Nice, Cute, and Wrong: The Real Story of Sustainable Fashion

So Romain, before we get into the hard stuff, I want to know who you are. Take me through your path, what you've built, where you are now, the whole thing.

So I'm Romain. I'm an entrepreneur in fashion. I'm a father of two children. My professional journey started in consulting at McKinsey. Then I co-founded a fashion brand in the US. It was called Adore Me. Like every entrepreneur adventure, we had a lot of ups and downs, but the story finished well, at least for me, as we sold the company to Victoria's Secret in 2023. And since then, I've been spending my time on different aspects of fashion, sustainability in fashions because there is so many things to do, so many opportunities and so little time. So that's what I'm doing now, working at the crossing of sustainability, fashion and innovation.

Okay, I love that. From McKinsey to lingerie, not a sentence you hear every day. What actually made you start the company? Was fashion always the plan?

It was a little bit unexpected. I mean, I met my partner at McKinsey and he wanted to launch a business. He started the first business in the US that didn't work out and he pivoted for something else. And he was enthusiastic about the future of fashion was in e-commerce. So that was back in 2012. And it made me join the adventure. But, you know, life takes you in an unexpected turn. I mean, I was at 32-33, selling lingerie in the US. It was not my career plan. So that's a little bit random. But then what was the plan was to... launch a business.

I think there was an entrepreneurship adventure and to use technology to make things a bit different. Technology in fashion back in 2013 was having a dot-com. So it was not AI or things like that, but still there was like, what are the opportunities or opportunities of technology to serve and to address a market in a different way. And then I'm making things simplified because it was the beginning of social media, they were doing advertising and so on. So there was many pieces of technology that were added and have changed with pros and cons, the way fashion is operating today versus how it was operating even 10 years ago.

I love the story. And the fact that it worked. So what actually makes a brand successful? Because obviously there are brilliant people with brilliant ideas who never got there. So what was the combination for you?

I mean, what makes a brand successful? I think that first, every entrepreneurial adventure, there is a big part of luck, that we should not underestimate. In the sense, I met so many entrepreneurs that were brilliant, worked very hard, and had great ideas, and the time to market was not the right one. So I think that it's important to acknowledge that chance is a part of any adventure. And of course, you can increase the odds by being smart, by working hard, by analyzing the market in a way, but there is still this factor.

I think that we had a good analysis of the market on what we guessed, which was like e-commerce will hit the world and our price point. We were targeting to sell a product between $40 and $80. And why this target? Because less than $40, we figured out it was not possible to compete against Amazon or really a cheap product. And above $80, nobody will buy a product above $80 on the internet back then. So we're like, okay, what can we sell in this $40 to $80? So that turns to be a good strategic foresight.

The other thing is like we say, okay, there is a segment in the lingerie because the price of the product and the experience is not amazing online. And paradoxically the lingerie has a long history of selling online like if you look at 100 years ago you had the it was before internet if you are looking at the catalogue of Sears which were like the distance commerce 100 years ago. One of the most successful category was in the intimate space so that means it's a category that it might be easier because there is a relationship with the customer she wants to try. There's a bit intimacy and so on, so it was not a totally unknown ground to shop with distance.

And then there was all the things that we didn't knew back then and that were part of the success in retrospect. Facebook was starting to do advertising. And in 2013, it was really a revolution because suddenly any small brand could have access to the super great tool of targeting and so on that didn't exist now. We are used to that and Facebook price are going to the roof. But back then, it was relatively cheap. It was very rudimentary compared to what we have today. But it was working at the most important thing which was like you show an ad to somebody, the customer that is semi-qualified was there. "Oh I want to sell, I want to display my ad to a woman interested in fashion in the us and shook and i will pay one dollar per click" and you will have this. So that was new and for us it was a big factor of reaching a certain level of growth and then unlock new opportunities.

And there was also like some things we didn't know, which that the lingerie market was extremely hard. It's a bad market. Don't open a business in lingerie. In the sense that it's within fashion, it's like a small subset of fashion markets. It's like what? Less than 10%. And the product has a lot of complexity, more complexity in like a shirt. Like if you look at my shirt, it will have like eight components. If you look at a bra, you'll have more 50 components. And it has an implication on the supply chain, on the suppliers that you work with. So that's one aspect.

