Earlier this year, our founder Mary Epner attended the Kering Sustainability Symposium at Hudson Yards in New York City. Here, she learned about the efforts that luxury brands have been putting forth to create more sustainable products. Kering—a French luxury corporation that owns iconic brands such as Gucci, Alexander McQueen, and Yves Saint Laurent—strives to be the most influential brand in the world. With that, they’ve done a lot to create sustainable practices within all their brands. They believe that sustainability and luxury are the same, especially because of how urgent the climate crisis has become. Their goal is to reduce their carbon footprint by 40% and use no animal fur. Instead, they are leading innovation with VitroLabs, a Californian bio-technology company, to develop lab-grown leather.
Lab-grown leather means that although the leather will feel identical to leather from an animal, the cells of the leather will be grown in a lab using stem cell technology instead of actual animal skin. Stem cells are special cells that can become any other type of cell in the body. We’ve known for a while that stem cells can serve important medical purposes, but innovations using stem cells in the fashion industry are far more recent. This allows fashion companies to be much more ethical while still creating the same product.
Of course, lab-grown leather is not the only way Kering aims to create more sustainable practices. They’ve created a list of objectives to achieve by 2025: building a more sustainable supply chain, working with startups and small businesses that employ sustainable techniques, and streamlining their production processes, to name a few. They also spoke highly of creating a circular economy of pre-loved merchandise; it’s always good to hear from important companies like Kering that we’re doing something right!
Come back every Thursday to learn a bit more about sustainability at Salvage Renaissance and in the fashion industry.
(Photo by Mary Epner.)