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Fashion Week Brings Another Layer of Chaos to Paris

Pharrell Williams returns a year after his lavish debut as Louis Vuitton creative director. JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP
Pharrell Williams returns a year after his lavish debut as Louis Vuitton creative director. JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP
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Fashion Week Brings Another Layer of Chaos to Paris

Pharrell Williams returns a year after his lavish debut as Louis Vuitton creative director. JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP
Pharrell Williams returns a year after his lavish debut as Louis Vuitton creative director. JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP

Paris Fashion Week returns on Tuesday, bringing some much-needed light relief to a country in the throes of political chaos.
Menswear week runs until next Sunday, followed immediately by the haute couture shows until June 27.
France has been in turmoil since President Emmanuel Macron called surprise legislative elections after a surge by the far-right in European polls, said AFP.
But for fashionistas, the biggest issue might be getting around Paris, which is also finalizing preparations to host next month's Olympic Games, with a tenfold increase in traffic congestion due to road and site closures.
The Olympics have brought the menswear and couture weeks forward from July (womenswear takes place in September).
With fashion already working at a punishing pace, that has forced some houses to abandon this season, including Olivier Rousteing's Balmain, which told AFP it had pulled out at the last minute.
Valentino and Givenchy are also skipping this week's shows.
As for the big names who are appearing, hip-hop mogul Pharrell Williams will continue his high-profile leadership at Louis Vuitton, marking a year since his ultra-lavish debut show when he took over the Pont Neuf bridge and painted its paving stones gold.
But the highlight will be a mega-party organized by Vogue on Sunday bringing together the doubly lucrative worlds of sports and fashion.
It is the third edition of Vogue World -- a sort of traveling Met Gala that has already seen events in New York and London -- and comes as the brand seeks new ways to stay relevant in a world of dwindling magazine sales.
Several top brands will display collections, including Dior, Jacquemus, Hermes and Balenciaga, each paired with an Olympic discipline from athletics to breakdancing.
Chanel shock
There have been some big movements at the heads of fashion houses.
The biggest shock was the announcement last week that Chanel has dropped Virginie Viard, who worked for 20 years alongside her predecessor Karl Lagerfeld and took over after his death in 2019.
It appears the split was less than amicable, since Viard will not be present for Chanel's couture show on June 25, despite overseeing record sales for the brand last year.
"It will be a studio collection and Virginie Viard will not be present," a Chanel spokesperson told AFP.
The end of the Lagerfeld era has set off fashionistas' favorite pastime: speculating on who comes next.
Among the names circulating: France's Marine Serre, Hedi Slimane of Celine, Pierpaolo Piccioli (who recently left Valentino) and Simon Porte Jacquemus, whose eponymous label has been one of the big independent success stories of recent years.
While Valentino awaits the debut of its high-profile new creative director Alessandro Michele (formerly of Gucci), Givenchy is still looking for a lead designer since the departure of Matthew Williams last year.
This week will also see the final show by Belgian designer Dries Van Noten on Saturday.
Though not a household name, the 66-year-old is retiring as a favorite among serious fashion fans for his avant-garde styles and expert tailoring.

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Fashion Suppliers Want Brands to Help With EU Green Regulations

An employee arranges bobbins at a textile plant in Haian county, Jiangsu province, China. REUTERS
An employee arranges bobbins at a textile plant in Haian county, Jiangsu province, China. REUTERS
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Fashion Suppliers Want Brands to Help With EU Green Regulations

An employee arranges bobbins at a textile plant in Haian county, Jiangsu province, China. REUTERS
An employee arranges bobbins at a textile plant in Haian county, Jiangsu province, China. REUTERS

