Bridget Foley’s Diary Views on Sustainability: Katharine Hamnett

WWD: How does a manufacturing-based business like fashion reconcile growth with sustainability? Katharine Hamnett: First, it’s got to recognize that it needs to be sustainable to survive at all. A decade ago, Standard & Poor’s concluded that companies had to either go sustainable or lose their business. So first, businesses have got to work out what they can make sustainably, how they can make their existing product sustainably and make a profit before they even think about growth. The industry impact is so bad, it is going to have to reinvent itself. It is going to have to work out how to coexist with life on Earth or it won’t have any customers. We are going to have to re-examine our definitions of success, both as businesses and as individuals. WWD: So, full-on integration. K.H.:  The thing is, you’ve got to be sustainable or lose your business. How to do it is the big question. We have to reexamine the business from top to bottom and where is our worst impact. In addition to obviously changing to sustainably produced raw materials, we’ve got to look at our energy supply, how our energy is actually made. I mean, America has got such an incredible opportunity

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