With Paris Fashion Week now drawn to a close, it’s safe to say that the 2023 Fashion Week was a showcase of incredible talent, creativity, and innovation. Fashion brands from around the world came together to present their latest collections and trends, setting the tone for the season ahead. Amidst the glitz and glamour, one particular announcement stood out: Italian maison Gucci, in collaboration with its parent company Kering, announced the launch of a new innovation platform aimed at transforming the production model of the fashion sector.
The initiative, called the “Circular Hub”, is an “open innovation platform for the design and manufacturing of circular products and the scouting of new solutions” based in Tuscany. Its goal is to create the circular luxury product of the future and to maximize the use of recycled materials, durability, repairability, recyclability and reduce emissions. Initially, the hub will be serviced by Gucci and its vast network of Italian suppliers and finished product manufacturers (over 700 direct suppliers and 3,500 sub-suppliers, to be precise). It will then be extended to the other Kering brands and, in the future, open to the wider market.
So, what exactly is a “circular luxury product”? In short, it’s a product that’s been designed to be reused, recycled, or repurposed at the end of its lifecycle. This approach to design contrasts with the traditional linear model of production (typical of the fast fashion industry), which involves extracting resources, mass producing goods, and disposing of them at the end of their useful life.
It’s a key focus area for fashion-tech and brands have been exploring how digital technology solutions relating to product data, logistics and inventory management can be used to facilitate circular business models. For example, digital labelling technology is used by certain forward thinking brands to track garments across the multiple stages of their lifecycle, enabling them to let consumers know when repairs are needed or when to direct consumers to have the garment recycled. This requires brands to store and organise production and supply chain data on user friendly consumer facing cloud platforms.
by pooling know-how and synergies, the hub will enable the entire luxury supply chain and especially the small and medium sized enterprises… to play an active role
Gucci
It’ll be interesting to see to what extent, and how, the technology innovations developed by the Hub are exploited by Gucci and offered to the market more widely.
The Circular Hub, which will draw on the expertise of the Kering Material Innovation Lab in Milan, is a significant step towards circularity in the fashion industry and is a nod to the extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme under consideration by the European Commission as part of its strategy for sustainable and circular textiles, which will require companies to take responsibility for the end-of-life of the product and waste materials.
From a regulatory perspective, we are seeing more and more action by the legislators around the world to crack down on what ultimately is a largely unregulated sector. France was one of the pioneers in the regulatory sphere, passing the French Anti-Waste Law for a Circular Economy back in January 2020, which laid out a six-year plan to reduce waste and end the use of single-use plastics. Further, last month a new bill was proposed in California (the aptly named Responsible Textile Recovery Act) which, if passed, will become the first in the US to require brands that manufacture or sell in California, either on their own or through dedicated organisation, to finance the creation and operation of waste management programmes.
The call for more sustainable products and practices is undeniably growing in the sector and the circular hub by Gucci represents a great example of the kind of innovation and leadership that brands are displaying in order to keep up with the demands of today’s consumer. As we explored in The Collective 2023 Report, the rise of the conscious consumer is a major driver of the increased focus on sustainability across the retail sector and the buyer of tomorrow wants brands to be on top of this issue, to be putting a greater emphasis on giving back and making a tangible difference, and will make decisions on which brands to engage with based on their sustainability-focussed offerings. With the prospect of increased regulation in this space, brands will no doubt be keeping a keen eye on legislative developments and tech opportunities to ensure they are staying ahead of the curve.