And you also have all the sizing that is very specific. So you will have to offer more than 40 sizes to be inclusive in the US. And versus a shirt, it will be more 10 size max. And this sizing has some consequence in terms of designing the product, but also in terms of inventory, MOQ, and so on. So it requires a lot of cash. So the lingerie market, for all those reasons, is a bit atypical and pretty complex to do. And I think for us, it was in retrospect our chance because we were geeks, you know, that were coding, crunching data, like what we learned at McKinsey and company. And we're well equipped for that. If we had decided to launch a cool brand selling shirt in which the coolness factor would be more important than the quantitative factor, I would not have been successful, I think. We don't know, but let's say that this complexity turns to be an advantage for us based on the profile that we have.

Okay, so your weakness became your strength. The thing that made it harder for everyone else made it easier for the two of you specifically. That's kind of a beautiful lesson, actually. And you launched in the US. Was that always the plan?

No, and then it's always a mix of reasons. The US market is huge, let's be honest. It's giant. There is a lot of a bit of consumption. It's less fragmented than Europe. And you have like a habit of shopping online and shopping in general that is very strong. So I think we have a natural advantage. And I think that the competition also might be lower in this space and in Europe. I think in Europe, every country has a few lingerie brands that have their particularities and so on. So here, suddenly, you have access to a big pool. So yeah.

You built this before Shopify was the default, before TikTok existed, before AI was a word people used at dinner parties. So if you were starting the same company today, exact the same company, the same idea, same you, how different would the journey be?

It's a good question. I think it will be an answer that sounds like a little bit bullshit, but I think it has some pros and cons. Well, clearly, if I was to launch it now, let's say I have more experience and I've learned a few pitfalls, so I will try to avoid those pitfalls. I think the market might be more mature as well in terms of e-commerce adoptions. But, and also there is some good stuff that are happening now. You have Shopify, for instance, which is a revolution for the e-commerce. We had no Shopify back then. It was Magento, which was an old version of Magento. I can tell you that it was, let's say, rudimentary. So now, the universe of Shopify that created all these apps to manage a lot of things, it's a game changer. So instead of having to recruit 20 or 30 tech developers to a website up and running that is cool, you can almost do it alone or with one developer.  So I think that's changed because it reduced the cost of entry to launch a brand and things. So that's on the positive aspect if I were to launch such a business today.

On the challenging aspect, I think that there is more competitions now because it's your brother's brand, it's easier to launch a brand as well. So I think it has more competitions. I think that and the biggest challenge for me will be the price of ad back then. I mean Facebook price was way cheaper now in 10 years it was multiplied by 30 so it changed totally the economics of e-commerce and fashion not only fashion but all the business that wants to do advertising. But I would say fashion is more impacted because the margins are pretty thin. So I think the price of advertising is different. I'm sure there is new channels that are cool and new opportunities. And let's be honest, I might be a bit rusty now because I'm less into this aspect. So cool stuff happening, you know, TikTok shop might offer some new opportunities of virality that didn't exist. But clearly, the marketing cost of entry is different and might be more difficult today than back then.

After you sold Adore Me, you could have done anything. You could have retired or launched something completely different or just advised startups and kept it low key. What made you go specifically into sustainability? Because it's not an easy space. It's messy, it's political, and honestly, the results are slow. Why here?

In fact, I'm still in the fashion space, but in a different style. So I've left Adore Me in 2024. So the company is still operating and pretty successful under the wing of Victoria's Secret. So I'm not involved at all with Adore Me. I'm doing different things in the fashion and fashion space, advising different startups that are pushing the sustainability objective. I just released a book called Reset Fashion, where I try to explain the challenge and pitfalls of sustainability in fashion and the opportunity as well. So I'm still active in the fashion space but the fashion space is so large. I'm just doing something else so I'm not selling product for a brand. I'm trying to help business to be successful in this space in a different role more of a support than directly on the front line so it's different.

Okay: "nice, cute and wrong". I need you to be specific. Give me examples. What are the stories we are telling ourselves about sustainable fashion that just don't hold up?

Yeah, sure. I think that in general, you have a theory of the organization that is very interesting. It's called the unintended consequence of good intentions. And it's a theory that dates from the 60s, I think they invented. And basically it explains that you can have good intentions in a complex ecosystem. It doesn't translate into a good outcome because there is many effects, a lot of stakeholders, unexpected turn and so on. So you could think as a, you know, Airbnb, when it was launched, it was a nice project about you rent your room to make extra money. And now you go to Barcelona and it's full of Airbnb and the locals are not very happy about this little perks that was offered by Airbnb. It's a good example of good intent, but it's a challenging outcome.

This actually connects directly to something I heard in episode 3. Nathalie and Carla Vorarlberg told me they regularly receive brand new, unworn Shein shirts in their donation containers,  still in the color range, zero stains, zero quality. So the product exists, the transaction happened, the carbon was emitted, and it ends up in a sorting plant.

