If you’re buying fast fashion, chances are your clothes have been on a long, unseen journey passing through many different hands in many different countries. It may be the convoluted norm of globalised fashion supply chain, but it’s also a deeply entrenched obstacle to bringing the industry closer to sustainability and equity.

The longer a supply chain, the less likely it is for people to pay attention to where or how raw materials for their products are sourced and how products are made – and the fashion and textile industry have one of the longest supply chains.

Fabric’s life starts where cotton is planted or where it’s made in a lab, such as in the case of polyester. The synthetic material is made from by-products of non-renewable fossil fuels like petroleum and produces higher carbon emissions during production than a natural fibre like cotton.

Fabrics can also go through intensive processing including spinning and dyeing, or chemical treatment processes to be made anti-static, waterproof, or fire retardant.

They’re then sent to destinations in the developing world – to take advantage of cheaper labour and running costs – for manufacturing into garments.

Next, the finished articles are packaged for distribution and transported to consumers all around the world. Added to this chain, there’s the end of life of clothing when synthetic materials can end up jamming up landfills and taking decades to biodegrade.

The impact of these fashion supply chains on communities and economies is huge. According to research and analysis company, Statista, the traditional apparel market is a “world giant in continuous growth” with an estimated global apparel revenue of 1,547 billion U.S. dollars in 2021 (around 2% of global gross domestic product). Its value is forecast to reach 1,955 billion U.S. dollars by 2026. The industry’s carbon footprint is “also sizeable, estimated to amount to 3,396 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent in 2021 – or 8.8% of the total global emissions.”

It makes the imperative to rethink fashion supply chains, and the inequitable power dynamics that they perpetuate, a key target for this sector of the global economy to align with the agenda to cut carbon emissions and to have a clearer commitment to sustainability that protects environments and people’s lives and livelihoods.

 

Globalised fashion

Fashion’s long supply chain has its roots intertwined with the surge of industrialisation and has for centuries been marked by complex international transactions. For example, cotton grown in India was sent to the British Empire as early as the 19th century.

This trade continues today but is still marked by inequitable power dynamics and unequal profit sharing. While the developing nations that grow and manufacture raw materials for the garment industry take smaller profits, the lion’s share goes to those who control and market garments, with significant mark-ups and branding, to consumers in Europe and America.

According to a United Nations Environment Programme report, Europe and America comprise 57% of global fashion consumption.

Developing nations also face so-called carbon colonialism. This is when wealthy, developed countries “export” emissions by locating their dirty production in developing states. Countries in the Global South that enter into these agreements take on disproportionate loads in terms of pollution and potential environmental risks in their own countries.

 

It gets more complicated…

Supply chains are also heavily shaped by the trade practices of offshoring, onshoring, nearshoring, and reshoring, which have their own pros and cons and related social and environmental impacts.

Many fast fashion brands either outsource or move certain parts of production abroad. This is known as offshoring. Many brands move offshore to destinations where labour is often cheaper and there are fewer restrictions or regulations around production. Transferring a set of operations to another company can minimise costs, by skipping the costs of investing in and running specialised equipment, training, and production. This allows the company to focus on other core aspects of its business. The downside of offshoring though is that a company has less control over production flow, unexpected production schedule disruptions, and ethical practices.

Onshoring meanwhile involves moving production from one city to another within the same country. Some pros of this are lowered transportation costs, reduced cultural and language barriers, meeting domestic regulation compliance; and flexibility for companies  to respond more quickly to changing consumer demands.

There’s also been a growing trend toward nearshoring. This is choosing production locations that are geographically closer to the home base of the fashion brand, or to locations that are considered more stable or competitive. It was the case at the end of 2021 for PVH Corp, which owns brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Speedo, and Calvin Klein, when they closed a manufacturing plant in Ethiopia. Reuters reported that the decision was linked to Ethiopia’s loss of duty-free access to the United States over its ongoing conflict in Tigray at the time.

The impact of the loss of employment and its knock-on effects in vulnerable countries like Ethiopia is massive when transnational companies pull the plug.

According to the report, Ethiopian officials warned the “US decision could take away one million jobs [including those linked to the PVH Corp manufacturing plant], and disproportionately hurt poor women who are the majority of garment workers.”

There is also a move towards reshoring. As the Covid pandemic led to severe job losses and exposed the fault lines of global supply chains, reshoring has been considered a way of supporting local industries and bolstering employment within a country.

An organisation advocating for restructuring fashion supply chains in the United States called, Refashiond Ventures, is championing this change. Co-founder Lisa Morales-Hellebo says that localisation is not only more sustainable, it also a more efficient, cost-effective model for brands. Rocketing freighting costs over the past couple of years, she says, has also made the global supply chain “no longer makes sense”. Morales-Hellebo adds:

The pandemic is just a symptom – the root cause is climate change. A lot of issues facing supply chains, such as disease and migration, are all linked to climate change. And so, brands need to invest in a localised supply chain not only because it allows for more efficiency, but also because it is better for our planet and our people.

Reshoring though means more operational costs and a need to bolster operational and management oversight over more aspects of a business.

 

It gets even more complicated…and uglier too

That supply chains are so widely spread out across geographic locations, regulatory jurisdictions, and even time zones mean limitations on speedy communications for uninterrupted business flow, oversight, and good governance.

Current supply chain systems are also set up to allow for less transparency and accountability – this is for a sector that is in dire need of transformation.

Added to this, much of the exploitation in the fashion industry, “wage theft” and other illegal operations associated occurs because the supply chains also rely heavily on subcontracting. Subcontracting is another twist to the supply chain and ultimately allows brands to evade responsibility. Journalist and author, Dana Thomas, in her latest book, Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes, writes that:

Subcontracting is endemic in the apparel industry, creating a fractured supply chain in which workers are easily in jeopardy.

The fashion supply chain, then, is less of a linear chain and more of a web, with subcontractors, outsourcing, and imports around the world. This fractured supply chain, Thomas argues, leads to a lack of transparency as well as a lack of responsibility.

Her reflections connect the dots between transparency, the supply chain, and the quest for transformation of the industry. It also leaves the question of “what now” for the industry to be answered with deeper reckoning and clearer commitment to action from the industry itself, watchdogs and regulators, and also the average fashion and clothing consumer.

 

• Cover image: Photo by Dayvison de Oliveira Silva on Pexels
  
• Learn more about fashion’s transparency issue here.