Remake’s 2024 Fashion Accountability Report: Driving Accountability in the Industry
Since 2016 Remake, a global advocacy organization working at the intersection of labor rights and climate justice, has been pushing the envelope and holding brands accountable for the claims they make concerning sustainability. This year is no different – for Remake’s mission or the brands.
One glaring find in Remake’s 2024 Fashion Accountability Report is the lack of change from last year, highlighting a problem those in the sustainability community have voiced from rooftops to social media. The needle isn’t moving and the industry seems to be frozen when it comes to progress.
What is Remake’s Fashion Accountability Report
Remake’s Fashion Accountability Report is just one of several reports about the fashion industry but it measures things a bit differently. According to Julie Mastrarrigo, Managing Director of Remake New York, the report should be looked at as more of a roadmap. It’s meant to inform, guide, and be a north star because we “have to think beyond the system we have today”.
Remake’s report focuses on the progress brands are making holistically on their sustainability initiatives. Using a system that was revised in 2021 with input from experts in a variety of fields – Human Rights and DEI among them – Remake sought to take a new intersectional approach to the way they measured brands’ strides toward a more sustainable future.
Their brand assessment process only considers information that is available in the public domain and targets larger corporations known to have greater impacts. The areas of focus range from traceability and raw materials to environmental justice and commercial practices. In total, there are six impact areas each with its own sub-categories and scores.
As of 2024, the average accountability score is 14 out of 150 possible points. The same as last year. This highlights the stagnation that has taken place within the fashion industry. While some entities may progress individually, as a whole the industry is at a standstill.
Contracts as an Accountability Tool
As we work to drive progress, the Ethical Denim Council has centered on Commercial Practices as an area of concern, specifically, the way each brand treats its suppliers. The average score for commercial practices in the Remake Accountability Report is 1 out of 15. This is not surprising based on the EDC’s 2023 report which showed that not much had changed in the industry even though the impacts of the canceled orders had been voiced in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Change is needed throughout the industry but one of the Accountability Report’s proposed solutions stands in agreement with our mission of creating clear contracts that demonstrate equitable responsibility. In Remake’s Fashion Accountability Report, zero companies publicly included any type of Buyer’s Code of Conduct in their contracts despite 54% of them having extensive Codes of Conduct for Suppliers. In addition, there were no companies that documented purchasing practices guaranteeing a supplier’s ability to provide fair wages and support environmental sustainability. Companies also demonstrated a lack of a strong commitment to responsible exits (ethical cancellations) by failing to embed such commitments into their contracts.
The Ethical Denim Council sees responsible exits as paramount to the resilience of the denim industry and fashion industry as a whole. The contractual approach is part of the solution to the current stagnation dilemma.
Starting in the fall of 2023, the EDC began work with the Responsible Contracting Project to create a single clause where brands (and buyers in general) demonstrate an understanding of the ripple effect of unethical cancellations. Although order cancellations are a small segment of a much larger problem, the EDC wanted to focus on an area of great impact for the supplier base and its workers.
The Path Forward
According to Remake, the report lays out an “Industry Roadmap” to address the key areas where we urgently need more focus and shines a light on where there has been progress. For example, one of our industry’s best beacons of progress has been the International Accord because of the way it unites unions, brands, and suppliers behind one common mission of creating a safer and more reliable clothing industry.
Remake sees The Accord as a blueprint for policy, legislation, and binding agreements with its incredible synergy and the impactful work it’s managed to accomplish in the last decade.
Starting as the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh in 2013 with 40 companies, 2 global trade unions, and 8 Bangladesh trade unions as initial signatories, the now-named International Accord has since expanded into Pakistan, where over 120 global brands and retailers have signed on.
As a legally binding mechanism that ensures real corporate accountability through joint liability, Remake sees The International Accord as a guiding light for our industry. Despite some critics believing there is room for improvement, The Accord exemplifies international collaboration between companies and factories to safeguard worker health and safety, while also enforcing brand accountability.
Remake's persistent efforts highlight the crucial role of accountability in fostering genuine progress and setting a standard for brands to follow. This latest report, unveiled in March 2024, marks nearly a decade of Remake's unwavering dedication to holding the fashion industry accountable for its impact on our planet and its inhabitants. Beyond scoring companies, Remake’s Accountability Scoresheet can be used as a roadmap to guide brands with their implementation of responsible commercial practices.
Remake’s report is hardly the only one out there. However, it lends itself to more of a collaboration with other reports and brand efforts, whether intentional or not. Each sustainability report or scorecard contributes to a broader movement towards a more ethical and sustainable fashion industry. After all, like Julie says:
“Without transparency, you can’t have accountability”.