Aura Blockchain Consortium is joining the Sustainable Markets Initiative Fashion Task Force in a private-sector coalition aimed at accelerating the transition towards a more sustainable future in the global fashion, textile and apparel sector. The SMI was launched by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales in 2020, and its Fashion Task Force is chaired by Federico Marchetti, tech entrepreneur and sustainability pioneer. In order to achieve their sustainability goals and enhance traceability, Aura Blockchain Consortium will use its technology to help the members of the Sustainable Markets Initiative Fashion Task Force.

One obstacle to circularity is that once a product is sold, there’s no way to oversee what happens to it. That can make resale a challenge, and it can also impede repair and recycling because the companies that specialise in those services depend on having, or operate more efficiently if they have, reliable information about what the items coming through their systems are made of. For high-end goods that are often resold, like handbags and watches, storing their information on the blockchain provides a record of its production and purchase history, proponents say, making the supply chain more traceable and helping end-of-life initiatives become a reality.

The task force was launched in 2021 under the Sustainable Markets Initiative, a private-sector coalition launched by Prince Charles in 2020 to promote circularity and regenerative agriculture. Members include Brunello Cucinelli, Burberry, Chloé, Gabriela Hearst, Giorgio Armani, Moda Operandi, Mulberry, Vestiaire Collective and Zalando.

A major milestone was the Digital ID launched last October that tags products and records details about their manufacturing and sustainability credentials, allowing brands to share information with customers about a luxury item’s supply chain, an offering that meets consumer interest in sustainability and regulators’ interest in greenwashing and supply chain due diligence. It can also be used to preserve the identity of a product beyond the initial point of sale, needed for circular services from resale to recycling.

The collaboration with Aura, which was founded in April 2021 by LVMH, Prada Group and Cartier, will take those services to the next level by providing additional convenience and security, and enabling those details to be transferable with the products they’re associated with, says Daniela Ott, general secretary of Aura Blockchain Consortium. Brands can have suppliers write details from different stages of production — where leather originated from when it arrives at a tannery before being turned into a handbag, for example — into the blockchain, in a simple, easy-to-understand manner. The blockchain stores those details in an “immutable” way, Ott explains, and brands can then share it with customers in whatever format they choose — an RFID chip or QR code, perhaps. “I can see, ‘This handbag was produced six months ago; this is where the leather came from, it was produced in Italy — and I can get access to all that information’. And you cannot falsify this information,” she explains.

The technology will play a key role, says Ott, in shifting fashion’s business model away from an overreliance on new product sales for profitability, a shift she says is already starting to emerge. In the next two to eight years, she says, some brands will be generating up to 70 per cent of their revenues from “new product with a digital twin”, 20 per cent from circular revenue sources such as resale or rental, and 10 per cent from virtual sources.

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