EP 235: How Flow Fashion Could Save Our Planet and Your Wallet

Guests: 

Ann Cantrell, small business owner and FIT associate professor

Liz Alessi, retail supply chain expert

We’re celebrating Earth Day Week early! The fashion industry has an environmental crisis on its hands. It uses an astronomical number of resources (a single T-shirt requires 700 gallons of water to manufacture) contributing 10 percent of global carbon emissions. Fast fashion brands are accelerating production cycles while regulatory rollbacks are threatening progress: understanding sustainable alternatives has never been more urgent for both consumers and brands. In this episode of Retail Unwrapped, Shelley and sustainability experts Ann Cantrell and Liz Alessi discuss innovative solutions in the face of global supply chain challenges and economic headwinds ensuring both economic and environmental sustainability.  Consumers hold significant power through their purchasing decisions while brands can drive change through innovative approaches like "flow fashion,” which is combining the best business practices of fast fashion with the core values of slow fashion, maintaining sustainability principles.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 

For more strategic insights and compelling content, visit TheRobinReport.com, where you can read, watch, and listen to content from Robin Lewis and other retail industry experts, and be sure to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Transcript

Transcript by Descript: 

 Hi everyone. Welcome to our weekly podcast,  retail Unwrapped. I'm very excited during Earth Month to have two provocative guests With me today, I have  Anne Cantrell. Who is a professor from Fashion Institute of Technology. She's written courses on sustainability. She teaches sustainability and circularity.

She's also an owner and founder of Annie's Blue Ribbon Store, a fantastic fund store in Brooklyn, New York, and also Anne. You are an advocate for small businesses, and I'm gonna share with our listeners real quick. I hope you don't mind. I love one day you and I were speaking. 

Check even at a very young age in terms of sustainability and circularity. So, Anne, welcome.  Thank you for having me.  We also have Liz esi and you are a consultant extraordinaire. You do a lot of work in sustainability, circularity. Um, you also have a background at a major retailer, manufacturer, coach, and tapestry.

Um, so you bring a world of experience and expertise to our podcast today, and I understand you're actually doing a keynote at Fashion Institute of Technology, which is fantastic. So welcome. That's right. Thank you so much for having me, Shelly, and I'm really pleased to be here with my dear, dear friend Anne. 

Um, Shelly, excellent. Also, Liz also has a daughter the same age as mine, so they both keep us in check on many levels. I don't know, mine doesn't even turn her lights off, so I don't think she is. She's not a role model.  It's funny, uh, and you know, my son does my, I have two sons and one son is like always.

Reminding me of things, so I think it's great, this younger generation, but let's start our conversation today we're talking about circularity, the state of the fashion industry. There's so much going on. Let's start with what does the state of the fashion industry look like? Liz, maybe you can kick us off. 

Oh my gosh. It's such a, a very interesting week to be having this question on a podcast, actually. Right. Um, I mean, I think the state of the fashion industry is in a major disruption at the moment. I think that, you know, obviously with supply chains all around the world, um, and the tariffs, it's like a very confusing time.

So it's, you know. Unfortunately not the best moment in time, but I think that in moments like this, we are, we have the ability to make some pretty dramatic changes that hopefully will be better in the longer term. Um, but I think I'd love to hear Anne's answer to that one.  Yes. Well, you're so right. We're in this huge paradigm shift right now.

I, I think, um, but in terms of Earth Month and why we're here today talking about sustainability, I will just say that, um, on one hand, you know, we are really dealing with, um, so much in the retail world, but for the first time I was reading. In retail wire that resale sales outpaced retail in 2024. Really fueled by a budget conscious shopper looking at sustainability, but also thinking about this uncertain economic environment.

And, um, you know, less, um, disposable and, um, discretionary income and fast fashion is getting faster than ever. Um, we saw recently that Forever 21, um, closed finally, after. Years of figuring out their bankruptcy situation. But really, um, there was an interesting New York Times article about this on March 30th about that.

Um, we are really in this time of almost instant fashion and because of brands like Sheen and tamu that are driving things quicker and faster than ever before, it's really even a forever 21. Couldn't keep up. So, um, in class I'm always, um, telling my students that my sides are trash because I'm always showing how much, um, we are throwing away into landfills and how, um, you know, just so the audience knows, we should never be throwing away our clothes.

