1. It’s time to regulate fashion the way we regulate the oil industry: When the EPA was established in 1970, the global fashion industry was far smaller than it is today; fast fashion didn’t yet exist. But as brands focused on making clothing as inexpensively as possible—effectively transforming clothes into disposable objects—the sector ballooned. – Read More on Fast Co.
2. Fashion’s Chinese New Year quandary: Can rats ever be luxury? With Chinese consumers spending more than a trillion yuan ($150 billion) across the holiday week last year, there’s ample motivation to indulge in the pursuit of disposable Chinese income via zodiac-themed capsule collections. Everyone from Fendi and Gucci to Burberry and Marc Jacobs want in. – Read More on CNN
3. RETRO READ: Chinese Teens Are Spending More Than $7,000 per Year on Luxury Goods, Outshining Their Western Peers. Chinese natives born in 1998 and after are demonstrating remarkable spending power, in some cases, shelling out more than $7,000 per year for luxury goods even before they reach age 21. – Read More on TFL
4. Away luggage saw healthy holiday sales growth despite a scorching exposé on its allegedly “toxic” workplace culture: It’s possible that everyday consumers are unaware of what’s going on, or simply don’t care about these corporate issues. – Read More on Fast Co.
5. A $20 billion to $30 billion per year fix: It’s going to cost $20 billion to $30 billion a year to live out the fashion industry’s sustainability promises. That’s the amount needed to be deployed per year toward the development and scaling of disruptive innovations and business models in the fashion industry in order to see a significant “step change” by 2030. – Read More on WWD