Some in the industry are becoming more vocal in suggesting that government, not brands, should be responsible for violations deep in the luxury supply chain and things are getting political.
https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/sustainability/luxury-hits-back-on-sweatshop-scandals-were-not-the-financial-police/?utm_source=newsletter_dailydigest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily_Digest_271025&utm_term=F2G5L7RRDVBHJKFPPHLF5MQRAY&utm_content=top_story_2_dek
Whether the fashion industry is or isn’t in a so-called “sustainability retreat,” as Tufts University professor Ken Pucker first described a year ago, has been a bone of contention. What some have characterized as a much-needed reset to adapt to turbulent economic and geopolitical realities is being interpreted by others as a feckless rollback of once-vaunted, if perhaps overly confident, greenhouse gas ambitions.
https://sourcingjournal.com/sustainability/sustainability-news/fashion-industry-sustainability-retreat-climate-commitments-1234783318/
The company’s emissions fell by a third in five years, but retiring its 2040 net-zero pledge puts the brand at odds with the mainstream.
https://trellis.net/article/ralph-lauren-rolling-emissions-ditches-net-zero-target/
“Unfortunately, I think it’s pretty compelling to buy a $7 pair of jeans if you’re not rich,” Ken Pucker, professor of practice at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and the former chief operating officer of Timberland, told me last year. “To a consumer, there’s no real functional benefit of sustainable fashion. Just perhaps a psychic benefit that they’re helping the planet.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/30/opinion/forever-21-bankrupt-fast-fashion.html
In this episode, MBA candidate Erin Malaney interviews Michelle Gabriel, Director of Sustainable Fashion at IENYC, and Ken Pucker, former COO of Timberland and professor at Tufts University. They discuss why current sustainability approaches in fashion aren’t working, highlighting business models that prioritize profit over planet, lack of regulation, and externalized environmental costs. Both experts emphasize that policy is essential for meaningful change, as voluntary corporate sustainability efforts have proven insufficient. They also address the critical need for fashion education to include business strategy, climate science basics, and policy understanding to create effective industry change.
https://leadthechange.bard.edu/podcast/fashion-industry-sustainability
In this interview we take a look at the fashion industry from Pucker’s unique perspective and history as a fashion executive, university professor, writer, business advisor and counselor on fashion legislation. We examine the fashion industry’s system structure, reporting, and regulations. Today, like the fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes, we are in many ways being fooled about our own clothing. We are told what to believe, and we believe what we think everyone else believes. But, just like the child in the fairy tale, it’s the voices that soar above the accepting crowd that tell us the truth we need to hear.
New tariffs and the potential end of a duty-free loophole bring new challenges to fashion brands, resellers and manufacturers.
The trade policy, although a “fine step,” won’t kick consumers’ addiction to low-cost, polluting polyester clothes, according to Ken Pucker, a former Timberland executive who teaches business at Dartmouth College and Tufts University. “Even with the addition of a few dollars of duty to a Shein dress, it will still cost less than half many competitors’ garments,” he said.
https://trellis.net/article/fast-fashion-confronts-a-reckoning-on-sustainability-under-trump-tariffs/?mkt_tok=MjExLU5KWS0xNjUAAAGYmTgzF-jqZWzL04iHD3P5XzrWZxaBESuRN1u_GlwIHVUwb9dAhk-35Plz1K1MrPfqaHiblWbaIozB_3DOiiHV1zMTc70mcOptONXTI10a_w
“Since the outset, Allbirds has been clear that consumers do not buy their shoes because they are sustainable,” said Ken Pucker, professor of practice with the Tufts Fletcher School. “Instead, they seek to make the most comfortable, simple and purposeful products that happen to be lower in carbon.”
https://trellis.net/article/allbirds-wants-footwear-companies-to-copy-net-zero-shoe-design/
Reformation’s executives call themselves a walking contradiction by combining rapid creations with an industry-leading phaseout of virgin synthetics.
https://trellis.net/article/take-a-factory-tour-of-the-350-million-fast-fashion-brand-making-surprising-sustainability-gains/
Big brands are focused on buzzy, marketable ‘solutions’ and face little accountability for failing to deliver on decarbonisation targets, but there are ways to unlock more effective action
https://www.businessoffashion.com/opinions/sustainability/fashion-climate-change-commitments-emissions/