We should always try to.  Donate them. That's a whole different conversation about where our clothes go from that perspective, but at least trying to keep them in this cycle as much as possible. We recycle them, um, we places can downcycle them. You might even find a hauler that it's gonna take away some scraps.

Um, and um, in Brooklyn where Liz and I both live, we put things on the stoop and they get taken immediately. Um, which is really, wow.  Yeah. I've gotten some good fines on the stoop, but, um, and now more than ever, students, like back to the earlier part, are really like selling their, selling their goods. Um, we have students that have depop shops.

And it, it's actually really exciting from that perspective. But I do wanna talk and make sure that the audience knows how much fast fashion is killing our environment. Um, all the pollution and textile waste is con contributing to climate change and resource depletion. Oh, um, just for some more context, um, the fashion industry uses so much water.

To make a t-shirt takes 2,700 liters of water. That's about 700 gallons. Believe that's enough to live off for, for three years. Um, and you know, how many t-shirts do we all have in our closet? Right. And I ironically, women and girls around the world are the ones that are spending a majority of time. Um.

Getting that water resources for their family. We're really lucky and blessed here in the United States, but, um, that we can open our faucet and get clean, fresh water most of the time. Uh, but the fashion industry is a major contributor to climate change. It's responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions.

Synthetic fabrics like polyester that are made from fossil fuels we're really, you know, um, hitting it on both sides, um, exacerbating the problem. Um, and, um, less than 1% sure can talk about this later, but less than 1% of material used to produce clothing. Is made from recycled into new clothing. So, um, we really just have this massive material loss.

Um, the landfill, the clothing in textile, textiles and landfills cost carbon dioxide, methane, which are greenhouse gases, greenhouse gas emissions. We're also, if everybody knows we're eating about a. Credit cards worth of plastic each week from micro microplastics. Yeah. That, um, get into our laundry everywhere.

Um, Antarctica, breast milk, all have microplastics. So really, um, just one more quick point to say how massive the industry is. Um, the fashion industry has like 430 million people in it and the, between the fashion and textile industry. So the aspect, and that's like about almost 12% of the global workforce.

So, and most of these people aren't earning a living wage. We're not paying them enough money. Yeah. And so it really, all these factors, environmental, um, ethical, all of these factors are really coming together to cross a very, um, you know, tumultuous time. Not to mention a very complex supply chain that is, you know, really.

As Liz mentioned with tariffs and, um,  companies trying to play like whack-a-Mole to figure out where they should produce things. Um, actually there was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about that, talking about Lululemon and Nike, about how they, um, just, you know, they've moved so much production there, um, and now they're getting hit with tariffs as well.

So not combined with over consumption. We're just in a really, really tough spot right now. So let me ask you a question. So first of all, I've always admire your passion. Our listeners can hear it, they can see your passion, and I just really admire the work that you're doing. I feel like the work that you're doing is really making a difference. 

But let me ask you a question. So I feel like we've worked so hard over the past decade, even the last 20 years, but specifically the last decade, we've worked so hard to get to a point where, you know, we are making a difference. And now there's a lot of rollbacks, there's a rollbacks on environmental, there's rollbacks on other initiatives.

Can you talk a little bit about. You know,  going backwards just seems like the wrong thing to do.  I, I know I, I'm sure Liz can chime in here too. I'll just get us started. But really, we, I feel like we came, we were going in a good direction pre covid, and then Covid actually highlighted a lot of. Things, maybe your, um, listeners are familiar with the hashtag payout movement where, um, remake, um, really got a big social media movement to um, make sure that cus that um, brands were paying the due due costs to the vendors that had already paid for things.

So we, we had some clarity around the supply chain during Covid and we had a chance to rebuild things that didn't really catch on. Brands are, you know, obviously needs are still, we are still in a profitability mindset, and I just wanna say, as a store owner, I wholeheartedly believe in environmental sustainability as well as economic sustainability.

You know, we can't, uh, we ha we can't. We have to be able to pay our bills in order for this all to, to work together. So it's, it's been very upsetting in this current, um, context of business and policy where brands are also trying to, you know, cover their bases and meet their margins. But, um, we're seeing a pretty intense rollback of environmental regulations at the federal level.

