Consumer Durables Impact Report: Fashion & Personal Care Edition, Q1 2025

Supply Chain Transparency Amid Trade Tensions Advances Fashion Sustainability

This report delivers a comprehensive analysis of how leading fashion and personal care brands are revolutionising sustainability practices through enhanced supply chain transparency and material innovation. The research spotlights LVMH's transformative €500 million LIFE 360 programme, which has achieved 100% traceable leather supplies across 76% of product lines, establishing new industry benchmarks for upstream visibility and environmental stewardship throughout complex global value chains.

The report highlights significant sustainability commitments from fashion and personal care brands with LVMH achieving 100% traceable leather supplies across 76% of product lines and Adidas replacing 96% of virgin polyester with recycled materials. The analysis also reveals how 59% of brands face delays in sustainable material adoption due to tariff impacts and trade uncertainties affecting global supply networks.

Call to Action: Fashion and personal care companies should develop regionally diversified sourcing strategies for sustainable materials while implementing enhanced supply chain visibility tools that monitor both sustainability metrics and trade policy impacts.

This analysis examines how innovative material substitution strategies, exemplified by Adidas's replacement of 96% of virgin polyester with recycled alternatives, are transforming industry approaches to implementing a circular economy. The report quantifies both the environmental benefits and financial implications of these transitions, revealing how materials innovation correlates with brand value enhancement, customer loyalty metrics and resilience against commodity price volatility - all increasingly material considerations for investors and financial stakeholders.

The report identifies Kering's Environmental Profit & Loss accounting system as an emerging best practice for measuring double materiality across fashion value chains, providing a methodological framework that quantifies environmental externalities in monetary terms. This approach enables more sophisticated materiality assessment processes that satisfy both traditional financial reporting requirements and evolving CSRD disclosure obligations, creating a potential competitive advantage for early adopters navigating the complex European regulatory landscape.

With 2025 bringing significant new climate commitments and traceability requirements, brands must urgently address gaps in supply chain visibility. The EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, Waste Framework Directive, and Ecodesign Criteria for Consumer Textiles are all introducing mandatory reporting requirements that will fundamentally alter disclosure practices across the sector. This analysis reveals significant preparedness disparities, with leaders investing in digital traceability technologies while laggards risk regulatory penalties and market access restrictions.

The report examines how the implementation of Digital Product Passports, mandated under upcoming EU legislation, will reshape fashion supply chains by encoding comprehensive sustainability data that is accessible throughout product lifecycles. This technological shift requires significant investment in system integration, data verification protocols, and stakeholder engagement, representing both a compliance challenge and a strategic opportunity for fashion and personal care brands seeking differentiation in increasingly competitive markets.