And in the fashion space, there is a lot of examples of good intent, but bad outcome at the end. So, for instance, you have the belief that customer will buy more and more sustainable fashions, which people wanted to believe that, you know, but in fact, it doesn't really material. And so a lot of business were not successful and a lot of strategy direction were taken were not the right one, because it has some implication. People will say, okay, but people will buy more, let's invest more, let's increase the price of the product. And in fact, customer, there is no green premium. It's a very minority, the green premium. So it was a wrong direction.

Another example will be that the aesthetic of fashions, of sustainable fashion. So the color code of sustainable fashion is very... beige tone, pastel, and so on, which is an elegant mood board story material for sustainable fashions. It looks a bit Nordic. But in fact, it's not a good direction for simple reasons. Most of the customers don't like those colors. In the US, the top five colors are red, blue, yellow, pink, and energetic green. So if you propose some beige product, sorry, it doesn't work. And there is no correlation between the carbon footprint of a product and the color of the product. So why do we feel obliged to have a pastel product to say they are sustainable? It's just like a... constructions you know but that is wrong and it's it's an issue because it leads in a direction where sustainable fashion is exclusive, expensive, a bit luxury and it's not a mass market fashion and the challenge is to mainstream sustainability not to keep sustainable product into a niche of luxury. So that's an example of good intent but bad outcome. And so I'm talking of different examples of such pitfalls in sustainable fashion and what should be done about that.

Hold on. I want to make sure I understand the beige thing. Are you saying that brands are choosing those colors because they genuinely believe it signals something? Or that customers started expecting it? Like, who started that?

No, it's a chicken and egg. I think it started with a fashion brand pushing an aesthetic that was this way, based on the mood board and also the process of fashion. So now it's true that a lot of customers associate sustainable fashion with such aesthetic, and some are happy with that, and some are not happy about that. And now the point is like it's there, but it's worth questioning this aesthetic because it's just designed to stay a minority of fashion. And it's not neutral. We were a mass market brand selling all across America. And let's be honest, the average consumer is not very sustainability fan. Doesn't mean they don't like it. It's just that they will buy a product because it's nice. So if we were to do a category of the sustainable product that wear this color, but you will know that you will cap your potential to 10% of yourself. While I think we should try to hope to have 100% of the sales with sustainable product.  So that's an example of things. So the process was more the brand pushed with a lot of marketing and campaign and things like that. And now the customer associate to that, but it's not really the good direction.

So if the beige world is a trap and customers aren't willing to pay a big premium, how do we actually make sustainable fashion work at scale? How does that bridge look like between where we are and where we need to be?

There's a lot in your questions. I didn't say the customer don't care. The customer do care, but they will tend to accept a premium of price of 3%. So you need to have the same, more or less the same characteristic of the product in terms of experience, including the product, not exactly the same, but more or less the same, and the product being more sustainable. So that's not easy, but it's feasible. But if you arrive with a product that is 25% more expensive, people will not buy it. And it's not that the people are villain, it's just that the way they are, they are human, they have their own constraints. So I think that's the role of the business to come up with a more sustainable product in this price range. So now how to do it?

There is a lot of things to be done. So it's not like a magic formula and an envelope in which do this and things will go there. If you read the page or book, you have some example. But it's more many, many factors. So there is work to be done on focusing on the right battle. So focusing on the right battle will be typically focusing on where the carbon emissions are, which are typically on the production side. We call it the scope tree of fashions. And scope one, scope two, scope three is a way to compute where is the source of the carbon emission of your product. Is it a direct emission of your business? That would be scope one. Or is it indirect? That will be more on the production side. And it's something that is not specific to fashion. You can do it for all the sector. And you have some business like airline or construction in which a scope 1, the direct emission, are 60% or 70% of the carbon emissions. So they are working on this direct scope 1 because it makes sense. In the case of fashion, 98% of the emissions are happening in scope 3, indirect. And most of the effort of fashion brands are focused on the scope one, the 2%. Why? Because it's easier, they control. But I think it's a wrong direction. I think most of the effort of the company should be focused on scope three.

What do we do about that? And it requires a change of mindset. It requires awareness. It requires some solution. But at least let's work on where the things are truly happening instead of bragging about an initiative to turn off the electricity in the headquarters or in the retail store. It's epsilon. If all the fashion brands were turning off the light at night or turning on the light at night, it will be epsilon. So don't communicate about that, please, because it's just like a way to fool  people, customers, but also people inside the company. It's not really an initiative that matters.

Epsilon. I love that word for it. Like technically true, completely irrelevant.

