Blue Cast: Giusy Bettoni on Sustainable Storytelling & Education
Sustainability has grown to become an industry-wide focus, but some frontrunners had low-impact fashion on their agendas even earlier.
For our latest Blue Cast podcast episode, sustainability pioneer Giusy Bettoni joined Lenzing’s Michael Kininmonth for a chat about building a more responsible fashion industry. Giusy is a consultant with Premiere Vision and an advisor to Eco-Age. She also has a long history with TENCEL™. A few decades ago, she was the Italian representative for the fiber, which at the time was owned by Michael’s then employer Courtaulds.
In 2007, Giusy founded C.L.A.S.S., which stands for Creativity, Lifestyle and Sustainable Synergies. With a mission to “activate the supply chain,” this platform researches and teaches everyone—from producers and brands to consumers—about responsible fashion. It also serves as a spotlight for sustainable materials.
As Giusy explained, sustainability involves the entire production process, going back to the raw material. And material innovation by itself is not enough. To truly be responsible, fashion must protect people, the planet and animal welfare.
“If you want to talk about responsible innovation, you have to look at the whole supply chain and not just a little part of it,” said Giusy. “Sustainability is not just about the materials, but it’s about the process, it’s about the choice that you do every day.”
Getting people to buy into sustainability requires creativity, or great aesthetics. Giusy sees the role of a designer expanding beyond sketching to include considerations about the impact of a particular creation.
Giusy noted that when she first started C.L.A.S.S., she was battling misconceptions in the market about sustainable raw materials. Customers thought that green materials wouldn’t be attractive or have a high level of performance. Meanwhile, fibers that were innovative weren’t deemed natural enough to fit the sustainability bill.
Education is crucial to help clear up confusion and assist both supply chain partners and consumers in making better choices. For instance, the industry can provide shoppers with more information so they can decide between two seemingly similar goods—such as two organic cotton T-shirts at different price points.
This also ties into effective storytelling. Companies need to avoid greenwashing, or sharing stories that have no substance or backing. Giusy also advised that “storymaking” without storytelling falls flat. Both elements need to be there to help companies compete. In the face of consumer and investor pressure, retailers are publicly laying out sustainability guidelines.
“They started to make a sort of journey to let the consumer know that they are listening and they are doing something,” Giusy said. “Again, maybe not perfect, but they’re starting. And these are really pushing the whole supply chain in a different direction.”
Synergy is also an important piece of the puzzle. As Giusy put it, she has always witnessed “one plus one” amounting to a sum of at least three. In its own joint venture, C.L.A.S.S. just teamed with Fashion 4 Development to launch a digital hub called The Reclothe’s Platform, which will help guide the industry forward.
“We cannot change anything if we are not doing things all together,” she said.
Listen to the full episode here.