Future Fashion & ‘Beautiful China’ – Together Forever?

By Dawn McGregor 18 August, 2016

Now is the time to fight to ensure a bright future for fashion

“I don’t design clothes. I design dreams“, said Ralph Lauren. “Fashion has two purposes: comfort and love. Beauty comes when fashion succeeds“, said Coco Chanel. As we can see, some of the great and the good of fashion see beauty and fashion encompassing each other.
And it’s not just them; such attention is paid to the “glamour”, “style” & “beauty” of fashion, the Oscars come to mind.  But is it really? Can fashion be beautiful with such a dirty and thirsty evolution? China also wants to be “beautiful” by 2020. But can it be when it produces half of the world’s textiles?
This puts the industry in a bind. Is there a future for fashion in a Beautiful China? Can they be “together forever”?

Regulatory landscape has shifted – no longer conducive for cheap fast fashion

China’s lax environmental policies in the past two decades facilitated the rise of cheap fast fashion. However, China is now stepping up environmental standards and regulations along its path towards balancing economics and the environment. Back in 2014, with CLSA’s Dirty Thirsty Fashion: Blindsided by China’s Water Wars, we warned of a change in regulatory landscape with negative implications for the global fashion industry.
Today, the regulatory landscape has indeed changed. With all three pollution prevention and control action plans in place, we update our views on the sector in the brief: “Today’s Fight for the Future of Fashion – Is there room for fast fashion in a ‘Beautiful China’?”
Key risks and opportunities for the future of fashion are:

• Dirty thirsty fashion: a clear target in ‘Beautiful China’
• Short-term risks: Water Ten Plan
• Stricter enforcement: new environmental law & policies
• Long-term risks: high raw material exposure, soil clean-up & ‘Made in China 2025’
• High reputational risk: continued NGO pressure & the new Chinese consumer
• Brand rankings on sustainability: leaders & laggards
• The future of fashion: closing the loop & who can help

The fashion industry is at a crossroad – in an increasingly difficult operating landscape with new, more stringent regulations and an uncertain future, the industry can go circular or shutdown in China.

Textiles less important to China; 2015 cotton production down 9.3%

This may seem somewhat far-fetched but is it? Given China’s need to protect its precious water resources, the textile sector is vulnerable – it is strategically less important than food or energy security.
Moreover, the sector’s contribution to national GDP is falling. It is unlikely that the textiles sector will be more important to China than ensuring food and energy security. Already we saw China remove cotton subsidies in the parched North China Plain, an area which holds around 12% of the nation’s total coal output and approximately two-thirds of the nation’s wheat production.
Impact on cotton is already being seen. Cotton prices have also jumped 16% after hovering around USD0.6 – 0.65/pound for the past two years, now selling for around USD0.7/pound but reaching as high as USD0.85. There are various causes for this increase, one of which is reduced production. China’s cotton production is down 9.3% to 5.6 million tonnes in 2015 from the previous year. India has now replaced China as the top global cotton producer after China made a conscious decision to deprioritise thirsty and dirty cotton.

Not just short-term risks from the Water Ten but also long-term raw material risks…

Short-term operational and financial risks are present. China’s war on pollution has been ramping up since 2014, with new stringent policies like the ‘Water Ten Plan’ driving this. Related laws to protect the environment are also currently undergoing revisions. All these point to the consolidation of textile, apparel & footwear manufacturing in China. Although painful in the short term for factories in China, we expect to see bigger, stronger & cleaner OEMs, with better pricing power over brands to emerge.
That said, in the longer term, both manufacturers & brands face similar upstream challenges with raw material production as China transitions to higher-value products in line with ‘Made in China 2025’. The direction here is clear with China wanting the industry to go circular. There is naturally a plan for this but there is still a long way to go. Amongst other obstacles, the right incentive structures, waste collection and logistic issues need to be addressed in closing the loop. However, with the promise of textile waste per year worth RMB60billion, surely it is worth the investment.

26 mt of textile waste per year presents opportunities for recycling and up-cycling

Another perspective is the sheer waste the textile industry generates. Pre and post-consumer textile waste in China is estimated to be around 26 million tonnes per annum. For perspective, this is more than half of China’s total chemical fibre production in 2014; and China produces two-thirds of global chemical fibres. At this size, given that landfill space is fast becoming a premium in China, it is not surprising that the government is pushing for the win-win solution of recycling/ up-cycling garments.

New, green Chinese consumer may have a different idea of the future of fashion

The good news is that brands are stepping up their game on this front. More brands starting circular initiatives this year compared to the last. But is this enough? There is much more at stake than merely demonstrating the drive to be “green”. With the spotlight on pollution in China, brand reputational risk is high. Studies show that the new, more green-conscious, Chinese consumer shows strong willingness to reduce purchases from poor performing brands. This shift in Chinese consumer attitudes towards clothes that do not contaminate their waters means that the largest consumer market in the world may have a rather different idea of the future of fashion.
More collaboration is needed, as is awareness. On this front it was great to see that the Sustainable Apparel Coalition has opened up its proprietary suite of Higg Index tools to non-member small and medium-sized (SMEs) brands and retailers – the SME Access program. Also, actor Emma Watson, through collaboration with Calvin Klein & Eco Age, wore a dress made from recycled plastic bottles to the Met Gala – she looked fabulous. More on circular fashion today here.

Closing the loop needs to encompass entire businesses; not just a few “eco” lines

In short, for fashion to have a bright future in China, it needs to become “beautiful” too. Ensuring that their supply chains are treating wastewater discharge from textile dyeing, finishing and tanning and committing to ZDHC are the least brands should do. Their efforts need to move beyond these to serious action on closing the loop. At the moment, there are lots of innovation and initiatives but scale needs to be increased. Closing the loop needs to encompass their entire business; not just a few “eco” lines.
Brands can continue with business-as-usual and move to source from other countries with lax regulations where they can continue to pollute, or they can choose to work with Chinese manufacturers to revamp the industry from within. Even with these risks & challenges it’s exciting times. We could be wearing clothes with lace made from strawberries, materials from algae and more. The time to come together and fight for a “future fashion” is now. The dream is not just a ‘Beautiful China’, it is to make fashion beautiful inside & out.
See you at World Water Week in Stockholm!