Spearheaded by The Fashion Pact, the European Accelerator brings together leading fashion groups and houses including Chanel, Ermenegildo Zegna Group, Kering, Moncler Group, and Prada Group, drawing on perspectives from sector organisations such as Confindustria Moda and Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, to drive forward collective action aimed at lowering emissions, boosting efficiency and building long-term resilience in fashion supply chains.

Beginning in Italy, the Accelerator is structured around three interconnected workstreams that aim to accelerate supply chain decarbonisation. Firstly, the Accelerator is working to engage the luxury fashion industry around an optional and non-exhaustive questionnaire for suppliers on relevant environmental data, aiming to strengthen the quality and consistency of environmental metrics while easing the administrative burden of reporting on suppliers.

The Accelerator will then aim to increase capacity-building efforts among suppliers and to identify opportunities for efficiency improvements and renewable energy uptake. Recognising that finance remains one of the most significant hurdles to progress, the Accelerator will also work to open pathways for suppliers to access the investment needed to adopt cleaner technologies and drive long-term transformation.

The first phase of the Accelerator addresses how to reduce the administrative burden of sustainability reporting on suppliers with an optional and non-exhaustive questionnaire for suppliers on relevant environmental data.

The Accelerator has worked together to develop a questionnaire for suppliers focusing on energy, water and waste data, which has been tested over six weeks with a diverse group of 74 suppliers in Italy (including finished product manufacturers, tanneries, textile and yarn manufacturers and accessories manufacturers), and with input from Camera Nazionale della Moda, the National Chamber for Italian Fashion, which represents over 200 associated brands.

The questionnaire, developed with technical support from Quantis, a BCG environmental sustainability consultancy company, is available to all fashion brands on an optional and non-exclusive basis. By making the questionnaire available, the Accelerator aims to encourage other brands to adopt harmonised reporting metrics.

The questionnaire will be updated regularly by a technical committee to ensure it is up to date with the latest regulations and best practices.

An estimated €4.4bn is needed by 2030 if the European fashion sector is to meet its decarbonisation targets. Yet in Italy, where many luxury brands concentrate their production, economic pressures such as high debt ratios are making the necessary level of investment unaffordable for around 58% of suppliers. In addition, a lack of standardised sustainability reporting has made obtaining accurate data on suppliers’ environmental practices a challenge.

Launched in 2019, The Fashion Pact is a non-profit organisation forging a nature-positive, net-zero future for fashion. It works to create meaningful, large-scale change to improve the industry. The association brings together brands, retailers, suppliers, and manufacturers from across the global fashion and textile value chain, all represented by their Ceos. The leverage collective action to scale and achieve impact in the following four focus areas: biodiversity, lower-impact production, lower-impact materials, and renewable energy.