14 Sustainable Fashion Consultancies Helping Change the Business of Fashion
By Stella Hertantyo
Navigating how to run a sustainable and ethical business in fashion is not easy. From business models, material sourcing, and carbon reduction, to circular economy strategy, communications, and regulatory compliance, there’s a lot to consider.
While some bigger companies may have in-house sustainability departments, this isn’t the case for most. Often brands and businesses seek out the services of external consultancies for sustainability-related guidance or strategy, instead of having an in-house head of sustainability with a broad range of expertise.
What Is a Sustainable Fashion Consultancy?
Consultancies are businesses that give expert advice and guidance on specific topics. They generally employ a team of people, each with different areas of expertise. Sustainable fashion consultancies help to make the process of becoming more sustainable less daunting.
Through strategy and implementation support, sustainable fashion consultancies can help brands become more environmentally and socially sustainable while building a resilient and financially sustainable business.
Sustainable fashion consultancies can offer services ranging from business strategy, understanding supply chain impacts, Life Cycle Assessment implementation, and reporting, to communications, marketing, materials sourcing, and pathways toward circularity.
Also, if you’re pursuing a career in sustainable fashion, considering a job at a consultancy is an option that shouldn’t be overlooked. Because many businesses don’t have in-house sustainability departments, looking into offering consulting services or working for a consultancy is an alternative to seeking out a sustainable fashion career within a specific brand.
Whether you’re looking to work for a consultancy, or you run a business that’s seeking some guidance, here's a selection of global sustainable fashion consultancies to know.
Selina Ho started Recloseted with the mission to transform fashion after pivoting from a career in business and marketing. Now, Ho combines her experience, working with Fortune 500s and startups, with that of her multidisciplinary team — from sourcing experts to material scientists and data analysts — to help shift the business of fashion.
Recloseted launches and scales sustainable fashion brands and helps existing brands become more conscious through their programs and consulting services.
Location: Global
Areas of expertise: Launching and scaling sustainable fashion brands, analyzing supply chain impacts, developing sustainability strategies, reporting, communications, materials sourcing, sales tactics, team structuring, ethical manufacturing, regulatory compliance
Eco-Age is a global agency creating systemic solutions in line with science, in harmony with nature, and in solidarity with human rights. The agency was founded in 2009 by sustainable fashion multihyphenate, Livia Firth. Firth also founded the Fossil Fuel Fashion campaign and the Green Carpet Fashion Awards, as well as being the editor of Vogue Arabia.
With a focus on sustainable business strategy, Eco-Age helps brands lower their impact on people and the planet from the ground level — beginning with technical consulting services ranging from climate strategy to biodiversity mapping, supply chain analysis, and beyond — through to media relations, corporate reputation, digital storytelling, and sustainable event production.
Over the past 14 years, Eco-Age has collaborated with NGOs, governments, and changemakers across industries to become a leader of change in corporate responsibility.
Location: United Kingdom and Italy
Areas of expertise: Climate strategy, biodiversity mapping, supply chain analysis, media relations, corporate reputation, digital storytelling, sustainable event production
Learn more about Eco-Age here.
Bergstrand Consultancy believes that we can make the fashion industry sustainable without compromising beauty or creativity. Their team of experts is dedicated to helping fashion and textile businesses measure and improve their impact.
Founder Lisa Bergstrand, approaches this by cultivating a sense of transparency. Time is spent deeply understanding the values of a brand, their stakeholders, and their customers as a key starting point. These factors are used to inform strategies that will help to achieve sustainability goals. Then Bergstrand Consultancy’s team of experts helps execute these strategies. Their packages can be tailored for brands of any size.
Location: Sweden
Areas of expertise: Sustainability strategy, design for a circular economy, impact reduction, supply chain optimization, legal and regulatory compliance, ethical wool usage, animal welfare practices
Sustainable fashion is no new concept on the African continent, with vast textile histories that hold insights into ancient sustainable practices. Now as we look to the future of fashion, we are seeing a need for a renaissance of these techniques. Zara Odu — who has 15 years of experience building, managing, and growing brands in Africa — founded the Designers Consociate as a full-service consultancy service that promotes responsible production among fashion brands in Africa.
