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group’s stable of brands
would not use animal fur
from the spring and summer
2020 women’s collections on-
ward, making it the latest in
a rapidly growing list of high-
profile luxury labels to for-
swear fur including Michael
Kors, Coach, Burberry and
Chanel (in the latter half of
2018 alone).
Also in May, designer
Tracy Reese, who had taken
her namesake label on hia-
tus two years ago, returned
with a sustainably and ethi-
cally focused Hope for Flow-
ers by Tracy Reese line, the
first collection of which used
textiles hand-printed in De-
troit and sewn into gar-
ments in Flint, Mich.
What’s behind the fash-
ion industry’s Great Awok-
ening? Why have these tradi-
tional standard bearers of
aspirational luxe — the
same companies that for
decades have tried to con-
vince consumers they could
never be too thin, too rich or
have too many pretty things
— seemingly reversed
course? While some of the
shift is obvious — top-down
forces such as recently
passed laws (fur-sale bans,
for example, have been
passed in West Hollywood
and Los Angeles and a state-
wide fur ban is currently
under consideration, and in
2017 France passed a law re-
quiring all models to obtain
a doctor’s certification of
their physical health) —
much more of it seems to be
bubbling up from below.
Carry Somers, who co-
founded the U.K.-based
Fashion Revolution organi-
zation in the aftermath of
the 2013 Rana Plaza fire in
Bangladesh (with more
than 1,100 killed, it ranks as
the deadliest disaster in the
history of the garment in-
dustry), says her group’s ef-
forts at encouraging trans-
parency — particularly via
its annual survey of top glob-
al fashion brands — have
started to pay off.
The 2019 Fashion Trans-
parency Index, which ran-
ked Adidas, Reebok and
Patagonia in a three-way tie
for the most transparent of
200 global brands surveyed,
revealed some interesting
shifts, Somers said. “[The
survey] has really opened up
the conversation among the
biggest fashion brands,” she
said. “We’ve found brands
that weren’t disclosing any-
thing at all [now doing so] —
like Chanel, which this year
published its first report.
There’s not much in it, but
it’s a start. A great change
we’ve seen is in publishing
factory lists; that’s some-
thing we’ve been specifically
asking brands to do and two
years ago only 12.5% of
brands were publishing [a
list of] their first-tier facto-
ries and, this year, that’s
gone up to 35%.”
Somers cites the influ-
ence of a changing demo-
graphic. “It’s definitely a
generational thing,” she
said. “The younger kids are
doing climate drives for
schools, and we’ve seen an
increase[d embrace of] veg-
anism over the last few years
that’s been really incredible.
People have been calling for
change because they want to
see better policies and prac-
tices [in place] for brands.”
P.J. Smith, fashion policy
director for the Humane So-
ciety of the United States,
says the same factors are at
play when it comes to the

pace at which luxury labels

are kicking fur to the curb.

“I’ve been doing this for

about 10 years and to see

what’s happened in just the

last few years has been noth-

ing short of amazing,” Smith

said.

“This latest wave has to

do with consumers’ chang-

ing attitudes toward ani-

mals, this new drive for

transparency, what’s now

available on the internet for

people to see and the gener-

ation coming up that has the

buying power. When Gucci

announces [it is going fur-

free] on Instagram, and

Prada and Versace an-

nounce [going fur-free] on

Instagram, I think they’re

looking to reach Gen Z. ...

The buying power of that

generation is going to be so

much bigger than the

boomers’, and they know

that that consumer cares

about these issues — sus-

tainability [and] animal wel-

fare.”

Studies of the post-mil-

lennial Gen Z demographic

(those born in the late 1990s

and early 2000s) support

Smith’s assessment. Ac-

cording to Cone Communi-

cations’ 2017 Gen Z corpo-

rate social responsibility

study, by next year Gen Z

will account for 40% of global

consumers, with a full 94% of

Zs surveyed believing that

companies should address

social and environmental is-

sues. (By comparison, 87%

of millennials and 83% of

Gen Xers felt that way.) The

Cone study also found that

89% of Gen Z respondents

said they’d rather buy from a

company that was address-

ing social or environmental

issues over one that wasn’t,

and that nearly half of this

mobile-first generation re-

ports spending 10 hours a

day online.

“Social media plays a

huge role,” said Summer

Rayne Oakes a model, envi-

ronmental activist and au-

thor who has been calling for

transparency in the fashion

industry for over a decade.

(She emailed The Times

from the road where she’s in

mid-book tour for the just-

published “How to Make a

Plant Love You.”) “More so

than ever, people and [non-

governmental organiza-

tions] can use the power of

social media to ‘shame’ com-

panies for values that don’t

align with their values. What

are the practices that are

contentious and that would

be a social media liability?

People are far more outspo-

ken now — from the lack of

diversity seen in Victoria’s

Secret to the sexual abuse

happening in the fashion

and entertainment world.”

With the social-media-

savvy, always-online Gen Zs

in the driver’s seat, even

small, mostly symbolic

moves — such as Ralph Lau-

ren’s Earth Polo (each shirt

is made from about 12 recy-

cled plastic bottles diverted

from landfills and oceans

and is itself 100% recyclable)

or Reese’s Hope for Flowers

capsule collection for

Anthropologie (made with

certified organic linen and

cotton and non-harmful

dyes) — have the potential to

help companies aiming to do

good also do well.

