On the Burberry website, among the chic handbags and up-scale clothing, you will find their sincere Global Environmental Policy. The statement highlights the company’s commitment to respect the environment by minimizing their operation’s environmental impact. The luxury fashion brand has also set the goal to become carbon neutral and eliminate the use of chemicals that may have a negative environmental impact by 2020. This devotion to saving the environment, however, has not always been part of their policies. In fact, the company’s past relationship with the environment prompted fierce criticism from environmentalists and green campaigners.

The 2017/18 annual report released by Burberry, revealed that £28.6m of merchandise was physically destroyed that year, including £10.4m of destruction for Beauty products. The company’s percent of waste had also appeared to be worsening, with the value up 50% since the 2015 report and almost six times greater than in 2013. The news had left consumers and investors outraged but came as no surprise to those in the fashion industry, as the practice of unsold stock and fabrics is a commonplace among luxury brands. At the risk of reducing full-price sales by becoming too widely available at discount stores, brands like Burberry would rather destroy their merchandise than risk their exclusivity. Sending products for recycling also runs the risk of making the merchandise accessible to thieves who can sell them at a discount and devalue the brand. 

Though destroying merchandise has become common practice for the fashion industry, with retailers describing it as a measure to ensure the supply chain remains intact, it comes with some very negative consequences. In 2019, it was recorded that the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of the annual global carbon emissions. By 2030, this percent is expected to reach higher than 50% if the industry does not reinvent itself. Incineration contributes greatly to this percent, releasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, thus exacerbating global warming. By burning their merchandise, Burberry is increasing its environmental footprint exponentially. Among the burned items are leathers, furs, and other skins that cost animals their lives. A former Burberry employee describes her experiences with the luxury brand in an interview with Forbes explaining how, “It was killing [her] inside because, as a vegan, seeing all that leather and fur went to waste and these animals had to die for nothing.” In 2018, PETA exposed Burberry for burning the merchandise that contained the skins and furs supplied by animals who endured the worst conditions imaginable as well as horribly painful deaths. 

In September of 2018, Burberry announced that it will stop the practice of burning unsold goods, along with ending the use of real fur in its products. The 2018/19 report highlights the significant reduction of destroyed products that year (£1.4 million worth) along with the integration of recycled fibers into their collections. In 2020, Burberry has committed to addressing climate change impacts within their own operations and aim to achieve a zero-carbon footprint. 

Before Hugo Boss established a name for himself through classic men’s suits and dapper ties, the clothing manufacturer produced uniforms for the Nazi party. 

In 1924, Hugo Boss founded a textile factory in Metzingen, Germany, under the title ‘Hugo Boss’. It originated as a family-run business that manufactured police and postal uniforms. Two years after it was founded, in 1931, Hugo Boss joined the Nazi Party and began his first big contract supplying brown shirts to the ‘National Socialist Party’ later becoming known as the Nazis. The Party continued to supply Hugo Boss with the production templates for its uniforms, which is a contract that propelled the small-time business into a successful international corporation. Much of the work that took place under the supervision of Hugo Boss consisted of forced labor from 180 Polish and French prisoners of war and concentration camps. These workers endured extremely poor working conditions, including uncertain food and hygiene conditions. 

According to Dr. Eckhard Trox, a military uniform expert at the museum in Ludenschied, the Nazis had contracts with thousands of companies to produce the black SS uniforms, brown shirts worn by SA storm troopers, and the black and brown uniforms worn by Hitler Youth. Among these companies was Hugo Boss. 

Following the death of Hugo Boss in 1948, the factory returned to making uniforms for postal and police workers. The first men’s suit was produced in the 1950s and by the 1970s the company focused solely on men’s fashion. 

In 1997, the company became aware of the upsetting history behind the founder, Hugo Boss, when he appeared on a list of dormant accounts released by Swiss bankers. Following the publication of his father’s history, Siegfried Boss stated, “Of course my father belonged to the Nazi Party, but who didn’t belong back then? The whole industry worked for the Nazi Army.” In 1999 the company finally agreed to contribute to a fund that compensated former forced laborers.

In 2011, luxury brand Hugo Boss issued a public apology on their website, wishing to “express its profound regret to those who suffered harm or hardship at the factory run by Hugo Ferdinand Boss under National Socialist rule”.

In 2019, luxury fashion label Gucci was under scrutiny for cultural appropriation – twice. The first incident took place in February when its fall 2018 ready-to-wear collection was dropped on the runway and on the Gucci website. The backlash was immediate on social media, including Gucci collaborator, Dapper Dan, who expressed his disappointment with the brand on his Twitter account: “I am a black man before I am a brand,” he wrote. “Another fashion house has gotten it outrageously wrong. There is no excuse nor apology that can erase this kind of insult.”  The controversy surrounded the balaclava-style sweater, which many claimed to resemble blackface. 

Gucci treated this problem with urgency, quickly issuing a statement from chief executive officer, Marco Bizzari, in an interview with WWD: “Certainly, it was not intentional, but this is not an excuse. We make mistakes, and certain [ones] are worse than others because they offend people. The lack of knowledge of diversity and the consequent understanding are not at the level we expected, despite all the efforts we did inside the company in the last four years.” The brand also issued an apology on Twitter stating that the wool balaclava jumper had been immediately removed from their online store as well as all physical stores. The statement also highlighted Gucci’s fundamental value of diversity which would be implemented throughout their organization. 

Despite this controversy, Gucci made headlines again in May when they began selling a headscarf dubbed “Indy Full Turban” which cost $800 on the Nordstrom website. Critics labeled the sale of the turbans as cultural appropriation, emphasizing the deep religious significance that is not appreciated by those wearing it as a designer accessory. Nordstrom changed the product’s name to “Indy Full Head Wrap” before completely removing the item from the website.

Among the backlash on Twitter that Gucci received was a powerful tweet by Simran Jeet Singh, reading “Wow. @Gucci and @Nordstrom are selling turbans as fashion items. We’re attacked and killed for how we look, and now corporations get to profit off that same look? Feels wrong to me. Your thoughts?”  The Sikh Coalition also took to Twitter to express their disgust.  

Though many considered Gucci’s release of the turban to be offensive, others described it as a celebration of other cultures and beliefs. Gucci failed to formally apologize for the misstep, and requests for comments on the matter remained unanswered. In an indirect response to the two instances of cultural appropriation, on July 30, Gucci appointed its first global head of diversity, equity, and inclusion.