So that's focus on the right battle. Then, within the right battle, the key is to provide products that are better. Better can have a lot of  definition it can be less carbon, it can be like less usage of water, less usage of chemical increase, impact on biodiversity and so on. So it's not easy and it can become very quickly and technical. Let's be honest and my goal is not to enter into a battle of should we favor biodiversity or carbon or whatever. I think it would depend per product per brand but at least better product will be a good path in directions.

Because the fashion industry today is 6% to 8% of the carbon emissions of the planet. So it's massive. And contrary to a few other industries that at least have reduced, start to reduce their emissions, it's still going up every year. So not a bit, every year it's going up. So if we could at least move in the right directions and go from let's say 6% to 5% in two years and then 4% and then 3%, I will totally sign for that. And I prefer to agree on the direction and to staff than to have a specialist debate about biodiversity matters more than water usage. Both matter, but at least let's move on to the right topic.

Something I keep bumping into in these conversations is that nobody defines sustainability the same way. For some people, it's materials. For others, it's labor rights. For others, it's carbon. How should we as consumers and as brands decide what to care about and what direction to go?

No, it's a great question. I think it's part of the challenge as well. Actually, you have different bodies that have tried to come with a definition. You have the global fashion agenda. You have United Nations that come with a framework and you have other very smart people that have been thinking about that. And all definitions are correct by design, but you are right that sometimes they actually overlap. Sometimes they are different. And it's not easy.  And I think you have some that are more focused on the environmental aspect. Other have a bigger social component with the right of labor. And I think that it's part of the challenge because it's become a little bit open house where everybody can claim we are doing something that is good for the planet without really aligning on what is inside.

I think this diversity of definitions is a trap sometimes because it can hide a little bit of bullshit. It's also an opportunity of kind of pluralism of positive impact. And I think after, it might also depend on individuals. What are their preferences? And also the brands. I mean, if you have a brand that communicates a lot on the protection of the ocean, I think naturally there will be more water protection folks than labor rights. So some will say, no, we try to touch on all the aspects of the world with some kind of complex mental construction, and they will be right on that. Others might be more on no chemical is good for your health. So I think it depends.

I mean, me personally, I prefer to use the word systemity than energy because systemity at least is about the environment, climate warming, biodiversity. But it's my personal preference. Some people say, no, for me, labor rights matter more and I want to have transparency. I think that what is the communality of all those elements is like: the more transparency, the more information people have, the better the choice. When you don't know how your garment is done, it can have a bad effect on the biodiversity, labor rights, or usage of chemicals. If you don't know anything, there is not much. The day when you start to have this transparency, you might be a bit more selective in your pick and choose of what you would prefer. And that's applicable for individual customers, but also for brands. I'm not sure it answers exactly the question in the way you wanted, but that's my view on this diversity of definition of sustainable fashion.

Okay, let's talk about technology, because I think a lot of people have hope placed there. The idea that AI, sensors, blockchain, digital passports, that tech will kind of come in and fix what we can't fix through willpower alone. Is that hope realistic?

A great question. Yeah, technology will be important to change the way fashion is doing fashion. So technology will not make fashion more sustainable per se, because the reason why it's not sustainable is like there is a process of transforming some cotton into a shirt, but technology can help to make the physics smarter or more optimized. And you also have a lot of innovations that are not technology like tech, but about chemistry and things like that, that also unlock a lot of opportunities. So I think, yes, technology will be necessary to make fashion more sustainable.

More specifically on traceability, I think traceability will be useful to kind of create a map of where to work. So it's not like some fancy gadget for customers that check their digital passport. I think most customers would not care. It's more like to help to say where should we work to reduce our carbon emissions. So for instance, within fashion, half of the emissions of products fashion are about the dyeing, so the coloring of the garments. This used to be white cotton, and now it's white and red. This process, half of the carbon emission of fashion, that means 4% of the total carbon emission of the world, that means the dyeing process of fashion is two to three times bigger than the airline industry. Nobody talks about that. It's just insane. But it's happening in tier two, tier three. That means the supplier of the supplier of the supplier of a brand. And it's not easy to know who they are because it's kind of scattered all over the place. But with traceability, you can know where was the dyeing of this shirt done. Was it in some kind of responsible dye house in Bangladesh? Or was it done in like a very primitive place diehouse in Indonesia that is only powered by coal? And then if you know, after you can take actions because you can say, well, can we upgrade the capacity of the primitive Indonesian dying house to make it more responsible? And then you have a technology that can help with a bit of AI and sensor to better optimize or even use a different process. So, traceability helps you to know where to find, it's like a treasure hunt, we have a map of the treasure to do. So, I think the main understanding of traceability is to believe that it's useful for customers, it's useful for brands that really want to work on what really matters.

