RESPONSIBLE FASHION
The fashion industry thrives on newness and consumption. We spoke to Head of Responsibility and CSR Lauren Bartley from Danish fashion powerhouse GANNI about how they are pushing their industry forward.
What sparked GANNI’S journeys towards responsibility?
Our founder Nicolaj is personally very passionate about sustainability, especially the climate crisis, and in 2018 GANNI decided that they wanted to accelerate their efforts in this area and that is where I came onboard, September 2018.
How do you define sustainability at GANNI?
Sustainability has become so broad and obscure that we have started to say Responsibility instead, as we view more responsible business practices as our moral obligation. It breaks down into 4 areas for us, People, Planet, Product, and Prosperity, and behind that 4 'P' framework, we have 44 concrete and tangible goals for the next 3+ years.
Your progressive initiatives?
The industry is moving so quickly in this area now - which is great - it's hard to know what's progressive anymore! But our GANNI Lab project with the UN Development Programme is something we're very proud of. It started as the quest to create a 100% impact-free collection. The idea was to take all learnings from this test case project and implement them in the way we do business. Our aim was to rethink the way we operate across our entire value chain. We chose to work with some of the highest volume fabrics and styles in our existing collections to see how we could hack these to become more sustainable. We took a holistic approach, working across 8 departments in total. We collaborated with 4 external stakeholders and 11 suppliers. This resulted in an internal sprint process that created knowledge sharing across all ends of the business and accelerating our use of organic, certified and recycled fabrics across main seasons from just 4% in July 2019 to 52,5% in August 2020. The end goal was to reach 100% impact-free with the test collection, but instead what happened was a process where we internally absorbed knowledge so quickly that it exceeded the actual test project.
Oh and we created a super cool Instagram account to document all of our learnings on Responsibility @ganni.lab.
Who inspires you?
Purpose-driven people like Alexandra Ocasio Cortez and Brene Brown - women who really want to change the world and are leading the way in showing us how to do that.
Office routines?
I like to get to the office before most so I can set myself up for a day of back-to-back meetings going anywhere from Diversity and Inclusion to new fabric solutions or renewable energy in our stores. A mandatory coffee break at 10 am and around 2 pm too!
How do you drink your coffee?
I am a Brit living in Denmark, my coffee has always been a Flat White - which apparently is not very common here? I guess it's just a shot of coffee with milk - but it sounds fancy.
GANNI recently moved into their new fantastic HQ on Bremerholm in Copenhagen. The chrome dream of an espresso machine from ECM is constantly serving their coffee cravings. All employees become mandatory baristas when they join the company. They brew the amazing Yirgachefe coffee bean from Ethiopia.
