Conscious Fashion Futures: Ethical Fashion by H&M, Kenzo and G-Star Raw

The fashion industry, often maligned as excessive or elitist, is far from passive to the problems of the world. Fashion consumers are looking with an increasingly critical gaze at how products are made and reacting negatively towards exploitative labour and production practices.

However, visionaries within the fashion industry responding to consumer concerns are directing luxury brand designers to embrace new sustainable and ethical production methods. The Ethical Fashion Campaign, launched by System magazine and Ever Manifesto's Elizabeth von Guttman and Alexia Niedzielski, seeks to encourage the production of ecological and ethical fashion which transcends the negative “hippie meets hemp” stereotypes: clothes that are eco-friendly but still desirable, contemporary and refined.

To this end, the Ethical Fashion Campaign has enlisted the industry power of G-Star, the might of high-street giant H&M and the influence of Humberto Leon at Kenzo in its efforts to positively reshape the future of the industry. The H&M Conscious initiative is an organic and recycled range that, as a principal tenant, makes use of sustainable materials, including recycled wool, organic leather, silk, linen and hemp; aiming to use completely sustainable cotton sources by 2020. Simultaneously, H&M aims to improve the pay and conditions of its 850,000 textile factory workers. Kenzo has entered into a long-term alliance with British conservation group Blue Marine Foundation to help protect the world’s oceans. Launching the campaign during the Spring/Summer 2014 collection runway show, Kenzo showcased a range of ocean protection advocacy T-shirts. The Ethical Fashion Campaign envisions a bold future of creative practices that will revolutionize the fashion industry for the potential good of humanity.