How much water does Indigo Dyeing really use? The industry frequently communicates about water savings, but there is no shared agreement on baseline numbers – until now. Transformers partnered with 7 leading mills to create the first ever industry reference for water consumption during indigo dyeing.

Catwalk to Carbon Neutral is a white paper detailing the challenges and innovative solutions for financing decarbonization in the fashion industry's supply chain. It highlights the structural inequity where manufacturers, often in the global South, bear the brunt of emissions reduction but lack the necessary funding due to factors like high debt and low profit margins compared to brands and retailers.

This 2023 updated report from Transformers Foundation provides the latest data, updating the initial issue from 2020, on cotton's water, pesticides, and fertilizers. It emphasizes that solving impacts requires understanding local realities, shifting sourcing models, and addressing the underlying challenge of equitable farmer partnerships.

This group of documents is intended to enable suppliers in the apparel value chain - and others who are seeking to better understand upcoming legislation - to better understand how impending sustainability-related legislation in the Global North will impact them.

On February 6, 2023, a devastating earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 struck southern and central Turkey, as well as northern and western Syria. The earthquakes resulted in widespread damage and tens of thousands of fatalities, making it the deadliest seismic event in the history of Turkey and Syria.

Fashion has a chemical certification problem. Dozens of private-sector auditors, consultancies, labs, and certifications provide an expensive and inefficient form of surveillance over the supply chain on behalf of brands. This paper calls for collaboration and alignment around a single set of rules.

The consumer-facing product labeling tool known as the Higg Material Sustainability Index (MSI) is under fire for greenwashing. The accusation leveled by the New York Times is that the fabric ranking system (created by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition) favors petroleum-based synthetics over natural fibers.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to decipher what is right and who is credible. That’s why we launched The Truth Series, where we bring in the top experts from around the world to investigate the facts and bring truth to the table.

Transformers Foundation was created at the beginning of 2020, a moment when an unprecedented global situation that exposed how deep the cracks in the supply chain go. We have a rare window of opportunity to fix the power differential that allowed brands, retailers, and importers to walk away from their contracts with suppliers without almost any consequence. More than just enforcing contracts, we hope to build ethics and care into an industry that right now seems to have very little of either.

Brands, retailers, and importers often demand strict supplier codes of conduct without following ethical standards themselves. To rebalance power, we created the Eight Ethical Principles for Jeans & Denim Purchasing — a framework for both BRIs and suppliers to adopt, share, and sign as a mutual commitment to fair business practices.

This report examines how fashion’s multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) often exclude suppliers from decision-making, limiting progress toward sustainability. Drawing on supplier perspectives, it exposes systemic inequities and power imbalances, calling for “fair process”: greater transparency, equitable participation, and bias reduction to build truly inclusive, effective collective action across the industry.

This group of documents is intended to enable suppliers in the apparel value chain - and others who are seeking to better understand upcoming legislation - to better understand how impending sustainability-related legislation in the Global North will impact them.

Towards a Collective Approach argues that fashion’s current climate agenda unfairly burdens suppliers with the cost and responsibility of decarbonization. Drawing on supplier perspectives, it exposes how top-down strategies, inequitable financing, and fragmented supply chains undermine progress, and calls for shared responsibility, contextual solutions, and equitable climate action.

To advance effective mandatory human rights due diligence at the EU level, we are allying with amfori, Ethical Trading Initiative, Fair Wear Foundation, Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Transformers Foundation, and manufacturer associations from the Sustainable Terms of Trade Initiative. Coming from a sector classified as high-risk by the OECD, our input is critical in the development of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (EU CSDD) Directive.

Legislation in the Global North is advancing to hold fashion companies accountable, but the new Apparel Supplier’s Guide to Sustainability Legislation reveals that suppliers—who will bear much of the implementation burden—have been largely excluded from shaping these laws, prompting calls for their direct involvement in future policy development.

We're back with another season of The Truth Series, where denim and sustainability experts unpack myths and uncover the truth behind manufacturing realities.

True transformation of fashion’s environmental impact won’t come from consumers buying differently, but from producers—supported by fairer financial systems and genuine collaboration—redefining how and where clothes are made, while consumers in the Global North shift from shoppers to informed allies and conversation changers.

Fashion has a serious and growing misinformation problem. Inaccurate and outdated figures are widely shared, as is data without any context. By using credible information, and learning to use information more responsibly, we can hopefully begin to move past mistrust towards actual improvements.

Transformers Catalysts is an event focused on actively addressing and facilitating change in key areas of the denim supply chain to increase sustainability, where we spotlight the members of the denim supply chain focused on redefining the rules for the future.