PARIS - At the ChangeNow climate conference, held within the gilded halls of Chanel's usual runway venue, fashion's leaders confronted an uncomfortable truth: the industry's century-old engine of growth - make, sell, discard - is broken. The conversation has moved beyond eco-materials to a more fundamental question: how does an industry built on newness find value in what already exists? For The Lingerie Museum, this moment echoes a foundational shift in intimate apparel.
The push for digital product passports and repair services, framed as tools for customer loyalty, directly recalls the pre-mass-production era. In the early 20th century, brands like *Maidenform*, founded in 1922, built relationships through catalogues and department store fittings, where garments were expected to last and be altered. Value was embedded in service and longevity, not volume. Today's proposed 'scaffolding' of digital data seeks to rebuild that enduring connection, transforming a one-time purchase into an ongoing dialogue.
Yet, as speakers noted, execution is tangled. The current supply chain is a fragmented echo of the vertically integrated systems once mastered by houses like *Warners*, which in the 1940s controlled design, manufacturing, and distribution to ensure quality. Modern proposals for industrial-scale recycling, such as Circ's planned facility in France, aim to reconstruct such closed-loop systems, but on a global scale. The challenge is no longer technical, but one of coordination - a lesson in logistics the old corsetières would well understand.
The debate ultimately circles a core tension: can fashion grow while making less? As regulations like France's proposed anti-fast-fashion law gain traction, the industry is forced to measure value not by units shipped, but by the life extended to each garment. It is a return to the principles of craftsmanship and care that defined lingerie's most revered houses, now being rewritten for the digital age.
Originally reported by WWD