change as work ‘outside’ the system. Transparency is fundamental to achieving all the changes that Fashion Revolution is working towards - in policy, in culture and in the industry.
