According to the Bostòn Consulting Group, (BCG), the coronavirus crisis is accelerating brands’ sustainability

Often sustainability efforts are additional costs that are not high on brands’ priority lists. Even brands that have been loud and proud about their sustainable practices have been forced to make cuts, like Reformation and Christy Dawn, which have reportedly both scaled back sustainability initiatives this year due to cost. But for some brands, the coronavirus has instead become an opportunity for creative, more sustainable rethinking around how production is done.

For instance, Lafayette 148 has using on-hand material from previous collections that would normally go to waste to create entirely new products.

More than 75 per cent of the brand’s materials and products come from Italy, which has meant a significant amount of order cancellations and delays in production. But from Lafayette 148’s pre-fall material order, the company still had 3,000 yards to work with. Some of those materials were used for samples that never got a full production order or were unused.

Similarly, luxury brand Mark Cross,is in the middle of a similar project. For the brand’s 175th anniversary this year, Mark Cross will release an updated version of the Grace handbag that will be made entirely from reused fabric. Garde Due said the brand, which does all of its manufacturing in Italy, was able to put in a big order for raw materials just before its suppliers shut down in Italy in mid-March, which Garde Due said he’s planning on trying to stretch as far as possible.

Both Smith and Garde Due acknowledged that brands may be tempted to cut sustainability efforts right now, but that it’s not strictly necessary. Mark Cross, for example, has been working with a company called Positive Luxury, a third-party company that advises luxury brands on how to improve sustainability in the supply chain, to ensure that all of its manufacturing and product choices meet environmental standards. Mark Cross has been consulting with Positive Luxury for at least the last two seasons.

Garde Due said that rather than cancelling this partnership to save money, he has deepened it — Mark Cross is working on getting Positive Luxury’s Butterfly Mark, a butterfly symbol the company awards to brands with production that meets a tier of sustainable standards, by increasing the amount of recycled materials it uses. (A number of other luxury brands have received the Butterfly Mark including Dior and Kenzo.) Other luxury brands that have recently made commitments in the name of sustainability include Giorgio Armani, saying he would limit his brand’s collections to only two per year.

Many of the downsides of this crisis have sustainability-related silver linings, like the reduced carbon footprint from limited travel, the requirement of brands to stretch their materials as far as they can go and, in general, and the training of consumers to get used to a world in which both production and consumption is limited.