Stella McCartney (right), pictured here with H&M’s Ann-Sofie Johansson, says she’s helping change the system by collaborating with the retailer. We remain unconvinced.
Hey there, what happens when a luxury designer, who’s widely regarded as one of the most sustainable, decides to collaborate with a fast fashion giant?
That was the question on JD’s mind while squinting from a booth at the Fashion Awards, where H&M teased its new collection in collaboration with Stella McCartney. Yes, that Stella McCartney.
So, in this week’s briefing, we explore why these high-low collaborations feel tired. And we try to make sense of McCartney’s claims that she’s somehow achieving change by “infiltrating from within”.
Thanks for reading! Find the full briefing below.
JD and Amy
What’s happening?
This year’s Fashion Awards, hosted in London’s Royal Albert Hall, kicked off with what struck some fashion journalists in the audience as a joke about the climate crisis. “I’m here today to report an unprecedented heatwave across the continent — of hot British talent,” actor Celia Imrie said in a video celebrating the footprint of the UK’s influential designers. Imrie delivered her wry lines brilliantly, though the irony seemed to be lost on whoever wrote the script.
Maybe that passes as “edgy” in a year when the world’s largest brands have rolled back on sustainability commitments and embraced science-denying, far-right politicians? Unsurprisingly, then, shortly after the punchlines about rising temperatures, Anna Wintour appeared on stage to present the Special Recognition Prize to billionaire nepobaby Delphine Arnault, an heir to the LVMH fortune and CEO of Christian Dior. Arnault’s other headline-grabbing event appearance this year was her controversial attendance at Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration in January.
One of the only messages related to “sustainability” that night came on the red-carpet with the arrival of Anitta, Amelia Gray, Emily Ratajkowski and Alton Mason… all wearing H&M. It was the official preview of the fast fashion giant’s collaboration with one such “hot British talent”, Stella McCartney. It marked the 20-year anniversary of McCartney's original 2005 H&M collaboration — and the official news release was eager to introduce her as a “sustainability pioneer.”
Both parties frame this reunion as evidence of progress, but it’s just the latest in a high-low brand collaboration playbook that’s feeling trite. Even the claims are classically vague. H&M promises pieces made from “certified, responsible materials — many of which are recycled.” And press coverage has so far been glowing and uncritical. (Vogue Scandinavia reported, for instance, that even the rhinestones would be recycled!) But no outlet has asked: many means what, exactly? The more significant announcement is the so-called “Insights Board,” described as a platform for “voices from across fashion to create a space for meaningful discussion.” It’s a lot of talk without any acknowledgement of H&M’s power to actually act on all that discussion.
Even the ‘sustainability’ claims are classically vague
It appears the fast fashion giant is once again borrowing McCartney’s sustainability credibility while changing little about how it makes an estimated three billion garments a year.
What are people saying?
Among her fans, McCartney’s brand is perceived a bit like the Patagonia of luxury. Nodding to this reputation, H&M’s Ann-Sofie Johansson praises “Stella’s moral compass and tireless commitment to sustainable practices.”
So it’s telling that McCartney’s statement is subtly defensive. She uses eco-buzzwords to give this collaboration a sheen of activism. “This second partnership feels like a chance to look at how far we’ve come on sustainability, cruelty-free practices and conscious designs,” she says in the news release. “Real change only happens when we push from both the outside and the inside, and I’ve always believed in infiltrating from within to move the industry forward.”
Certainly, McCartney’s label does have lessons for the broader industry. A lifelong vegetarian, she has always avoided leather and fur in her designs, and has invested in promising new materials and preventing deforestation. But her “infiltrating” language is a curious tell, as if she’s acknowledging she’s operating inside hostile territory.
McCartney’s press statement reads as if she’s acknowledging she’s operating inside hostile territory
It raises the question, has any one-off collection ever actually changed anything in a significant way? Twenty years of evidence suggest they have not.
H&M has collaborated with the luxury end of the market since 2004, when Karl Lagerfeld launched the template. Over the past two decades, they’ve worked with the likes of Versace, Balmain, Simone Rocha, Mugler, Moschino, Alexander Wang… the who’s-who list goes on. Each limited-release collection sold out quickly. Many have become secondhand grails on resale platforms. But it’s self-evident that none of these has resulted in system-wide change to H&M’s production volume, business model, labour conditions, or environmental impacts.
