Fashion Pact appoints Óscar García Maceiras from Inditex as co-chair of the steering committee

The fast fashion giant has replaced another at the helm of Fashion Pact. Former consortium co-chair Helena Helmersson was ousted as CEO of H&M a few weeks ago and also stepped down from her position on Fashion Pact’s steering committee.

Helmersson’s successor at Fashion Pact was announced today: Óscar García Maceiras, CEO of Inditex, announced his appointment on his LinkedIn account.

The Fashion Pact was launched in 2019 by French President Emmanuel Macron and Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault at the G7 meeting in Biarritz, France, in response to growing concerns about the fashion industry’s environmental impact. At the time, the Fashion Pact set out broad guidelines to improve industry practices by 2050. The consortium now consists of around 60 brands, including sportswear brands such as Adidas, Nike, Puma, Rossignol and Decathlon, retailers and groups from the budget and premium clothing industry, such as the Beaumanoir group, Etam, Celio, MF Brands, Kiabi, PVH, Mango, H&M and Inditex, as well as luxury players such as Ferragamo, Armani, Ermenegildo Zegna, Chloé, Tapestry, Burberry, Prada and Kering.

The consortium, which includes many major industry players and whose mission is to share ideas and solutions on environmental issues, also includes several retail groups and clothing manufacturers. Last year, Fashion Pact’s stated goals were to “play a role in introducing and developing innovative solutions, using those solutions to take concrete action at scale, and transforming the entire supply chain to significantly reduce the industry’s environmental footprint.”

Fashion Pact focuses on common tools and shared benchmarks on issues such as fighting climate change, protecting biodiversity and protecting the oceans. Its critics find these assurances unclear, highlighting the lack of binding obligations of Fashion Pact members and the low degree of transparency of their activities.

These are some of the challenges facing García Maceiras, as well as Paul Polman, co-chairman and co-founder of Fashion Pact and former CEO of Unilever, and Eva von Alvensleben, executive director and secretary general of the consortium.

“As founding members of the Fashion Pact in 2019, we at Inditex, along with other pact members, are committed to creating a net-zero and environmentally positive fashion industry,” García Maceiras wrote in his June 10 LinkedIn post. “Now we must do more to innovate solutions and materials that help make fashion circular, reduce environmental impact and ensure positive impacts on water, biodiversity and climate,” he added.

NGOs and consumers who pay close attention to the industry’s promises will undoubtedly take his word for it.