Governance Practices in the Fast Fashion Industry

France has always led the Fashion world; now they have stepped up their role as a pioneer by adopting an Anti Fast Fashion law. It came into effect in June 2025, to regulate the environmental and social impacts of the textile industry, particularly targeting ultra-fast fashion brands. The law introduces a tax on ultra-fast fashion items, bans their advertising, and requires consumer information on environmental impacts. Key measures of the French Anti-Fast Fashion Law: ✅Environmental Impact Score (Eco-score): A system to evaluate products based on environmental indicators like carbon emissions, resource use, and recyclability, with lower scores facing penalties. ✅Financial Penalties: Ultra-fast fashion brands with low eco-scores will incur a tax of €5 per item sold starting in 2025, increasing to €10 by 2030. This tax is capped at 50% of the product's retail price. ✅Advertising Ban: The law prohibits advertising for fast fashion brands and products, including social media promotions and influencer partnerships. ✅Consumer Information: Companies are required to provide customers with information about their products' environmental impact. ✅Targeted Brands: While aiming to regulate the broader fast fashion industry, the legislation specifically targets ultra-fast fashion retailers like SHEIN and Temu, which are often based outside of Europe. Motivation: This legislation is a response to the significant environmental strain caused by fast fashion, including water consumption and waste, and aims to encourage more sustainable consumer choices and a shift towards a circular economy.

France just made history—by calling out ultra-fast fashion for what it is: A Planetary Liability. On June 10, 2025, the French Senate approved groundbreaking legislation to curb the environmental and social damage of ultra-fast fashion. It’s bold. It’s overdue. And it should ripple far beyond France’s borders. ⚖️ What does it do? - Introduces a €5–€10 (by 2030) eco-tax per item on ultra-fast fashion --> Stop dumping clothes to fast digital cycles - Bans advertising and influencer promotion of these products --> Stop misleading Tiktokers and Insta Influencers - Mandates eco-score labels to expose product impact --> Stop Green washing - Rewards slower, more circular brands with bonus-malus incentives --> Encourage ecodesign But here’s the real shift: "Ultra-fast fashion" is now defined in law as: 1- High-volume 2- Low-durability 3- Lack of reparability Yes, names like #Shein and #Temu come to mind. This is regulatory foresight in action. A clear message: Speed without responsibility is not innovation—it’s erosion. But the real question is: Is ultra-fast fashion the only threat to circularity and justice in the industry? Because while France steps forward, parts of the EU are debating watering down the Green Claims Directive —and delaying broader legislation that could hold all players accountable for repairability, recyclability, and material stewardship. We need more than tactical wins. We need systems thinking. What other bottlenecks should regulation address? And how do we ensure ambition at the EU level matches the urgency we’re seeing from national leadership? 📷 photo credit Emanuele Morelli #CircularEconomy #TextileRegulation #FastFashion #UltraFastFashion #France #EPR #GreenClaimsDirective #EUtextiles #SustainableFashion #EcoDesign #Legislation #Accountability #PolicyForImpact

🚨 THE CLIMATE WIN YOU PROBABLY MISSED 🚨 The French Senate has passed groundbreaking legislation taking direct aim at ultra-fast fashion. Targeting brands like SHEIN and Temu, this law challenges an industry built on overproduction, waste and exploitation. As I shared at The Business of Fashion last year, it would take decades to recycle what fast fashion brands produce in a matter of days. And there is already enough clothing on the planet for the next 6 generations of humans. This is why this legislation is more important than ever. Here’s what’s coming: 💵 Eco-tax: starting this year, each ultra-fast fashion item will carry a €5 environmental surcharge; doubling to €10 by 2030. 🚫 Ad ban: all advertising for ultra-fast fashion will be prohibited, unless it's promoting circular or sustainable models. ⚖️ Influencer accountability: fines for influencers who promote unsustainable fashion brands. 🔍 Transparency mandate: brands must display an “eco-score” on every item sold, covering carbon footprint, resource use, recyclability, and more. ♻️ Funding the future: eco-tax revenue will be funnelled into France’s sustainable fashion sector, rewarding brands that embrace circular models. Now, there has been valid criticism that the bill doesn't go far enough — major European retailers such as Zara and H&M are exempt from everything but environmental reporting. However, this is still a critical step in the process; especially for an industry that has largely evaded accountability. We must build on this momentum, and expand the legislation to encompass ALL fast fashion producers. Kudos to the incredible organisations and campaigners who have paved the way to this moment: Fashion Revolution, Fashion for Good, Global Fashion Agenda and many others. . . . . . #climatecrisis #climatechange #sustainability #fashion #sustainablefashion #climateaction #fastfashion #shein #temu #France #regulation #CircularEconomy

This is a story about the power of regulation and how to take a more innovative approach to it to fight extremely unsustainable practices. In this case, the French lower assembly passed legislation aiming to combat ultra-fast fashion, applying both carrots and sticks by rewarding "more durable, sustainable apparel items and taxing carbon-heavy ones with a lack of transparency." Here's the part I found most interesting: "According to the bill, brands with over a thousand new items added to their site per day will face modulated financial contributions. Additionally, it imposes a €5 penalty per product for those exceeding the thousand-model daily threshold, with an aim to curb the environmental impact." For companies like SHEIN and Temu, which adds thousands of new items every day to their website (in the case of #Shein, up to 10,000 according to this report - https://lnkd.in/gWQYYzMs), such legislation could be a very challenging obstacle to their current business model, requiring them to redesign it, hopefully in a far more sustainable way. Beyond the smart use of new items per day as a key anchor of this legislation, it also offers a lesson in 'riding the populist wave' (in this case, the context is the rise in French and European protectionism) to drive legislation that guards us against the destructive practices of ultra-fast fashion and its counterparts. I wrote more about the need to apply #populism to drive #sustainability here: : https://lnkd.in/dF2r94wD #france #fastfashion #temo #fashion #eu #climatechange #climateaction https://lnkd.in/gdnxnbdM