Everything from EPA enforcement powers being weakened by climate policies installed. Course DEI as well. Um, a big, you know, point of discussion a few years ago was ESG, environmental, social and Governance Initiatives, and these are often the first to roll back. So, um, we're really at this crossroads where we have a lot more awareness from consumers, um, especially the younger generations as we were talked about earlier, and we want brands to be more transparent and responsible, but. 

The headwinds are real and it's gonna be an interesting, um, you know, I always tell my students we're living through it right now. Um, we'll see, we'll see how things play out. Yeah, so true. And there, there are some bright spots like, um, SB 7 0 7 in California. So like, as Anne said, at the federal level, I.

Things might be ruling back, but the states are, the states do still have the power to do things like that. And SB 7 0 7 is the first, um, in, in the us um, extended producer responsibility. So brands actually have to, um, have, take responsibility for the products that they make even after they're sold to the consumer.

And consumer doesn't want them anymore. Um, so I think that's really interesting. And I also wonder if there is, um. Silver lining to these tariffs where, you know, if people have less discretionary income, maybe they will be actually buying less. And um, that could be, could be interesting. Looking at resale, looking at vintage, looking at upcycling.

Um, and there are some brands that are doing really interesting things like my favorite. Project that I've worked on from a product standpoint was actually with my alma mater coach, where I worked for a very long time. Um, was and met me by the way. That's, that was, that was, that was actually my favorite part side benefits, meaning Anne.

That's right.  Um, but you know, she was talking about like the amount of water that it takes to, to make fabrics around the world and, um.  We did this, um, really scaled project where we used denim that came from, um, salvation Army and Goodwill. It was actually post-consumer denim to make Coach Beggs. And this was like really scaled in the, you know, tens of thousands of units.

Um, and they actually sponsored an LCAA life cycle analysis and uh, it proved that there's over 90%. Carbon savings and over 80%, sorry, opposite over 80% carbon savings and over 90% water savings by using existing materials.  That's great. And Liz, well that's talking about making the business case for sustainability, which is like really how we're gonna win on this in this conversation. 

Absolutely. And Liz, can you just go back for our listeners, explain what the SV 7 0 7 is? In layman terms. Yeah, sure. So basically what it is, is in California, if a brand selling product to people in California. Then that the consumer doesn't want the product at the end of the product's life. The brand HA is financially responsible for dealing with the product in a, in some responsible way.

So they're actually creating, in California what's called a pro, it'll be a nonprofit organization that brands have to pay into. And then the pro will help to figure out what California needs to do as a state in order to, um, handle the end of life of these products. 'cause it's a huge issue.  That is a tremendous impact. 

It, it's gonna take a few years to get set up, but it's, it's going, at least it's, it has headed in the right direction. I think that's unbelievable. Yeah. And the idea with these things is, you know, if it's in one state then, you know, as we've seen with like automobile industry for example, things you know are hopefully going to roll out to other states as well.

But the European Union, maybe Liz, you can just tell us a few things, what the EU has been doing, maybe with a digital product passport as well. 'cause I think that would be really, um, those are some amazing, um, rollouts that they've been doing. Yeah, I think, uh, the digital product Passport, which is like DPP they call it, is, is really interesting because, um, it's requiring brands to have radical transparency about what is in the product that consumers are buying.

Where did the material come from? Where was it manufactured?  Um, all all  kinds of information that we, that. Most consumers don't have access to today. So it's requiring brands to actually then take responsibility for their supply chain in order to then report on the supply chain. Um, in addition to the fact that it's very helpful for, again, end of life of products.

So you can actually scan products with DPPs now and you understand the content of it, so therefore you understand what you can do with it. Can you recycle it here? Does it need to be disassembled, et cetera. So it's, it's, DPP are excellent.   Yeah, and I wanna go back to something Anne, you said, 'cause I think it's very relevant and doing a lot of circularity and sustainability in a business.

It's costly, it's difficult, it's complex. You know, becoming a B Corp certified, you know, that's very difficult road to take. And you're right Anne. The p and l has to work. You have to still make money, you have to be profitable. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about, you know, what brands are doing it right, what brands are making it work, and being able to, you know, still make a profit At the end of the day, I. 

Yes. Um, well that's a complex conversation, but I do wanna say that, um, well, just everything, you know, some brands might be doing something really good here and, and I'll tell you about a few bit, but I do wanna mention what caring's, um, environmental profit and loss statement, um, which they share on their website.