As the global fashion industry braces for new green supply-chain regulations, clothing makers in low-income countries like Bangladesh expect major international brands to share the burden. The European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), adopted in July, requires corporations to make their global value chains more sustainable.
The new rules on workers’ rights and emissions could transform the way clothing is made and sold, most significantly in the garment factories and textile mills across Asia that account for much of the sector’s pollution. Bangladesh, the world’s second-biggest clothing exporter after China, in particular needs assistance from major brands as it undergoes a political transition following mass protests sparked by a jobs crisis that ousted the previous government.
"While in Bangladesh we have prepared our mindset and ecosystem for the change, we will need support from our global buyers, as well as our government, to reach the green transition goals," said Abdullah Hil Rakib, managing director at Team Group, a clothing supplier in Bangladesh that employs about 23,000 people. The CSDDD seeks to bring corporate practices in line with the Paris Agreement on climate goals. Major European brands must ensure their suppliers are conducting due diligence to protect workers and communities from the adverse effects of their operations or pay compensation for damages.
For the fashion industry, the onus will mostly fall on factories in places like Bangladesh, Pakistan and Cambodia to find and fill the gaps in safeguarding labor, human rights and the environment, experts said.
International brands must collaborate with these suppliers to adhere to the new rules, according to a study by clothing makers in Asia that was supported by the Transformers Foundation, which represents the denim industry, and GIZ FABRIC, a project from German development agency GIZ to support sustainable textile production in the region.
GROWING COMPLEXITY
The new regulations may provide a chance for suppliers to push for ethical commercial practices and more favorable contracts from international brands, representatives from companies behind the study told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a joint interview.
But manufacturers are still coming to grips with what measures they must take and how they will finance their portion of the estimated $1 trillion investment required for the fashion industry to transition to net-zero emissions in the coming decades.
Rakib estimated that suppliers will have to make additional investments of 20% to 30% to turn their factories green.
Industry experts warned that the CSDDD will require a raft of legal changes in countries where the products are manufactured.
National legislatures will have to pass laws that line up with the EU directive. Brands must devise their approach to implementing such laws, and courts will need precedents in order to enforce them, said Matin Saad Abdullah, a professor of computer science and engineering at BRAC University in Dhaka who maps garment factories’ compliance on labor rights and environmental standards.
"The path forward is long and complex," he said.
Brands and suppliers have widely differing capacities and plans for meeting what the EU calls “just transition,” said Zahangir Alam, a fashion industry consultant who has worked for three decades with top global brands on labor issues and sustainability.
For example, Sweden’s H&M Group aims to cut carbon emissions by 56% by 2030, while US retailer Walmart’s Project Gigaton seeks to avoid 1 billion metric tons of emissions in its global value chain by 2030.
Smaller producers in particular will struggle to determine which actions they need to take to meet a brand’s particular benchmarks, Alam said.
‘SHARED RESPONSIBILITY’
Industry associations and government agencies can encourage a common approach by companies in the transition to cleaner and fairer practices, said Rakib.
Bangladesh's garment makers' association, called BGMEA, has set up the Responsible Business Hub to provide information to suppliers about the changing regulatory landscape. The group is also creating a platform to facilitate data collection and sharing. But suppliers said they need brands at their side too and that meeting the CSDDD’s requirements is a “shared responsibility,” as the directive mandates.
Brands are often accused of passing the buck to their suppliers when it comes to ensuring a living wage or investing in decarbonization.
To achieve net-zero emission by 2050, the fashion industry will have to invest more than $600 billion to implement solutions that already exist and about $400 billion to develop innovations, according to a report by the Apparel Impact Institute (Aii), a non-profit promoting sustainable investments.
Aii has formed the Fashion Climate Fund, which pools resources from brands and philanthropies, and is working with more than 1,000 suppliers to help them achieve energy and water efficiency, said Lewis Perkins, President of Aii.
Aii acts as a "clearing house" to identify programs and technology for decarbonization and encourage local suppliers to adopt them.
"We have identified 1,500 suppliers with high energy usage and aim to support locally grown decarbonization solutions, when they meet our criteria, prioritized by the suppliers themselves, with buy-in from multiple stakeholders, so that all actors are on the same page," Perkins said.
WORKERS’ VOICES
The EU directive is also aimed at improving labor conditions, requiring businesses to verify workplace safety and allow workers and unions to file complaints about human rights violations with authorities.
Union leaders said they are waiting to see how the changes are put in place to protect workers.
"When the laws kick in, we need clear and simple channels to seek remedy when anything goes wrong - and the Global North should have a roadmap for supporting the upskilling of workers," said Kalpona Akter, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity (BCWS).
"Moreover, for all the lawmakers' focus on transitioning to net zero, there should be a comparable commitment on helping workers deal with climate impacts like flooding and heat," said Akter.
Garment-producing countries like Bangladesh could lose $66 billion in export revenues by 2030 due to flooding and heat waves, said reports by the Global Labor Institute at Cornell University in the United States and investment manager Schroders published last year.
Team Group’s Rakib said Bangladesh’s experience making changes to improve conditions for workers and the environment make it well-positioned to tackle the new rules – and ensure it retains its position as a leading producer of the world’s clothing.
"With the strides that suppliers in Bangladesh have made in ensuring workers are safe from fire and electrical risks - and more than 200 green factories making extra savings on energy and water - we will remain a key sourcing choice," Rakib said.