In the last decade, the "democratic" vision of fashion has made it possible to pay ever lower prices thanks to increasingly reduced costs, so much so that the guarantee of good quality and a fair production process is unsustainable. Francesca Romana Rinaldi and Salvo Head in The responsible fashion company. Integrate ethics and aesthetics in the supply chain (Egea 2013, 224 pages, 30 euros), they speak of a revolution, ushering in the era of critical and participatory consumption. The new consumer – sometimes referred to as «consumer-actor» or «consumer-author» – is helping to rethink, recreate and redesign the rules of the market.
The buyer wants to be more and more informed about the origin of the product, the production method, the labor used. The big fast fashion chains, such as Zara and H&M for example, have questioned the traditional logic of production and the timing of fashion. Furthermore, the growing production delocalization has generated a progressive globalization of the supply chain leaders. All this has led to increased attention to quality and the recovery of control of the supply chain.
So how is the sector changing? What are the new managerial models needed to manage a fashion company in this varied context?
The thesis of the authors is that, in order to continue to be competitive, companies will have to adopt a new managerial and entrepreneurial model which implies a medium-long term perspective and takes into strong consideration all the interested components, i.e. the stakeholders - from the environment to society, culture, the media, institutions and legislation - placing values and ethics at the center of their action.
“The idea for the book” the authors state, “was born and raised together with Bio-Fashion, a blog created to give a voice to companies, associations and opinion leaders on issues of fashion and eco-sustainable lifestyles. In three years of research, around a hundred interviews were collected and the range of action was widened: eco-sustainability and activities that have an impact on the environment represent, in fact, only one of the contents of the book”.
The basic idea is that the company's long-term economic equilibrium can only be achieved if the short-term economic objectives, essential for the remuneration of capital and labour, are integrated with other non-economic objectives which refer to the with the environment, society, culture, the media, institutions, legislation and above all the dimension of values and ethics.
In fact, what has already happened recently and suddenly in the food and wine sector is happening slowly in fashion (think of the examples of Slow Food, Illy and Eataly), where artisanal and high quality products are radically changing the consumption model, with a return to values, meanings and production methods of the pre-industrial era that guarantee the quality and exclusivity of the product and also its traceability, without nostalgia for the past but, on the contrary, incorporating new needs and new technologies in the product, in communication and in distribution.
