4: If fashion solved its women problem, would it solve its sustainability problem too?

Since Hedi Slimane announced his exit from Celine last week - setting fashion social media alight with the rumour he’s going to Chanel – I’ve been thinking a lot about the many men at the helm of fashion brands and why they’re there.

Fashion is a business largely for and about women and yet it’s men being shuffled among the coveted positions at the top. Somehow in 2024, men are designing clothes for women, even though they seem to understand very little about what women want or need. 

Take for instance, two styles that were sent down the runway during Paris Fashion Week. At no less than three shows there were one-legged trousers: Louis Vuitton, Courrèges and Bottega Veneta. Designed by Nicholas, Nicolas and Matthieu respectively. At Loewe, Jonathan Anderson put hoops under dresses and delighted editors. 

One-legged pants at Louis Vuitton SS25

Although I agree the Loewe dresses are very pretty - the hoops remind me of a young male designer I interviewed a few years ago who was briefly stocked at Dover Street Market. When I asked him if he wore his dresses with pool noodles floating beneath their ridiculously long skirts, he scoffed and said something to the effect of: I just wear jeans and hoodies.

The first two looks at Loewe SS25

Let’s quickly re-cap the current state of play for female head designers. Of course, Stella McCartney, Phoebe Philo and Gabriella Hearst are the creative directors of their eponymous labels. Then there is Donatella at Versace and Miuccia at Prada. Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski at Hermès and Chemena Kamali at Chloe.

But of the luxury houses owned by LVMH and Kering, there is just Maria Grazia Chiuri at Dior and Sarah Burton whose first collection at Givenchy will be shown in March next year. Both brands are owned by LVMH but make up just two of the conglomerate’s six biggest labels.

Kering - the owner of McQueen, Balenciaga, Brioni, Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Valentino - has been much maligned for having only white male creative directors, but seems content to wear this criticism rather than actually put it to rest by hiring a woman (or POC).

Needless to say, fashion has a women problem and the data shows it spreads beyond the role of head designer and may in fact, be getting worse. A 2019 report from PwC found that women lead just 12.5% of Fortune 1000 Retail and Apparel companies despite making up 78% of fashion school students (and presumably graduates). Another study from the Business of Fashion revealed that among the biggest brands, women designed 40% of womenswear brands and held only 14% of leadership positions. It doesn’t get much better when it comes to racial inclusivity. I’m not going to get into it here, but this 2021 investigation by the New York Times highlights the lack of progress.

This isn’t new data, but I think it gets interesting when we place it in the context of fashion’s lack of progress on another pressing issue: sustainability.

According to UNEP, fashion’s emissions are still growing. The industry is on track to at least double its emissions by 2030, which would mean by 2050 fashion will be emitting as much as 50% of the world’s 2-degree warming carbon budget. Textile Exchange’s latest report revealed virgin fossil-fuel-based synthetic fibres increased from 67 million tonnes in 2022 to 75 million tonnes in 2023. Not to mention the failure of big brands to disclose their production volumes, so we don’t actually know how many garments are being produced, sold, landfilled or incinerated every year. But every year as many as 60 billion garments may never even be bought let alone worn.

In Vogue Business back in March, Rachel Cernansky asked the question: “Why are sustainability-focused designers mostly women?”. The most prominent designers pioneering regenerative, next-gen materials and transparent supply chains are Stella McCartney, Gabriella Hearst, Eileen Fisher, Amy Powney at Mother of Pearl and Vanessa Barboni at Another Tomorrow. Until she closed her business in May, Mara Hoffman was part of this movement too, as was Kit Willow.

Although this is relatively anecdotal, the data suggests there is a causal link between fashion’s lack of progress on sustainability and its lack of progress on gender equality. When we look at studies into corporate leadership it's clear having women in leadership roles results in better outcomes for the environment – and also for bottom lines (again challenging the notion a green economy is not a profitable one). 

