For an industry that prizes novelty and reinvention, fashion has proven difficult to budge when it comes to longstanding issues around environmental and social impact. From animal welfare to renewable energy and garment worker wages, the need for change is often well documented, and the tools are there, but the motivation is lacking. So what does it take to actually move the needle?
To get under the skin of fashion’s resistance to change, and create a shared blueprint for moving forward, Replica Handbag Store Business asked four leading advocacy organizations to break down their most effective strategies. From public protests and stunts optimized for social media, to behind-the-scenes advocacy and lobbying for regulatory change, there’s a full spectrum of approaches represented. Whether you implement one or all of them, there’s a lot to learn.
Action Speaks Louder
At the tail end of last week, just shy of April Fool’s Day, a curious new store popped up in the quiet idyll of London’s Marylebone High Street. It was the short-lived flagship of Mumumelon, a fake brand designed to imitate Lululemon for the sake of pushing its leadership to adopt more progressive renewable energy policies. Created by advocacy organization Action Speaks Louder and creative climate studio Serious People, Mumumelon had a limited run of 50 products on display, designed and produced within a matter of weeks, on a shoestring budget, to demonstrate that it’s possible to produce fashion from renewable energy, despite the lack of progress from global brands. Action Speaks Louder is transparent about the limitations of this stunt — namely that Mumumelon may have been able to use renewable energy in the garment manufacturing stage, but its supply chain is by no means “a perfect proxy” for that of a global brand, and it compromised on other factors like synthetic materials in order to prove this point.
A spokesperson for Lululemon said the company is committed to “meaningful progress” on its impact goals, and counts climate action and worker well-being as “key focus areas”. The spokesperson also said Lululemon is investing in scaling environmental solutions across its supply chain and has been in “active conversations” with Action Speaks Louder over the years. “We are disappointed the group has taken this approach, but we welcome dialogue with all stakeholders and look forward to providing additional insight into the work we have underway in the months to come.”
Action Speaks Louder says the escalation was necessary. “The idea was to demonstrate a proof of concept that anyone can see, touch, and engage with, which makes the argument visceral rather than abstract,” says Ruth MacGilp, a climate campaigner at Action Speaks Louder. “This is particularly important for such a visually driven industry like fashion.” When it comes to applying the kind of public pressure that forces fashion brands to change their ways, “dry reports” and “traditional digital tactics” cannot compete with “creative, culturally resonant campaigns”, she adds. “The fashion industry’s commercial model is deeply concerned with brand reputation and consumer perception.” So far, tens of thousands of people have engaged with the campaign on social media and our campaign website, including hundreds of comments tagging Lululemon, but the brand has not issued a public response.
For Action Speaks Louder, this activation is the latest escalation in a years-long campaign targeting Lululemon. “In the last few years, we have rolled out petitions, open letters, investigative reports, in-person stunts, influencer collaborations, and lots of direct dialogue with the brand, as well as the various multi-stakeholder initiatives it is part of,” explains MacGilp. “Mumumelon sits within this much longer campaign. It is an escalation after years of good-faith dialogue has continually failed to produce meaningful movement.” As far as why Lululemon, MacGilp says that going after the biggest brands yields the best results. “We have found that targeted corporate campaigns work because accountability needs a face, and when one major brand shifts, it has real power to pull the rest of the industry with it,” she adds.
The secret to satirical activism is finding the gap between image and reality, says Jamie Inman, campaign director at Serious People. “Mumumelon is a joke with a serious punchline. The real accusation is that Lululemon has the resources to do better, but is choosing not to,” he explains. “Fashion brands have spent decades creating today’s offshored supply chains. Now, their billionaire owners tinker around the edges on climate and worker rights as if they weren’t the ones with the money and the power. This campaign is designed to draw attention to that failure to act.”
By enlisting yoga and wellness influencers to spread the word about Mumumelon, the campaigners are hoping to attract attention from Lululemon’s core customer base, while highlighting the disconnect between the brand’s health and wellness messaging, and the reality of its largely coal-powered manufacturing base. “When you unite a company’s core community on an issue, it’s very hard for the company to resist,” says Inman. “What will it take for Lululemon’s leadership to act? They know the science. They know about supply chain and energy price risks. They’ve got the money. The technologies exist. And yet they still drag their heels. Maybe their customers laughing at them is the missing piece of the puzzle.”
The campaign is also a prime example of one of Action Speaks Louder’s guiding principles that effective activists offer “different entry points into the same argument”, she continues. “Action Speaks Louder combines direct brand engagement, deep research, coalition building, and creative tactics. We use all of these levers in tandem, and we support and amplify other actors who take different approaches, because no single strategy will move a multi-billion-dollar industry alone.”
There are always risks with a multi-faceted approach: will the more direct protests burn bridges, undermining incremental change behind the scenes? Will singling out individual brands create a culture of fear, where others are afraid to make public statements about sustainability? MacGilp says this risk is worthwhile. Fashion is an industry made up of multiple stakeholders, each with a different motivation to change, and a different lever to pull to do so. “Consumers need to recognize the hypocrisy, investors need to see the financial risk of fossil fuel dependency, manufacturers and workers need to know their interests are central to the ask, and Lululemon’s leadership needs to understand that the solutions are achievable and the window for leading rather than lagging is closing fast.”