Um, and.  Even have spoken at FIT in the past about it as well, but, uh, the way of analyzing decision making to, you know, not just from the bottom line. Um, we call, we look to businesses for the triple bottom line. People plan it and profitability and often why also correct my students and say, let's just maybe not think of it as profitability for.

You know, the head of the top of the pyramid, the C-suite, but also maybe prosperity for everybody in the state, in the supply chain. So really looking at it from a more holistic supply chain perspective. So when you talk about some of these brands, um, you know, in class we obviously highlight. Brands like Patagonia, that's kind of like me winning on all of these fronts.

They're doing amazing things environmentally, they're really very transparent. You can, you know, use a QR code to analyze their look at their supply chain. They're, they're, um, you know, really trying to share information. They help start the sustainable coalition now CAS scale, but in general really winning on all those different fronts.

Um, Stella McCartney, a luxury brand, but really, really one true core values that is, you know, trickles down to the rest of the industry. I just, um, wrote and presented a paper at the London College of Fashion about this, um, new concept that I've been talking about called Flow Fashion, and I brought up some, um.

Sell some smaller brands. There are like cotton, KOTN, which is out of Canada, that produces in, uh, Egyptian Delta. And they really started with this idea of trying to find the best t-shirt. Um, but they are like one of the top rank apparel, um, B Corps and North America. The kit is a really interesting one outta Dominican Republic that is, um, producing, um. 

Bespoke clothing within a 10 or 20 day timeframe specifically for you. So they're not keeping any inventory you can choose from their styling. They develop and, um, print and, um, cut, make and trim everything under their one roof. So the transportation costs are, are low as well, and they're. Like I said, not producing anything until it's sold.

Um, I also talked about one brand that it was really big when I was in high school. CP Shades. They are, they Oh yeah. Have been producing in Sausalito for the past 40 Sausalito, California for the past 40 years. But they, um, they really only cut to order what they are getting. Um.  I've mentioned reformation.

They, you know, have some, you know, there's some takers and, uh, detractors on all of these sides. But, um, Liz, do you have any more to add to that? I mean, I really have always really respected, um, Eileen Fisher in general, you know, talk, she's like the.  The OG of the co, um,  extended producer responsibility actually.

Um, and I, you know, I think Coach is doing a wonderful job as well in terms of like really upcycling at scale and the, and the re loved program, which is actually, um, something that I helped launch early. I. In its early days, um, which basically took bags that came into the repair shop and, um, design brought designers in to sort of redesign them, give it a little aesthetic love, and then resell the product, um, on their website.

So they're extending the life of the product. So any brand that's offering repair service, I think is really interesting. Um, tailoring I think is really interesting. Um, and there, um, you know, you're never gonna talk a CFO into like. Making less money next year. So I do think that that triple bottom line that Ann mentioned is extremely important.

And you know, a lot of people that are in fashion sustainability can get lost in like the rainbows and unicorns about all of this, but we really have to think about profit in terms of like even the reduction of fabric use, for example, like.  Zero waste design or designing for designing for circularity.

These are all things that have financial impacts on the front end and the back end, and we really need to look at the entire supply chain and the entire lifespan of the product in order to understand the p and l, the total p and l, the true cost of what we're, of what we're actually making and using. 

Yeah, absolutely. I just wanna jump on one thing. She, um, Liz mentioned Eileen Fisher and Eileen Fisher  and like CP Shades. Also, their products work with each other season after season. So they're this kind of classic timeless looks. So we haven't really even talked about trends and how this. Factors into the conversation, but certainly, you know, when people are wearing things only a couple times, um, and then, you know, moving on to something next.

And that's why she and and tamu are just like crushing it sadly and crushing the environment in the process. Yes. By, you know, just producing what the next thing that someone wants to wear just like that night or that weekend. Um, and so some of these brands, again, if you think about sustainability and a different perspective, and not, of course we want our environmentally produced and preferred materials.

We want ethical manufacturing and sourcing, but we also want things that are gonna last a long time and that people really feel good in and feel good on your body. So, you know, we, you're. Can also think about it from that perspective too, that you know, if you buy something, it's gonna last a really long time.