In one study the International Finance Corporation found substantial evidence connecting increased gender diversity in leadership with enhanced environmental, social, and governance standards. According to Chaitra Vedullapalli the co-founder of Women in Cloud, women are more likely to have master’s degrees in sustainability, environmental or energy-related disciplines which makes them more likely to drive stronger performance during ESG integration. Research from McKinsey shows that gender diverse companies are 25% more likely to outperform their peers on profitability. 

It’s worth asking: if fashion solved its woman problem, would it solve its sustainability problem too? Even taking into account how complicated and structural fashion’s impacts on the environment are, the answer still seems to be - yeah, probably. 

Answering why is harder. Research on diversity suggests having a greater range of perspectives in decision making results in more holistic outcomes. Plus, people that have historically been excluded from power are less likely to preserve the status quo - like an archaic manufacturing system based on mass production and long lead times that hasn’t evolved in 150 years…

This is all to say nothing about the ability of female designers to create clothes that women actually love and wear and keep. Which is essential to a sustainable fashion industry because it gets to the heart of reducing consumption and eliminating the desire for ultra-fast and fast fashion brands that are plaguing shopping centres, wardrobes and landfills. It is not a simple thing to engineer garments that are worn over and over again. That are so functional and beautiful they add to the wearer’s life as they go about their day. Garments that breathe and keep you warm. Garments that can be pulled on knowing they’ll make you feel something fundamentally good.

I spent last Thursday afternoon at the atelier of Melbourne tailor Emily Nolan (E Nolan) and left feeling more resolute in these ideas. Aided by having spent an hour and a half in a beautiful, curated boutique that held the promise of finding something I didn’t know I wanted yet.

Nolan’s business is built on her made-to-order suits for women and LGBTIQ+ people. I wrote about her for The Saturday Paper a few years ago and wear her pieces multiple times a week.

Her suits are made from high quality, natural fibres like wool and linen that have mostly been milled in Biella, Italy. She has a line of cotton poplin shirts from a mill in Portugal and a range of shoes she’s created in collaboration with the label L’Eclisse. The shoes include a pump with a low kitten heel, a sling back with T-bar detailing across the foot and a soft patent leather loafer. When you try them on, they’re so light their made-in-Italy craftsmanship is evident.  

Beneath walls lined with her eclectic art collection (including a framed McDonald’s small fries bag from a trip to New York) and shelves laden with fashion books, she has tables covered in trinkets. Cotton and silk scrunchies that made me want to grow my hair. Cigarette lighters made from brass and stainless steel that made me wish I smoked. Bottles of perfume on silver trays and the softest, warmest cashmere shawls (I already own one of these in grey).

But the piece I haven’t been able to stop thinking about was a long, double breasted cashmere coat. When Nolan described it as the coat of her dreams, I wondered how she got into my head since it happens to be the kind of coat I dream about too…

Nolan is only 30 but she manages to capture something so fundamental and often overlooked in women’s clothing and particularly in women’s clothing designed by men. She makes clothes that can be on high rotation in a wardrobe, that are comfortable and sexy that women actually want to wear. She understands that bellies fluctuate over the course of a day and a month. She makes jackets and pants lined with cellulose fibres instead of polyester, so they don’t hold onto odours. Her blazers have carefully placed pockets, so they don’t upset the line of the hip. In fact, her signature pants have “twisted” seams and fabric removed from the inside leg to make them as flattering as possible – every time I put them on, I think only a woman would know to do this. 

E Nolan suit in her old atelier

She does these things because she understands something about women’s interior lives that allows her to create clothes, shoes and accessories that function both on our bodies and in our mind’s eye. She knows that looking good and feeling good are two sides of the same coin. That since women’s bodies are so scrutinised and policed the security of a properly constructed waistband can provide not just a source of comfort but also the perfect contour. That a silhouette needs to be balanced across the shoulders since what’s sexy about masculinity becomes even more seductive when met with playful, feminine construction.

Just as she understands something about what we desire in our wardrobes, it seems female CEOs and creative directors might understand something about what we desire in our lives: a planet with biodiverse forests, healthy soils, plastic-free oceans, clean air and, also, beautiful clothes.