Sustainable Fashion News Round Up - July 2025
- arthursbeth
- Jul 31
- 5 min read
Usually we try to keep the sustainable fashion news round ups a little more positive, and there is some of that, but a lot is going down in the sustainable fashion world, and it's mostly a bit uncomfortable. Accreditations such as 'Made in Italy' and B Corp are showing to be untrustworthy, supply chain and data exploitation, and an AI generated model in the world's leading fashion magazine.
Billie Eilish Upcycles Half a Million Concert Tees
We'll start with the good. As global icons go, Billie Eilish is one of the best for speaking out about sustainability and sustainable fashion, and she is giving us substance. Teaming up with her label Universal Music Group and their merch arm Bravado, she’s turning 400,000 unsold concert tees into recycled cotton yarn via textile processor Hallotex in Morocco. Instead of shipping waste to landfills or discount bins, she’s reinvesting it back into circular production.
What’s striking here is the upstream intervention: Billie isn’t just buying carbon offsets or pushing a “green” capsule. She’s fixing the problem at the source. Her recent climate-focused events, upcycled Met Gala gown, and vocal partnerships with Greenpeace all point to a more systemic approach. The best part is she’s doing it all while maintaining a firm cultural grip, proving that climate consciousness and being extremely relevant aren’t mutually exclusive.
For sustainable brands, Billie’s model offers two clear takeaways. First, waste is a resource - especially in music, fashion, and merch, where backstock is rampant. Consider what product you can unmake to remake. Second, partner smart - not louder. No one needed a flashy campaign to know Billie meant it. She just did the work. In a moment when the climate crisis is accelerating and brand trust is declining, real utility and quiet innovation cut through noise far more than curated hype.
France Sues Shien for a Total of €190 Million Across Two Separate Lawsuits
France is ON Shein. Like, she hates her. Totally fair.
Fine number one - €40 million
The first of France’s fines was for alleged deceptive business practices including misleading discounts, following a nearly year-long investigation. Shien’s sales management company Infinite Style E-Commerce Co Ltd, which handles sales for the Shein brand, had misled customers about discounts, and that the company had accepted the fine.
The findings of the investigation showed the company "deceived consumers about the authenticity of discounts they could benefit from."
Fine number two - €150 million
The second find proposed by France's data privacy regulator, the CNIL for alleged breaches of user consent and cookie handling, their investigation finding "multiple breaches" of legal obligations regarding cookies and targeted advertising.
The regulator, the CNIL, faulted the fast-fashion retailer for using cookies that enable targeted advertising to users without their approval as required in Europe, or for using a confusing method to get consent.
Can’t decide if it’s wild or not that Shein has risked abusing data like this because they are fundamentally algorithmically led. Their entire business model relies on AI pattern-identification algorithms to measure preferences of their customers in real time, which is how they predict demand so quickly, leading to their ultra-fast supply chain. So, I wonder what countries might look into investigating them as a follow up, and how that could effect their business and where they can carry it out.
They haven’t yet been debted for this as the lawsuit is ongoing, so we’ll see what happens.
Btw, all of this comes after the sale of Shein products has been completely banned in France - you can catch our cover of the ban in last month’s round up.
Princess Polly B Corp Accreditation Threatens Credibility
So, we can’t just blame Princess Polly for the dwindling trust in B Corp, as other accreditations such as Nescafe and has meant that trust in B Corp as a certification of true sustainability has been questioned for a while, but Princess Polly gaining B Corp status has really riled and confused people.
On the sustainability rating website Good On You, Princess Polly receives a “Not Good Enough”, key reasons being no evidence it ensures workers are paid living wages in its supply chain, lack of action on reducing plastic and textile waste, hazardous chemicals or protecting biodiversity in their supply chains. They also unfortunately subcontract their labour, whereby they have no control over conditions or treatment of the people in the supply chains, but they do publish their factory list, so credit where it’s due.
Beyond this, with 720 items on the website currently listed as “new”, they are essentially an ‘ultra fast’ fashion brand. With daily new arrivals, they are constantly adding more and more styles which cannot possibly be sold. It’s all very Shein.
From a communications standpoint, a lot of their sustainability claims to not appear genuine. Their website states that: “Currently, 30% of our new arrivals are made with a lower environmental impact. By 2025, 60% of our range will be sustainably made, and 100% as soon as possible”. We have no context on how many ‘new arrivals’ there are to determine the scale of impact, and loose terms such as ‘as soon as possible’ leave no risk of accountability. These are clear greenwashing tactics that corporations such as B Corp should be penalising, not awarding.
Why is this so damaging? Dr Jon Hewitt, Lecturer, School of Fashion and Textiles, outlines perfectly with this quote:
"Certification is an important part of communication strategies for fashion-based social enterprises that are built on ethical principles, however, when the same accreditation is used to certify an ultrafast fashion brand, it risks becoming meaningless.
Loro Piana becomes the latest luxury label to be put under court administration
The quiet luxury myth just got a little noisier. Italian heritage brand Loro Piana - known for €5,000 cashmere jackets and understated prestige - has been placed under court-appointed administration after authorities uncovered illegal subcontracting and labour exploitation. Workers in the brand’s supply chain were reportedly clocking 90-hour weeks for €4 an hour, some even sleeping on factory floors. This is the fifth Italian label in a year tied to such practices, joining Dior, Armani, Valentino, and Alviero Martini in what’s becoming an uncomfortable fashion pattern.
Loro Piana’s value proposition has always been rooted in heritage, rarity, and ethical craftsmanship. As fashion consumers become more informed (and more cynical), price points without proof no longer hold weight.
For sustainable fashion brands, this shows there is room, and demand, for transparent, values-driven alternatives. Now is the time to push harder on proof: show where your garments are made, who is making them, and how they’re paid.
Vogue Features Guess Campaign With AI Generated Model
The latest issue Vogue 2025 features an AI model in an advert for the first time, and the internet has popped off about it. It’s unclear just how much of the image was made with AI, or who signed off both at Guess and Vogue, but Vogue has since stated that the AI model was ‘not an editorial decision’.
The campaign and use of it had been met with a load of controversy and questions raised about what this means for Vogue, AI projection of beauty, the dampening of creativity. It does feel like we’re stepping back to the rife and intense use of airbrushing that we saw mid 2010s, and then had a slight step-back from whilst there were increasing pushes on body positivity and the presentation of real women in fashion.
AI image generators are trained on massive datasets scraped from the internet, including Instagram, fashion sites, stock photos, magazines, and search engines. These datasets reflect the existing biases of the media landscape. So when an AI is asked to generate an image of “a beautiful woman” or “a model,” it’s statistically more likely to output what it’s seen the most - because its idea of “beauty” is literally based on frequency and visual association, not nuance or diversity. So traditional biases are being perpetuated.
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