Redefining Success in Fashion: Building a Legacy of Responsibility

Most fashion brands measure success in one way: selling more. The industry rewards those who flood the market with new collections, who generate record-breaking profits, who make it onto the front pages of business magazines celebrating billion-dollar valuations. The more you sell, the more successful you are.

But let’s pause.

Think of Shein. By all conventional standards, it is one of the most "successful" fashion brands in history. It sells more than any other company, moves at a speed never seen before, and has reshaped the very idea of consumption. But ask the public—ask even those who buy from them—and the word success doesn’t quite fit. What Shein represents is deep extractivism, excess, scandal, lawsuits, pollution, low quality, and human exploitation.

Is it really success? Is a legacy of waste, destroyed lives, and ecosystems on the brink of collapse something to be proud of?

Is appearing in Forbes, Business of Fashion, and Bloomberg for record-breaking sales really worth it, when the fine print of those articles also tells of exploited workers, microplastic-filled oceans, and landfills overflowing with discarded clothes?

Well—yes, in a capitalist system that rewards growth at any cost. A system that celebrates financial extraction over planetary regeneration. A system where success is defined by a single metric: profit.

But what if that definition no longer makes sense?

What if we measured brands not by how much they produce, but by how much they restore?

Not by how many collections they launch per year, but by how much they slow down?

Not by how much they grow, but by how much they give back to the ecosystems and communities they depend on?

Where a brand was considered successful not for selling the most clothes, but for producing the least necessary.

Where degrowth was the marker of prestige, not expansion.

Where a company’s long-term success was measured by its ability to restore biodiversity, ensure fair wages, and contribute to planetary health.

Because despite the EU’s regulations on textiles and circularity, the elephant in the room remains untouched: overproduction. As Livia Firth famously said when closing Eco-Age, “There is no such thing as sustainable fashion without reducing production.” Rather than compromise or pretend that small changes were enough, Eco-Age walked away from the industry altogether. So yes, we need a change in values, but we also need a change in regulations. What is the point of making more durable, high-quality garments, as the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products regulation demands, if the amount of them is still the same? We don’t need more sustainable and durable clothes—we just need less clothes.

And here’s a final question for those who run these brands, those who set their vision and define their future:

Can you truly be at peace knowing you’ve sacrificed some profit, but left behind a legacy of regeneration, justice, and balance?

Can you find contentment in earning a bit less, but giving more—to nature, to workers, to communities?

Or will the desire for infinite growth always win, even at the cost of everything else?

Clara Tomé.