The dying statistic is just insane. Two to three times bigger than the airline industry. The same airline industry that think we are told to feel guilty about every time we book a flight. And it's the coloring of fabric? That's almost too simple to be real. Here is a  link for anyone who want to go deeper in this one.

All in all, fashion has a huge problem. It produces more emissions than all international flights and shipping combined. It pollutes water, trashes unsolved clothes, a truckload every second.

And while that sounds distant, the truth is it's driven by us. We own more than ever, yet feel like we have nothing to wear. We buy more to fix that feeling and the cycle repeats. I know because I've lived it. Clothes at full, nothing to wear, stress before school, work, events. I thought clothes were identity, expression. And they are. However, not the way fast fashion has taught us.

It's a system design failure. Most people wear only 30% of their wardrobe. And 61% still say they struggle to find something to wear. That's why I'm building a styling app. My app helps you preserve the stories in your wardrobe by styling what you already own. Buying only when it truly makes sense.

We are getting close to the end and I want to finish with something real. Not forced optimism but actual grounded reasons to believe this gets better. What gives you hope?

I'm an optimistic person. I think that there is, first, there are so many longing fruit that it's easier to decarbonize fashion than other sector to start with. Second, I think we have this hard conjunction of maturity of project, customer getting a bit more sharper as well. People feel every day that the world is collapsing. So there is kind of creative combinations there and that can bloom on a fertile ground of a lot of work that was done a few years ago about regulations. And the regulations are not stopping actually they've been slowed down in Europe. But every year the rise is going up so I think this we are entering into this kind of world where combination of needs opportunity I think so that gives you some hope.

And the second reason: It's more about the fashion industry itself. I think that it's an industry that is extremely influential. And if fashion can transform itself towards more responsible practice, I think it will have the power to influence other industries that have the same kind of pitfalls or challenges.  And I think fashion is interesting because it's not worse or better than the other industry. It's just like a caricature of the consumerism and the capitalism we live in. And so it's easier to see what doesn't work because it's such a caricature. But if it transforms, and I think it's possible to transform within five years in a spectacular way, I think the other sector will be influenced because fashion has this magical power that goes way beyond its economic clout, which is not that big versus technology, for instance.

Before I let you go, the book. Tell people what's in it, where to find it, and who it is for. Because I feel like this is not just a fashion industry book. It's wider than that.

The book has just been published. It's called Reset Fashion. You can find it on Amazon, to make things simpler. It's all over the world on Amazon. And then in some bookstores, it depends where you live. I'm covering a lot of topics on the book. I think that I try to take the point of view of an operator, because I was more an entrepreneur, so I'm not a theorist of fashion. I'm just like somebody doing. It's pretty holistic, because I really think that you cannot understand sustainability in fashion if you don't understand fashion in all this multifaceted approach. So I talk about the pitfalls of the way sustainability in fashion is done. I am also talking about how fashion as an industry has been destabilized by multiple trends. So it can be e-commerce, it can be fragmentation of supply chain. It can be Chinese brands that are coming. It can be tech. It can be social media. It can be regulations. So there is a lot of factors of destabilization that you need to understand to understand sustainability in fashion. And then I'm trying to cover, of course, what needs to be done for the industry. So we talk about technology. We talk about traceability. But there is also a lot of engineering level that I can talk. There is a lot of cool technology things that are done by different brands that people don't know, like Decathlon, Nike, Uniqlo. They are doing cool stuff that people are not aware. And I think they will talk about that. We talk about collaboration, what type of collaboration is to be done between players of the industry to be really efficient. We talk about HR, what type of skills that people need for these transformations. And we talk about purpose, because at the end of the day, it's like, it's a collective project. What do we want to do individually and collectively in a company, in an industry, and for our planet? So time to reset fashion.

Here is what I keep thinking about after this conversation.

We are so used to sustainability being about guilt. Don't fly, don't buy fast fashion, feel bad about your closet. And I get it, those things matter. But Romain is saying something different. He is saying we are solving the wrong problems. We are turning off lights in offices while the real fire is burning three suppliers deep in a supply chain nobody has mapped. And the people who should be mapping it are busy designing pastel collections for 10% of the market.

That's not a consumer problem. That's a system problem. And systems problems need people who are willing to be honest about them. Which is exactly what this book and this conversation are trying to do. Reset Fashion by Romaine is now out on Amazon.

And if you've been curious about this space but couldn't tell the real work from the greenwashing, this is genuinely useful read.