Boohoo Defends Kourtney Kardashian Hire and Sustainability Efforts – WWD

Boohoo Group certainly drew attention during New York Fashion Week but now the company is navigating the scrutinizing spotlight that comes with its newfound sustainability stance – and newly named sustainability ambassador Kourtney Kardashian.  

“We don’t mind the criticism, I’ll be very upfront about it because we have an important message for us to get out over the coming weeks,” Carol Kane, cofounder of Boohoo, told WWD in an exclusive interview Tuesday, alongside Lianne Pemberton, product sustainability manager at Boohoo, and Cheryl Chung, the group’s head of communications. 

At NYFW, the British retail group, which owns Boohoo, PrettyLittleThing, Dorothy Perkins, Nasty Gal and more, stretched its face across many events. On Tuesday night, Kardashian’s first collection debuted with the fast-fashion brand (complete with a celebrity crowd) at the Highline. On Wednesday, its “Swaptails” fashion swap and cocktail event hosted with Global Fashion Exchange (GFX), Fashion Revolution and Wearable Collections, among others, kicked off as a complement to the company’s new educational video series and “Kare Kit” (a play off of Kardashian branding) consumer guide on extending clothing life. On the racks of the Le Bain nightclub were new items from the Kourtney Kardashian collab that attendees could swap out their wares for. Leftover goods from the swap will be taken up by Wearable Collections for reuse. 

That same night, makeup guru Amra Olević Reyes (known by her Instagram handle Amrezy) hosted an after party with PrettyLittleThing and The Blonds at the Moxy Times Square to celebrate a new makeup line. 

Kane said the premise with hiring Kardashian was influence – 196 million followers to be exact.

“The launch [Tuesday] is really the start of that conversation to say, ‘How do we make a difference at the center of the market?’ Fast fashion has been heavily criticized for not being sustainable, and we’re just at the start of that journey. We’re not overclaiming, we’re not saying that we’re perfect – we know there’s a huge amount of work to do, but by collaborating with Patrick [Duffy, CEO of GFX who also consults for Boohoo] and some of the other stakeholders who we’ve been talking to, Kourtney together, it’s part of this education process.”

Though Duffy expressed initial concerns about consulting with the fast-fashion brand, he said the openness of the team encouraged him.

“That’s part of what my role has been – catalyzing and helping bring the people that can help forward the acceleration more quickly. That’s what I’m trying to bring to this partnership,” said Duffy, who also spearheaded the fashion swap event. “How do we bring the key stakeholders together and align the sustainable development goals, get a super solid sustainability strategy and build on the one they already have?”

The reality of fashion business today is that the “green” recovery, or sustainable product influx, actually yielded more stuff, and resale hasn’t delivered the system fix it promised.

With its new efforts, Boohoo’s aim is to prove you can make affordable clothes legally, ethically and safely, in the U.K. 

Much of Boohoo’s consumer-led sustainability journey thus far can be traced back to July 2020 when the company lost 23 percent of its value in one day, equating to $1.35 billion in losses, after reports of “modern slavery” were unveiled in its Leicester supply chain. Since then, the company has instituted its Agenda for Change program, taking on a number of improvements. For instance, Boohoo investigated its supply chain at the forensic level for lack of compliance, published its full 1,100 suppliers online (excluding subcontractors), instilled a whistleblower policy and linked executive bonuses to ESG performance, among other requests per government agencies like the U.K. Environmental Audit Committee. 

Pemberton rattled off Boohoo’s goals saying, “By 2030, all of our materials will be more sustainably sourced. By 2025, all of our [cotton] and polyester are going to be sustainably sourced [meaning things like recycled and organic content], reduce carbon emissions 52 percent by 2030. No textile waste to landfill in the U.K. by 2025. And we have goals to work towards circularity, from a design point of view by 2025 as well, but we’re kind of ahead of that.” 

At present, 20 percent of products across Boohoo’s brand portfolio contain more sustainable materials, including recycled origins. The company’s sustainability team counts seven people, not including the compliance and product teams.  

Amid the efforts, Boohoo is still fighting battles behind the scenes with the public sector – and outwardly with sustainability advocates. In July, Boohoo’s “Ready for the Future” line, along with Asda and Asos, came under criticism by the U.K.’s consumer watchdog group the Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, for “broad and vague” language. In March 2021, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection began an investigation on the fast-fashion wares of Boohoo Group, looking into the possibility of an export ban if forced labor was not eradicated from its supply chain.

The supply chain is consolidated with some 33 percent of its production now in the U.K. as Boohoo Group’s overall volume is increasing per its acquisitions. 

“All our working processes have been improved since that time, so criticism has had its benefits. We took it on the chin,” said Kane, adding that Boohoo is a very different business from its beginnings in 2006. “My takeaway from this is that at the premium end of the market it’s much easier to be sustainable because of the price ticket. At the value end of the market – that’s huge. The change we’ve had in the business in the last two years is literally that, so we’ve got 10 million units that have gotten more sustainable than we had a couple years ago.” 

Asked what Boohoo wants to contribute to the sustainability conversation now that the attention is on, Kane said: “I think I want to break down some of the barriers. In all honesty, I think it’s been an elitist attitude that you should only be sustainable at the premium end of the market. And I’ve had that thrown out for the last few years. ‘It’s not possible, you’re a value brand. You’re fast fashion, you’re not able to do it.’ But we have been doing it, and we have been working with our supply chains to put more sustainable fibers through our production line.”