Designers Consociate is dedicated to developing sustainable solutions that revive African fashion ecosystems and local manufacturing through nurturing and promoting indigenous techniques and raw materials that reduce waste, and enhance local economies through artisans in small communities.
Location: Nigeria
Areas of expertise: Brand and product development, supply chain management, sales and market strategy, industry advocacy, partnerships and collaborations
Figuring out a brand-specific sustainability journey requires having the right support. Regenerate Fashion supports fashion businesses to integrate sustainable and circular strategies in the journey toward a more regenerative world. They transform fashion businesses into sustainable organizations.
Working across all aspects of business, from corporate strategy to product design, Regenerate Fashion focuses on capacity building for fashion companies and industry professionals. Their mission is to enact long-lasting change in the industry by aligning our work with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
Their team’s expertise ranges from sustainable agriculture and fiber production, material innovation, supply chain evaluation, and circular product and business concept development.
Location: Europe, United States, Brazil
Areas of expertise: Sustainability assessment and reporting, circular product and material strategy, industry standards and certification preparation
Closed Loop Fashion is a consultancy that helps to catalyze this process by providing apparel and textile industry stakeholders with practical tools and holistic solutions for applied sustainability and circularity, from capacity building to strategy planning, creation, and implementation.
Led by Corporate Social Responsibility and circular economy specialist Marina Chahboune, the Closed Loop Fashion team has vast experience in developing sustainable projects in emerging markets and applied sustainability. This includes social and environmental compliance, chemical and textile waste management, and extended producer responsibility concepts.
Location: Indonesia
Areas of expertise: Sustainable business strategy, supply chain management, textile waste management and recycling, circular design strategies
Figuring out circular solutions for your business model is not a one-size-fits-all process. Circular Earth works with businesses of all sizes to guide them through practical circular economy principles.
Reflective of their holistic approach to circularity, Circular Earth also offers regenerative restructuring guidance. This involves applying regenerative thinking to product development, but also to business structures that can create an enabling environment for regenerative innovation and future-fit thinking. This draws on founder Rachel Sheila Kan’s expertise as a leader in regenerative, living systems and new economics approaches.
Circular Earth’s team includes business mentors, sustainability fashion niche experts, and sustainability product development professionals.
Location: United Kingdom
Areas of expertise: Business and brand development, product development, reporting, regulatory compliance, circularity, regenerative structuring, project management
Fashion in the age of the metaverse, artificial intelligence, and immersive technology has become a hot topic of late. There is going to be a huge amount of upskilling needed with the uptick of Artificial Intelligence in production hubs to ensure that jobs aren’t lost as the world becomes more technologically advanced. With this in mind, Unfolding is a consultancy and education lab for digital, diverse, and sustainable fashion in Web3.
They educate, train, design, and consult with fashion and lifestyle brands on digital fashion, social responsibility, and sustainability. Unfolding also reskills and upskills teams through training, workshops, and talks. And help brands design and build digital and sustainable solutions.
Areas of expertise: Germany
Services: Digital fashion brand development, reskilling and upskilling of teams, education, creative strategy, guidance on fashion innovation and the metaverse
Aside from improving your environmental and social impact, integrating sustainability practices in your business is also about connecting with increasingly values-driven consumers and creating a unique offering that sets your business aside from the norms of the industry. This is where Clothes Minded comes in.
Clothes Minded is a consultancy that aims to map your supply chain to identify areas where positive practices can be actioned and help achieve sustainability goals.
After the initial consultation, Clothes Minded will create an impact report highlighting key areas for improvement utilizing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as a guide. This will become the basis of crafting a tailored sustainability strategy.
