This morning I opened two emails that both struck me – one for what it said and the other for what it didn’t say.
The first was about a clothing brand with vegan credentials – a product made out of polyester. Fine. But it then went on to suggest that this was also something ‘sustainable’. Hmm, given that landfill and sea are infested with synthetics like polyester that won’t degrade for many hundreds of years, that description did not stand up.
I moved on.
The next email was from COS, which has introduced a jewellery collection made of recycled metal.
The release contained a couple of very understated COS-style images and a few words. Notably, one word that was missing was sustainable – and it was all the better for it.
Sustainable is a word that is in frequent use in fashion press releases.
And if it was only being used to accurately describe products I wouldn’t mind. But using it inaccurately or falsely is not helping anyone. Better to leave it out altogether and make journalists and the public make up their own minds.