In 2021, H&M launched another collection that had an “ethical fashion” bent via a collaboration with Liya Kebede’s brand Lemlem. It raised eyebrows, too. “It’s an antithesis [of brand values],” Jacqueline Shaw, founding director of sourcing and production consultancy African Fashion Guide, told the Business of Fashion. “The contrast between the two brands is confusing. People are upset because they stand for different things.”
Is it a collaboration that's shifting the business model? Then that’s something that can be truly transformative
In the same report, Maxine Bédat of New Standard Institute underscored the results we should expect to see: “The planet doesn't care about our marketing; the planet cares about our results. Is it a collaboration that's shifting the business model? Then that’s something that can be truly transformative.”
What to keep an eye on?
What would “infiltrating from within” actually look like? For a start, it would require changes to H&M’s core business model and binding commitments such as reducing production volumes and guaranteeing living wage across the supply chain (H&M has never delivered on its 2013 pledge to pay hundreds of thousands of garment workers living wages, after all); but even as the brand touts its investments in circularity, it remains one of the largest overproducers of clothes, which invariably get sent to landfills.
What would ‘infiltrating from within’ actually look like?
But ultra fast fashion’s lowering of the floor has created a cynical opportunity for the older-school fast fashion brands to reposition themselves without changing the material realities of their value chains. Take Zara. In November, Bloomberg reported how another fashion billionaire heir, Inditex’s Marta Ortega, was aiming to raise prices and take the brand upmarket — largely to differentiate from the likes of Shein, which had beat Zara at its own cheap game.
It might make you wonder what the term “fast fashion” even means anymore when fast fashion seems to have consumed the whole industry, nose to tail? Even many luxury brands’ diffusion lines mimic the fast fashion model. This summer, French lawmakers tried to define these terms. They drew a distinction in the anti-fast-fashion law, passed by the Senate in June. But the law seemed more intended to bolster European “classic” fast fashion brands (defined as releasing fewer than 1,000 new products per day, already a staggering number) against the competition from China’s “ultra” fast fashion retailers (such as Shein and Temu, releasing closer to 12,000 products per day). The law was designed to primarily target Chinese imports. (“I have no intention of making French brands that contribute to our country's economic vitality pay a single euro” in fines, said Senator Sylvie Valente Le Hir, a key supporter of the law.)
This is where there are limits to the Shein bashing, Vogue Business’s sustainability editor, Bella Webb, recently reported in a piece unpicking the backlash to its first physical store in Paris:
For brand and communications consultant Chinazo Ufodiama, who specializes in sustainability, the heightened response to Shein’s store opening is evidence of the fashion industry’s “oversimplification” of sustainability issues. During the protests, different stakeholder groups, with disparate priorities and interests, were able to “unite against a single enemy [...] without requiring any of these actors to interrogate their own complicity in the system that enabled Shein’s rise”, she explains. “It’s convenient. Brands spent decades offshoring production, squeezing wages and training consumers to expect cheap clothes that they can purchase and then discard at obscene rates. They created the blueprint; Shein just perfected it. Now, [other companies] can position themselves as the ‘good guys’ while distracting from their own complicity.”
And H&M has invested heavily in the “good guy” perception. To its credit, it is arguably more transparent than many of its competitors. It often ranks highly in Fashion Revolution’s annual Fashion Transparency Index, though as Fashion Revolution would likely be quick to point out, transparency does not equal action — and there’s little evidence its owners want to meaningfully commit to a transition away from the fast fashion model. In 2019, for instance, H&M billionaire nepobaby Karl-Johan Persson critiqued climate activists and warned of the “terrible social consequences” if shoppers were to ditch fast fashion. Luxury designer collaborations are one way to keep us shopping.
Designer collaborations underscore how shallow and disingenuous the corporate sustainability agenda really is
Yes, the appeal of these designer collaborations is clear. They promise to “democratise” luxury, creating designer-name garments that are more “accessible” to those of us who are not billionaires or nepobabies. But collections like these are akin to the “eco-collections” that popped up in fast fashion stores in the 2010s. They underscore how shallow and disingenuous the corporate sustainability agenda really is — because no collaboration, no matter how well intentioned it may be or how well respected the collaborator is, will address the root causes.
It’s going to take more than swapping out a few materials for, say, recycled vegan plastic to tackle the take-make-waste system drowning the planet in textile waste.