That is really important as well.  So, Ann, I have to share with you my kind of, how I tackle trends. I just buy something and it sits in my closet for 20 years and I know trends are cyclical and they all come back. So I just go back and I go re shopping in my closet. I say, okay, I is trendy. I can wear it again.

Oh yes. One of my best friends from Ralph Lauren, uh, he always looks so good and I'm like, whatcha wearing? He's like my closet. And I love that. Um, I do wanna say for your, for your listeners, if they wanna check out, good on you. They have some really good suggestions and review brands. They have a great newsletter as well, but they can also look for, um, accountability and transparency, reports from Fashion Revolution and remake and others, um, business of fashion, et cetera, that can help, um, with that, uh, to help, um, analyze, look at brands. 

And I, yeah. Can you just explain the flow fashion, because I think it's a great concept and I know that's gaining a lot of traction, so tell us what that is. Yes. Well, I hope so. Um, it's the idea, um, it's, it's the idea of reframing what fast fashion means. Fast fashion doesn't have to be, um, uh, a dirty wear.

Of course it is, and that's how we've come to terms with it. But, um, CPJ is an example of a brand that's doing fast fashion but in a sustainable way. So. Slow fashion is this concept that I came up with, which is combining the best business practices of fast fashion with the core values of slow fashion, slow fashion.

If you're, um, listeners aren't aware, it's kind of like, I always like to talk about fast food versus slow food movement, right? Fast food. We know that's McDonald's, it's, you know, we're heating up. Food and eating it quickly. And um, but in slow food, slow food movement, we have, um, farmer's markets. We might know the chef we are familiar with material.

So it's the same thing with clothing. So this idea of. When you are in a flow state, um, which I feel right now on this podcast where mind and body are at one and we're aligned, um, with, uh, you know, working towards a, a, a good goal. Um, this idea of combining the best business practices of fast fashion with the, um, core values of slow fashion. 

I love it. No, that's great.  And, uh, so before we leave, is there any advice you have, I mean, we've covered a ton of topics right here, and you've mentioned a lot of different things that brands can do and think about. Um, what advice would you give the retailers and brands that are out there today, where do you start?

What do you do? How do you focus?  I'll let Liz take this one over. As a business guru consultant, she is, well, I really think that brands need to really, I. Need to start looking across our entire value chain. So sustainability isn't a standalone.  Um, business unit, let's say. You have to think about sustainability in your finances, in your, um, merchandising team, in your design team, even in your dcs.

Like it's something that has to be an underlying core value. And I also think that I. You know, the NYU rosy work has been really interesting, which is that, you know, return on sustainable investment. Um, it's worth listeners checking that out as well. You know, they have to really, brands need to start link thinking more long term instead of short term.

So there is gonna be risk mitigation that they can do today. They can be first movers on new technologies that are actually gonna save them money in the long term. So my advice would be to really look more long term. There's also interesting financial triggers that brands can implement, like a very small tax on any new product that is sold that then goes into like an ESG Kitty for example, that can then help fund some of these new, um.

Technologies that might cost a little more at the beginning. Just like, as Ann was saying, like organic food costs a lot more at the beginning of the organic food movement. Um, and the cost comes down over time. So in order to fund and get some of these like recycled fibers, for example, like off the ground, um, that's one financial trigger that can be implemented to, to get it going. 

That's great. Ann, any advice?  Yeah, I think, um, first, um, you know, finding a baseline and where, where they're at right now and being able to measure from there. We always, I love the business phrase, what gets measured, gets managed, right? We, if we don't know where we are, we don't know how we're gonna improve.

So, um, and being real with themselves and their consumers and saying that it's. Say their work in progress. I think, um, Liz taught me a really important word a couple years ago. Green hushing. We might know what greenwashing is, um, when we're using more of our marketing dollars to make something look sustainable than is that then we've had this backlash where, um, brands don't wanna share any information for fear of like.

Getting in trouble with the consumer and other aspects. So, you know, you know, it's a process and um, it's also, we are a fashion industry is a very complex system that has been working this way for a long time. Brands don't own their own factories on the most majority of the time. So, um, really, you know, just looking at holistic approach and coming up with a baseline and trying to work forward from there. 

That's great. Well, Liz and Ann, thank you so much. You both are so inspirational. Thanks for joining us today. I am sure our listeners learned a ton. Thank you so much for having.  All right. We're gonna.