Can regenerative leadership fill sustainable fashion’s action gap?

This article is part of our Vogue Business Membership package. To enjoy unlimited access to Member-only reporting and insights, our NFT Tracker and TikTok Trend Tracker, weekly Technology and Sustainability Edits and exclusive event invitations, sign up for Membership here. Last month, in an ancient woodland an hour from London, a group of industry leaders from fashion, food and beyond, gathered around a campfire to discuss regenerative leadership. The remote setting was intentional: the goal was to take leaders out of their usual, fast-paced environment, bring them closer to nature, and deliver the deeper mindset shift that sustainability often gets stuck on, says Giles Hutchins, who runs the immersion days. CEOs from Lush and Vivobarefoot, who attended the retreat, and Chloé, which works with Hutchins independently, are already convinced. Attendees at Springwood Farm, the 60 acres of woodland owned by Hutchins, were asked to leave all belongings behind — including phones — and enter the woods unencumbered. The experience included gentle body movement (chi gung), belly breathing (to move from fight-or-flight to a relaxed state), forest bathing (walking through the woods with “senses enlivened”) and presencing (being in the moment). Stretches of silent walks were balanced with walking in pairs, contemplating questions like “what do you want to let go of?” and “what do you want to welcome in?”. The day was punctuated by exercises like this, designed to challenge attendees’ instincts and biases, acknowledging and letting go of their fears, judgement and cynicism. The goal is to prompt a deeper reflection of individual and business purpose, around which other strategies can be built. Regenerative leadership addresses the discrepancy of businesses that try to become “sustainable” without shifting the way the individuals within them think or behave, the things the organisation values and incentivises, or the systems it upholds. Instead, it prioritises transformational change, empowering individuals to self-organise and viewing organisations as living systems, in tune with nature, explains Hutchins, who is also co-author of Regenerative Leadership: The DNA of life-affirming 21st century organisations. There is a broader renegotiation of work at play, into which regenerative leadership feeds. This ties together burn-out culture, the Great Resignation and “quiet quitting”, calls for a four-day week, and a harsher light on human resources policies and social impact since the pandemic. However, it’s not just another empty buzzword, says Carol Sanford, an author, regenerative paradigm educator, and founder of the annual Regenerative Business Summit, whose practice — used by Google, Unilever and Procter & Gamble among others — is built on Indigenous wisdom passed down through her maternal grandfather. It’s about getting back in touch with intuition, and unlearning the constraints of contemporary business. For executives and employees alike, it requires a radical rethink of how and why we work. Since working on regenerative leadership, Chloé has become a B Corp, hired sustainability-focused creative director Gabriela Hearst, and implemented its Social Performance & Leverage Tool to measure social impact. Elsewhere, UK beauty brand Lush has been educating staff on its sustainability strategy, encouraging them to attend protests, and investing in grassroots movements they care about. Experts say adopting regenerative leadership across fashion would help the industry achieve its other goals — namely reducing emissions, creating positive social impact and promoting an inclusive culture — which are out of reach without meaningful buy-in from leaders. “We’re moving away from the old world of leadership, which was about extracting value from people and the environment,” says Christin Owings, managing director and partner in the people and organisation practice at Boston Consulting Group (BCG). “Now, the aspiration of leadership is to leave the world better than they found it, which includes setting up a culture where people leave work feeling energised, not drained. Employees don’t want command and control leaders presented as superhuman figures, they want leaders who can remove barriers, coach them to the right solution, and connect them with the right people. ‘Servant’ leaders — who focus on the needs of others before considering their own — score much better in engagement, satisfaction and retention.” Vivobarefoot: Squashing hierarchies, creating new ecosystems UK footwear company Vivobarefoot has drastically restructured its team since founder and CEO Galahad Clark started working with Hutchins in 2019. The brand has flattened its hierarchies, hoping to encourage entrepreneurship and cross-functional collaboration. Employees are now organised into “home groups” (what conventional businesses refer to as teams or departments), “project groups” (cross-functional teams based on mutual interests to execute new ideas), and “yin groups” (which create space for reflection on the regenerative leadership transition, and the challenges or feelings it might bring up). The business has also appointed a team of “proprioceptors” — in reference to the sensory neurons in our bodies and feet — which can sense-check changes to the company structure and feedback to leadership. “It wasn’t a cookie-cutter approach; we developed something that felt right for us,” says Clark. With the new focus on regenerative leadership, Vivobarefoot has expanded its remit, as well as almost doubling its employee count in the last two years. “Vivobarefoot was fundamentally a barefoot shoe brand creating products that bring people closer to nature,” explains