Collective Fashion Justice
“If you want to see a totally different future, you have to make that future inevitable by basically blocking off every other path forward,” says Collective Fashion Justice (CFJ) founder and director Emma Håkansson. This requires an ever-evolving arsenal of tools. When the industry argued that animal-derived materials can be produced more responsibly, CFJ produced investigative footage and reports showing that even the best-intentioned certifications cannot totally stamp out animal cruelty. When the industry posited that using different agricultural practices to produce animal-derived materials could have a positive impact on the environment, CFJ worked with researchers to produce fashion’s first methane footprint estimate. When the industry suggested that alternative materials were not ready to replace animal-derived ones, CFJ worked with innovators and brands to incubate and operationalize alternatives, before making a film about the supply chains to inspire mass adoption.
CFJ takes a similar approach to lobbying, often using other issues with existing momentum as a Trojan Horse for ending animal-derived fashion. This could be a call for evidence about deforestation linked to leather in the EU, or an Australian inquiry into hemp production, which CFJ linked to the country’s climate mitigation targets and the methane emissions generated by wool production. “If you give a really good submission, that suddenly becomes a very powerful part of a government-produced report that policymakers have to respond to,” says Håkansson.
Before launching CFJ, Håkansson worked for a radical animal rights group in Australia, illegally documenting animal cruelty on factory farms. When she released her first documentary under the CFJ moniker — Slay (2022) — some of this radicalism lingered. In the documentary, Håkansson steals a lamb, which she says was moments away from dying of neglect. Someone “high up in the ethical fashion space” dubbed her a “terrorist” as a result. “It took a while for me to work out the balance between sanitizing my position and presenting it in a more pragmatic way so I can be in the room,” says Håkansson. “Over time, I’ve become more of a radical pragmatist, accepting small milestones, knowing that my ultimate goal is much bigger, but sometimes you have to take the path of least resistance.”
Take fur, for example. When CFJ set out to convince global fashion weeks to ban fur, it didn’t start with the biggest hitters. It started with Melbourne Fashion Week, before using that to propel conversations with Copenhagen Fashion Week, the unofficial fifth fashion city and one that has made its name by prioritizing sustainability. From there, it was easier to win over London and New York. “You build social proof of what’s possible, starting small and slowly shifting the window of what must be talked about and what is acceptable to talk about,” says Håkansson. “It’s easier to talk about ostrich feathers being problematic once a company has already banned wild animal skins, but if you went with feathers first, that would be a problem.”
Håkansson is keenly aware of how CFJ is perceived, and how this can help or hinder its activism. “We exist in a wider ecosystem of activists and organizations — some are less radical than us, but they are useful to collaborate with, and others engage in a way we wouldn’t, but they make us appear more acceptable. We all bounce off each other, and that’s really important,” she explains.
In the fashion industry, as in lobbying, relationships are currency, and some are more valuable than others, says Håkansson. “I would rather change the minds of five people at luxury fashion groups versus 50,000 people with less potential for impact. That’s why we don’t really engage in consumer awareness,” she explains. “Likewise, you can’t just befriend the sustainability people, because they’re trying so hard but they only have so much power within brands. You need the creative class to care. We focus a lot of attention on fashion councils because they’re very helpful for building trust among brands.”
Maintaining these relationships is a balancing act between building trust and staying distant enough to be disruptive. “You need to walk with people instead of just slamming them,” says Håkansson. “But if you’re in the room too often, you can’t agitate change. I’m constantly walking this tightrope between annoying people and befriending them.”
Peta
Far from being the silver bullet some brands market them as, third-party certifications get a lot of flack in sustainable fashion circles for relying too heavily on a flawed auditing system that lets so much slip through the cracks. Animal rights organization Peta is keenly aware of this, which is why it calls for all-out bans on animal-derived products in fashion. “Auditors show up announced, so they will never see what is really happening on farms and in slaughterhouses. Right now, undercover investigations are the only way to know what is really going on, which is why Peta has done this for decades,” says senior director of strategy Anne Brainard. “As far as we are concerned, there is no way to eliminate cruelty from supply chains when animals are used. Companies must look to go vegan.”
One Peta investigator, who spoke to Replica Handbag Store Business under the condition of anonymity, says they prioritize investigations where the greatest number of animals have suffered most severely and for the longest periods of time. “This is often driven by companies that mislead consumers through deceptive marketing and certification schemes,” they say. The goal is always to produce “indisputable footage that reveals how animals are routinely abused” — the methodology can be unpredictable, requiring extensive planning and sometimes unsafe conditions. “I try to remind myself that if I weren’t there, the story of these animals would never be told.” In one case, their team’s investigation into the mohair industry got more than 340 major brands worldwide to ban the material. In another, their footage resulted in the world’s first-ever cruelty-to-animals convictions of sheep shearers. Others struggle to make an immediate impact: Peta is currently readying to release another investigation into wool, its 17th to date.