But Detroit-based Reese

is quick to dismiss the no-

tion that fashion brands are

getting woke as a way to woo

the Zs, at least in her case.

“My average customer is

about 40 years old,” she said,

“so [Gen Z] is not my cus-

tomer — not that they might

not grow into my customer

at some point. ... As for why

now? It’s because there is a

great sense of urgency to

change how we’re working;

to recognize that how we’re

currently working is not

healthy and it’s not sustain-

able — as in it can’t last —

and that we can’t just use up

all these resources and go on

and on forever,” she said. “If

we don’t make dramatic

change in the next 10 years

then we won’t survive, so

there’s a real push for real

change to happen immedi-

ately.

“I think the companies

that aren’t recognizing that,

that aren’t making dramatic

changes in their sourcing

and their supply chains,

they’ve got their heads bur-

ied in the sand.”

Kering’s chief sustain-

ability officer, Marie-Claire

Daveu, echoes that senti-

ment. “Customers are [get-

ting] more and more in-

volved in what brands are

doing and they’re asking

more questions about sus-

tainability — both environ-

mental and social [sustain-

ability] — as well as animal

welfare. ... I think now most

brands understand that

thinking about sustainabil-

ity is not an option, it’s a ne-

cessity. And, more than that,

it’s becoming a duty if you

want to continue to develop

your company.”

While the flurry of recent

pronouncements by luxury

fashion brands trying to do

the right thing has generat-

ed positive coverage — not to

mention reframed the no-

tion of what, exactly, luxury

means in the era of the woke

wardrobe — it has barely be-

gun to address the indus-

try’s biggest, dirtiest secret

of all: the exploitative use of

cheap foreign labor. It’s on

this front that Fashion

Revolution’s Somers says

demanding supply-chain

transparency is crucial.

“[Transparency] really

makes a difference to the

workers on the ground be-

cause it means issues get

remedied much faster,” she

said. “And it’s also really

good for the brands because

it helps protect them. If one

of their suppliers has con-

tracted to a factory that

shouldn’t be making their

clothes and they’re found

not to be compliant, they

can say ‘They’re not a regis-

tered supplier and shouldn’t

have been making the

clothes.’ It should be a win-

win. I don’t know why all

brands aren’t doing it.”

The most important cat-

alyst to that change, Somers

says, isn’t a single demo-

graphic but a single ques-

tion.

“As consumers we really

have power over these

brands, we can use our voice

and our power to bring

about change — and we

really need to do that,” she

said. “So asking the question

‘Who made my clothes?’ is

really powerful. I’ve been

told that for every one per-

son who asks [that ques-

tion], the brands take that

as representing 10,000 peo-

ple that think the same way

but can’t be bothered to do

anything about it.”

A ‘great awokening’ for luxury brands

AN OUTFITmade of cotton crepe that was hand-printed in Detroit and sewn in Flint, Mich., reflects the industry’s new social awareness.

Itaysha JordanCNG

PRADAin May said it would stop using animal fur.

Above, a model wears a Prada furred helmet in 2006.

Luca BrunoAssociated Press

[Fashion,from C1]

cal conditions. The Afford-
able Care Act required
insurers to accept all appli-
cants and, as compensa-
tion, required all individuals
to carry at least minimal
coverage.
The health insurance
industry’s most telling
contribution to the debate
over healthcare reform has
been “to scare people about
other healthcare systems,”
Potter told me. As a conse-
quence, discussions about
whether or how to remove
private companies from the
healthcare system are
chiefly political, not practi-
cal.
The Affordable Care Act
allowed private insurers to
continue playing a role in
delivering coverage not
because they were any good
at it but because their
wealth and size made them
formidable adversaries to
reform if they chose to fight
it. They were sufficiently
mollified to remain out of
the fray, but some of the big
insurers then did their best

to undermine the individual

insurance exchanges once

they were launched in 2015.

Even as individual

Americans fret over losing

their private health insur-

ance, big employers have

begun to see the light. Boe-

ing, among other big em-

ployers, is experimenting

with bypassing health

insurers as intermediaries

with providers by contract-

ing directly with major

health systems in Southern

California, Seattle and other

regions where it has major

plants. It would not be

surprising to see the joint

venture of Amazon, Berk-

shire Hathaway and JPMor-

gan Chase try a similar

approach in its quest to

bring down costs.

That’s an ironic devel-

opment, since the private

insurers first entered the

market precisely by offering

to play the role of intermedi-

aries for big employers. But

instead of fulfilling the

promise of efficiency and

cost control, they became

rent-seeking profiteers

themselves.

There’s no doubt that it

will take years to wean the

American healthcare sys-

tem off the private insur-

ance model; Kamala Harris’

proposal may be merely a

recognition of the necessary

time frame. It’s true that

some countries with uni-

versal healthcare systems

preserve roles for private

insurance, including cov-

erage for services the gov-

ernment chooses to leave

out of its own programs or

providing preferential ac-

cess to specialists, at a price.

But the private insurers’

central position in Ameri-

ca’s system is an anachro-

nism dating back some 75

years. The sooner it’s dis-

pensed with, the better off —

and healthier — America

will be. The next time a

debate moderator asks

presidential candidates if

they favor doing away with

private insurance, let’s see

all the hands go up.

michael.hiltzik

@latimes.com

Get rid of private health insurers

[Hiltzik,from C4]