Areas of expertise: Australia
Services: Sustainability consulting, sample making, sustainable sourcing, design work and start-up assistance
The Sustainability Club is focused on creating a true impact in a sea of greenwashing. As a communications-led consultancy, their offering includes corporate social responsibility and sustainability consulting for footwear and apparel brands.
The founder Nynke Eggen’s aim was to bridge the sustainability knowledge gap between product departments and communication departments within fashion brands. Working with fashion businesses of all sizes, they tailor communications strategies that uphold the highest standards of responsibility.
They also offer greenwashing training for marketing, e-commerce, and sustainability teams, so that they can learn how to communicate in line with the Green Claims Directive and effectively communicate their sustainability efforts.
Location: The Netherlands
Areas of expertise: Sustainability strategy, greenwashing training, sustainability support, product development and launches, communications
Specializing in sustainability strategies for fashion, Cikis helps companies define strategic sustainability objectives and design an operational plan to achieve them, as well as supporting them step by step in the practical implementation.
They believe that sustainability transformations are not only an act of responsibility, but it’s also a necessary action in order not to become obsolete.
Location: Italy
Areas of expertise: Sustainability assessments, traceability, company sustainability training, legal consulting, communication, reporting, materials and supplier research, compliance with buyer standards, certifications, Life Cycle Assessment, and emissions calculations
Reimagining fashion can be seen as a rebellion against the status quo — RethinkRebels put this rebellion into practice. They accelerate circular change by helping retailers, brands, and makers to fully integrate circular approaches within their strategy, operations, and communication.
Rethink Rebels was founded by Rachel Cannegieter, who has instilled an approach to sustainable fashion that’s personal, fun, easy to understand, and supported by a group of changemakers.
Location: The Netherlands
Areas of expertise: Sustainability strategy, Life Cycle Assessments, certifications, risk analysis, stakeholder involvement, training courses, transparent communication, circular business models
Since 2006, Quantis has specialized in finding science-based solutions for every stage of a business journey. While their services are not limited to sustainability in fashion, they do have a ‘Fashion + Sporting Goods’ department.
They combine the latest environmental science with business strategy to create action points for business owners to reduce their impact, engage their stakeholders, and create meaningful change — all while building a resilient business.
Their team is made up of dynamic professionals — from engineers and environmental scientists to business strategists and communications experts — with expertise in planetary boundaries, biodiversity, climate, land and agriculture, plastics, and water.
Location: United States, Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy
Areas of expertise: Environmental risk assessments and footprinting, strategic insights and business case services, strategic sustainability framework, science-based target setting, business model design, organizational engagement, supply chain activation, product portfolio transformation, consumer engagement, ecosystem stakeholder engagement,
Go Well Consulting aims to make sustainability and the circular economy accessible and understandable to all businesses. While they work in many industries and areas, they have a strong focus on fashion.
Their in-house apparel and footwear experts have over 15 years of experience in the fashion, textiles, and footwear industries and have specialized expertise in supply chain risk and sourcing. The team brings together circular economy thinking, stakeholder engagement experience, and industry expertise to offer knowledge and insights that inform sustainable business decisions. This process begins with analyzing risks and matching them with viable solutions.
Location: New Zealand
Areas of expertise: Sustainability strategy, communicating sustainability, stakeholder engagement, emissions mapping and reductions, supply chain risk and sourcing, B Corp certification, sustainability reporting, talks and presentations, circular economy solutions
About the Author:
Stella Hertantyo is a slow fashion and slow living enthusiast based in Cape Town, South Africa. Stella finds solace in words as a medium for sharing ideas and encouraging a cultural shift that welcomes systems change and deepens our collective connection to the world around us. She is passionate about encouraging an approach to sustainability, and social and environmental justice, that is inclusive, intersectional, accessible, and fun.
Stella holds a B.A. Multimedia Journalism from the University of Cape Town, and a PGDip in Sustainable Development from the Sustainability Institute. She currently works as a writer, editor, and social media manager. When she is not in front of her laptop, a dip in the ocean, or a walk in the mountains, are the two things that bring her the most peace.