Clark. “We expanded that and transitioned to a natural health brand.” Through the project groups — which have since become fully fledged revenue streams — and home groups, employees pioneered a digital health education platform, a bespoke 3D printing arm and a resale platform. Later this year, the company will launch a bespoke made-to-order model, which Clark says is its biggest investment to date, and a direct result of the regenerative leadership process. Giving employees autonomy over their work, and encouraging them to lean into new interests and ideas, can be incredibly fruitful for regenerative companies. This emphasis on personal development isn’t new — it’s something Gen Z employees in particular increasingly prioritise when choosing new roles — but it can take time for companies to fully embrace it. “You have to give up on the idea of efficiency, but what you lose in overall efficiency, you gain in entrepreneurial zeal, resilience, and the benefits you’re able to offer society,” says Clark. “There are a lot more leaders in our team now, and more prongs to the business.” This process can also push people out, if they’re unwilling or unable to adapt to the new systems. “It doesn’t work for everyone. There are more pressure points, as well as more happiness points,” Clark continues. When someone does leave, wider restructuring is needed. “It’s much easier to hire people in simple boxes, and much harder to replace someone who was also involved in cross-functional circles beyond their core job. There’s more to untangle, so you have to be comfortable with the chaos.” Employee education Regenerative businesses rely on open-minded employees, and finding the right people requires a radical redesign of the recruitment process. Instead of companies using interviews to test whether a potential employee would suit their needs, it becomes a more collaborative, two-way process. Regenerative companies often present their essence to interviewees, and create an experiment or exercise where they ask what that means to the interviewee, how they feel about questioning themselves and their colleagues in their work. “It’s often hard to know when people go from interviewees to employees,” says Sanford. Onboarding and training new employees takes about six months. Sanford works with businesses and the individuals within them to find each stakeholder’s “essence” and celebrate those differences. Instead of people being promoted through increasingly small hierarchies, employees should be empowered to deliver results from anywhere in the organisation. “We often treat people like machines instead of developing their capacity to express who they are. If you don’t lead people to see those differences, you are not in a regenerative state.” It’s not just about onboarding, but also re-boarding existing employees, says Ruth Andrade, strategy lead for giving, regenerative impact and organisational development at Lush. That takes time and space. “You cannot do this without doing the inner work,” she says. “That can include reading, mindfulness, retreats, trauma-informed leadership and working on your mental health. It was important for Lush to start with the people who were already thinking more progressively, and bring others along after. Maybe you use one team as a case study and then apply it to the whole.” At last month’s immersion, two Lush employees were present: one from the people team, who was already in tune with the principles of regenerative business, and one from manufacturing, who started from a point of cynicism. Leaders can try to support their employees through this process, but rushing people before they’re ready brings its own challenges. “You can’t catalyse this process in people too quickly,” says Hutchins. “A regenerative culture can respect and hold space for anyone at any stage. It’s not regenerative to judge the stage someone is at.” There are external resources brands can lean on here. Grassroots movement Fashion Declares is the latest venture from author and social entrepreneur Safia Minney, who used the principles of Fair Trade and regenerative leadership to build Japanese-headquartered brand People Tree. The bottom-up, Fashion Declares global movement of over 1,000 fashion practitioners runs monthly webinars on decarbonisation, social justice and the circular economy among other topics. “Hierarchy is often the enemy of change,” says Minney. “We need system thinkers at every level, not people trying to change things in siloes.” Insurance and consulting company Axa Climate says it has recalibrated its mission to make regenerative leadership universal. Starting 25 May, its new regenerative business school, Butterfly, will take other companies through a seven-week digital course, including weekly live sessions and watching recorded interviews with over 40 practitioners, including Hutchins and Storm, among others. CEO Antoine Denoix now refers to himself as chief ecosystem officer rather than chief executive officer, a nod to regenerative leadership principles. Asking employees to bring more of themselves to work might challenge people who are more comfortable putting on a mask. It’s important for leaders to role-model this integrated approach, so that employees feel psychologically safe but developmentally challenged, continues Hutchins. “You need a healthy tension. The ideal is to be out of your comfort zone and in your learning zone.” To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com. More from this author: The EU is targeting greenwashing claims, and fashion is a top offender Inditex injects €15 million into Kering’s regenerative agriculture fund Allbirds says its net-zero carbon shoe is here

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