Undercover investigations and public stunts are perhaps what Peta is best known for, but since the late 1980s, it’s had a robust corporate accountability arm, quietly working behind the scenes to secure commitments to phase out animal-derived products. One of its leading tactics is shareholder activism, says Brainard. The organization currently owns stock in more than 65 publicly traded companies across food, fashion, pharmaceuticals, and other industries, but it also acts on behalf of independent shareholders in an even wider pool of companies. “Shareholder meetings are one of the few places where CEOs have to answer questions publicly,” Brainard says. “When Peta asks a question, it also serves to educate other investors and executives in the room. Even one share gives us the right to speak directly to leadership and raise issues that affect animals’ lives.”
Shareholder pressure from Peta has helped move the dial many times, Brainard continues. Among others, H&M agreed to stop sourcing new down, Gap and Farfetch dropped angora, and Frasers Group banned fur. In many cases, it works best when Peta representatives counter public perceptions of the organization. “We raise these issues in a straightforward way, laying out the facts and implications, and helping investors to see the full picture,” she says. “When Peta shows up to shareholder meetings, we disarm executives and board members because we are professional and dispel some of the myths associated with the organization. We push for change in the most professional way we can.”
Shareholder activism can force executives to answer questions about animal rights, but public pressure is still critical to push those executives to act, says Brainard. “Public pressure through campaigns and demonstrations and celebrities and celebrity support gets attention,” she says. “Consumers appreciate transparency, and shareholders don’t want their investments tied to practices the public considers unacceptable.”
This can take many forms. In September 2023, Sabato De Sarno made his debut as then-creative director of Gucci. Sascha Camilli, PR projects manager for Peta, stormed the runway to protest the brand’s use of wild animal skins. The show was selected for its visibility, Camilli explains. “Actions like this come after sustained, behind-the-scenes engagement. It comes after evidence is shared, after appeals are made, after companies are given every opportunity to change. When they refuse, we escalate. Being on the catwalk ensures that the company, as well as buyers, journalists and fashionistas, are confronted with our message,” she says. “When that happens, it often drives dialogue and sparks change.”
The challenge for organizations like Peta is that shock value only goes so far, especially when the format is repeated consistently, and the people watching are more acclimatized to stunts than ever. “People might roll their eyes at the momentary interruption, but they still talk about it, and that’s the point,” Camilli adds. “If anything, the heightened visibility of disruptive protests in recent years has made people more curious about the motivations behind them — and for animals, that’s a good thing.”
Fashion Revolution
Fashion Revolution started as a grassroots campaign, demanding that fashion brands take accountability for the Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013. A lack of supply chain transparency at the time meant that activists had to dig through the rubble to see which brands were manufacturing products in the facility. Fashion Revolution quickly developed a social media campaign with the goal of educating consumers about the environmental and human rights abuses that plagued fashion production. “Our role was to educate and give a clear call to action, to give people the tools to do something about it,” says policy and campaigns manager Delphine Williot. “We prefer to say citizens rather than consumers, because not only can people change the industry by changing their consumption habits, but they can call for legislation, too.”
Williot is now based in Brussels, where she leads Fashion Revolution’s work with policymakers. This has taken a hit in the past year, she says, pointing to the rollback of certain EU sustainable fashion regulations. Despite this, Williot remains optimistic about the potential for advocacy organizations to engage policymakers. “We still feel like policy change is an important pillar for us moving forward,” she says.
Central to Fashion Revolution’s theory of change is that it never targets a single brand, Williot says. “By talking about systemic issues in the fashion industry, we’re able to engage more brands in our research.” She points to the annual Fashion Revolution Transparency Index, which reviews and ranks 250 of the largest brands and retailers based on their public disclosures about sustainability. In recent years, this has evolved to track progress on decarbonization and clean heat — a burgeoning priority for the organization. “We’re able to speak to brands more directly because they know we won’t target them individually. That is the strength of Fashion Revolution — a collaborative approach.”
Taking a systemic approach means engaging with stakeholders beyond the usual brand ecosystem, Williot says. In October, Fashion Revolution organized a roundtable for brands, suppliers, NGOs, and technical experts operating in Pakistan, to generate a 360-degree view on the barriers to change. “It wasn’t about finger-pointing, but understanding the challenges they’re facing, and what support they need from the industry to overcome them.”
Sustainable fashion advocacy has faltered in recent months, with several longstanding leaders in the space closing in the face of growing ESG backlash and tighter reins on funding. Fashion Revolution is no stranger to these hurdles, and has amended its strategic priorities in line with demand from funders, explains Williot. “A lot of organizations we work with have had to halve the number of employees they have because of funding restrictions,” she says. “It’s a very bleak landscape.”
In response, Fashion Revolution has pivoted in line with the interests of funders, she says, pointing to Fashion Revolution’s recent push for extreme heat stress to be included in the updated Pakistan Accord, and its renewed emphasis on decarbonization. “We have found that there is an increasing amount of funding available for environmental research, and there needs to be an environmental angle to research on human rights or labor to access funding,” Williot says. “We pivoted, not to dismiss the human rights side, but to keep the organization going. At the end of the day, it’s all connected.”
