Why DRESSX's Sustainability Report is Greenwashing and Harmful for the Fashion Industry
The splashy startup that just raised a $15 million Series A has released a report on their sustainability efforts, but their numbers, like their clothes, aren't real.
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For those not immersed in the daily happenings of fashion innovation, you may not have heard of DRESSX. The female-founded startup that peaked in popularity during the pandemic is on a mission to make the fashion industry more sustainable. Sounds great, right? Hold that thought.
DRESSX fulfills their mission by encouraging consumers to wear digital fashion— that is, apparel and accessories that exist only digitally and not physically.
On DRESSX.com, customers can browse and even purchase full looks or individual items from rain jackets to ski masks (because apparently, even our avatars like outerwear). The items are then “worn” on social media or Metaverse platforms like Instagram or Decentraland. So you get the point, you can see above an example of me “wearing” a digital dress from a similar platform called XR Couture.
DRESSX’s “Sustainability” Report
A recent email newsletter from DRESSX included a link to a 50-page report on the sustainability of the company from an environmental perspective. The “Digital Fashion Sustainability Report” claims DRESSX “reduces carbon emissions, eliminate [sic] waste and harmful chemicals during production and useage [sic]”
The report then goes onto compare the CO2 emissions used to make a digital garment with the emissions from manufacturing a physical one. It states that digital production emits “97% less CO2 than production of a physical garment,” and “saves 3300 litres of water per item.” In the footnote, the report states in bold that DRESSX has “filed a patent on the method of calculating carbon footprint savings by switching from the production of physical garments to the production of digital garments.”
Here’s my problem with the above: aren’t we comparing apples to oranges here? Put plainly, is it accurate to compare digital garments with physical ones? Digital garments, while they may have found their place in gaming or augmented reality try-on, aren’t the same thing as something we actually wear in real life. Of course it’s going to take less energy to render an item digitally than to produce it physically. The former deals with pixels while the latter deals with manufacturing and materiality.
Here’s Why This Kind of Greenwashing is Harmful for the Fashion Industry
The fashion industry already has a problem with greenwashing, and there’s no shortage of examples. Just last week, The Fashion Law reported that Nike was named in a lawsuit accusing it of deceiving consumers by marketing its sportswear offerings as “sustainable,” made with “sustainable materials,” and environmentally friendly when its products “do not live up to these claims.”
In essence, greenwashing is when a company makes an environmental claim about something the organization is doing that is intended to promote a sense of environmental impact that doesn't exist.
DRESSX says they’re developing a method for calculating carbon footprint savings of digital fashion, which may provide some nice numbers for fashion companies looking to appear sustainable when they’re actually not. Like DRESSX’s garments, the data is not real.
Later on in the report, DRESSX presents the environmental savings from a recent campaign with American Eagle. The report claims DRESSX saved AE 86,399,044 gallons of water and 481 tons of CO2.
Here’s the problem: these numbers assume people are wearing the digital version of the jeans instead of the physical ones. They seem to miss the point that the digital jeans are meant to market physical ones (there’s no way AE invested in this campaign without the hopes of building brand awareness for their product offerings).
While I understand that DRESSX’s American Eagle experience is meant to be fantastical (these animated jeans don’t exist in real life!) what makes me uncomfortable about this campaign is American Eagle now gets to tout their sustainability achievements when they’re actually not a sustainable company.
According to Good on You, an independent organization that rates fashion company’s based on their impact on people, the planet, and animals, AE’s rating is “Not Good Enough,” although on the surface the company seems to be dedicated to sustainability.
“In practice, American Eagle appears to be doing very little to reduce its environmental impact. While it has set an absolute target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions generated from its own operations and supply chain, there is no evidence it is on track to meet its target. There is also no evidence that American Eagle is taking adequate steps to minimize or eliminate hazardous chemicals in its supply chain […] American Eagle also lacks adequate policies and initiatives for resource management and disposal, and uses few eco-friendly materials”
and later:
“While its greenhouse gas reduction target and recycling programs are a good first step, ultimately American Eagle appears more interested in talking the talk rather than walking the walk”
(You can read the full Good on You report on American Eagle here)
The last line sums it up perfectly: AE is interested in talking the talk rather than walking the walk, and that’s exactly what DRESSX’s campaign allows them to do. Rather than doing the hard work of fixing their production processes, supply chains, and human rights concerns, AE gets to live in la la land bolstered up by bullshit numbers provided by DRESSX.
Now I’m not here to dunk on a female-founded startup focused on sustainability, but I can’t stand by while an industry I care about gets duped in the name of innovation.
So, Death to Digital Fashion?
That’s not what I’m saying. Certainly, digitizing the production process can lead to efficiencies: sending digital samples as opposed to physical ones is just one way an apparel company can cut costs and carbon emissions. But creating a digital-only product that lives on the internet and comparing it to something that’s made IRL is false equivalency.
I remember when I was producing Metaverse Marketing, a podcast for Adweek hosted by Cathy Hackl. One of the people we interviewed was Benoit Pagotto, the co-founder of RTFKT(pronounced “Artifact”), a company that designed and sold digital sneakers and other NFT collectable items. He asked what I thought at the time was a rhetorical question: “If something exists only on the internet, but enough people see it, is it real?”
He was referring at the time to the viral success of his Cyber Sneakers, a pair of digital sneakers he photoshopped onto a photo of Elon Musk at the Met Gala and then circulated on the internet. People were so excited, they started asking how they could get a pair of the sneakers in real life. Pagotto now works as a Senior Director of Brand and Partnerships at Nike.
To answer his question, if something exists only on the internet, but enough people see it, it’s not real in the literal sense, it’s just on the internet.
It also doesn’t mean it’s true or that it really happened.
We’re about to enter an age where AI can generate images, video, and voice with gobsmacking accuracy. Just yesterday my bestie sent me a TikTok of a girl using Adobe Photoshop’s new “Generative Fill” feature to completely and convincingly change her whole outfit with a few clicks.
This kind of Generative AI may render startups like DRESSX useless. At the same time it ushers in a new era where digital literacy is imperative. We must question the things we see on the internet, whether that’s an image of the Pentagon being attacked on Twitter or a sustainability report sent to our email inbox.