SOURCING
Vision 2025: Create beautiful and meaningful products, continuously improving their impact through transparency and traceability.
We intend to become a force for positive change beyond the Chloé workplace by working with our main suppliers to promote and further our standards while ensuring transparency.
Based on our environmental impact research, we learned that our biggest impact comes from raw materials. This has prompted us to work with external experts to identify lower impact materials. We are focused on increasing their proportion such that we can reach 90% by 2025 at latest. Consequently, this will contribute to our target of reducing emissions by more than 25% per product. You can find our guidelines for sourcing here.
For Gabriela Hearst, responsible sourcing is inseparable from design. Whenever possible, she tries to reuse existing materials and lower-impact materials. With her arrival at Chloé, we aim to achieve these objectives even faster, and possibly exceed them.
Objectives 2023
> 0%
of lower impact materials on average on Chloé Ready-to-wear.
> 0%
Fair Trade & social sourcing on Chloé Ready-to-wear manufacturing.
0%
Digital ID deployed on Chloé Ready-to-wear and shoes.
FAIR TRADE
The World Fair Trade Organization is a global community of social enterprises that fully practice fair trade. Its guarantee system is the only international verification model focused on social enterprises that put the interests of people and the planet first.
Following a partnership signed with WFTO in September 2020, Chloé launched its first fair-trade luxury collections in March 2021, which were both ethically produced and environmentally responsible. Over time, we will increase the quantity of fair-trade items in our collections, maintaining the highest luxury quality, while making products that are beautiful and meaningful. In 2022, 12% of our Chloé ready-to-wear offer comprised fair-trade guaranteed products. In 2023, we aim to bring this share to 20%. As such, we are working on adding social enterprises to our existing supply chain partners, as well as helping existing suppliers work towards fair trade certification and pursuing our collaborations with partners that we integrated in our supply chain in 2021.
LOWER IMPACT MATERIALS
Our lower impact materials are split into three main categories:
- Organic: organic materials involve better land management practices, respect for animal welfare, elimination of herbicides, pesticides and artificial fertilizers, reduction of water consumption, and restricted use of chemicals. The outcome is fields that are healthier for farmers, wildlife and surrounding communities.
- Recycled: recycled materials keep their inherent quality with a reduced environmental impact, as they enable us to extend the lifespan of fabrics that have already been produced.
- Deadstock: leftover materials are transformed into new products to decrease the production of new materials while lowering our environmental footprint. Using deadstock is our favourite option, since reusing existing materials is invariably more sustainable than spending resources producing new ones.
At Chloé, we joined the Leather Working Group in 2017 to support more sustainable leather manufacturing. The Leather Working Group is an international organisation made up of stakeholders across the leather supply chain, working to promote environmental best practice within leather manufacturing and related industries.
Chloé is committed to launch at least one bag using materials coming from plant-based sources by the end of 2023.
SUPPLY CHAIN PARTNERS
We currently require all supply chain partners (Tier 1, Tier 2 and nominated raw materials suppliers) to comply with the Richemont Code of Conduct, a new version of which will be launched this year. The Chloé team can also ask for social audit reports prior to any business relationship or run, at any time, its own social audit using SMETA specifications, with the support of SGS, ELEVATE or Bureau Veritas.
In line with our commitment to greater transparency on our supply chain, you can find here the list of our main suppliers. This list will be updated every 6 months.
Lastly, since 2021, we share guidelines with our supply chain partners, encouraging them to initiate a Sustainability strategy, measure progress, support innovation and seek certifications.
We expect our suppliers to act in favor of gender equality; avoid any form of discrimination; promote underrepresented minority workers communities; and support local communities whenever possible.
DIGITAL ID & CIRCULARITY
In February 2023, Chloé unveiled its Digital ID, introducing a new chapter of transparency for luxury, and enabling full circularity with Instant Resale – a first in the industry. This unique and innovative digital ID allows users to scan the labels of products with a smartphone. The initiative has three main purposes: to ensure authenticity, traceability and to facilitate care & repair. When customers scan the unique digital ID embedded in the product, they are redirected to a dedicated page. Here customers can learn more about the entire manufacturing process, find care and repair instructions, and also locate their product certificate of authenticity, complete with a unique ownership number. Through this certificate section, customers have access to a link to facilitate the product’s future second-hand resale directly through Vestiaire Collective. After landing on a dedicated Chloé x Vestiaire Collective pre-filled listing form, customers can choose from three exchange options:
1. A voucher that can be redeemed at Chloé either online or in-store.
2. A Vestiaire Collective voucher – a first for the platform – demonstrating Chloé’s support of the second-hand market.
3. Alternatively – reflecting Chloé’s commitment to improving social impact – a charitable donation to UNICEF’s gender equality initiatives can be made.
We invite you to explore our case study documenting key learnings on our journey.
Guidelines for sourcing 2023
In line with our commitment to promote responsible sourcing, we publish every year an updated version of our guidelines for sourcing, available for download here:
Guidelines for sourcing – version 3
The document lists a series of rules and policies for the sourcing of raw materials, fair trade products, animal welfare and packaging consumption.
To contact us with any questions or feedback please email sustainability@chloe.com.
Our key moments
For International Women’s Day 2021,
Chloé released the very first entirely fair-trade luxury collection in partnership with UNICEF.
In 2022 on average,
60% of Chloé ready-to-wear products were considered lower impact, meaning that they were composed of 80% or more of lower impact materials.
In March 2023,
Chloé shared its Social Profit & Loss Approach in open source.