By Beth Gormley, Communications and PR Manager, UCD College of Business

UCD College of Business Professor Donna Marshall and Visiting Assistant Professor Hakan Karaosman’s research in sustainable and ethical supply chain has earned them a place on the prestigious Vogue Business 100 Innovators list which is hand-picked by the publication’s global team of editors.

The annual list recognises people at the forefront of industry overhaul and spotlights people around the world who are fostering new ideas, pushing forward innovation, and changing the way we view the future of the fashion, beauty and luxury industries. It champions those working behind the scenes to create the projects and companies that are driving new ways of thinking and doing business.

“We hope that our work can shine a light on the unspoken issues in fashion, especially at the fashion brand level,” said Professor Marshall who is one of the most published women researchers in Europe and Director of Fashion’s Responsible Supply Chain Hub (FReSCH), a UN-recognised and EU-awarded action research project.

“We want to make fashion brands aware that they are dealing with people’s lives every day, both in their supply chains and in society. The shameful decision-making happening right now in many board rooms and procurement departments across many fashion brands, which is putting barriers in the way of decarbonisation and that exploits the most vulnerable of people, needs to be eradicated.” 

“Workers in fashion supply chains, at the bare minimum, should be able to live with dignity and respect with a living wage and not have to worry about how they will feed themselves and their families or put a roof over their heads. Abdicating responsibility and pushing problems like these onto suppliers, and ultimately their workers, needs to stop and it needs to stop now,” concluded Marshall who is also the Executive Director of the UCD Earth Institute: People, Work, Society initiative.

Professor Marshall partners closely with Assistant Professor Hakan Karaosman, an internationally experienced and award-winning scientific researcher focusing on climate action and social justice in fashion supply chain management. Hakan is the current chair of the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion (UCRF). He is also the Chief Scientist and Co-Director at FReSCH which is hosted by UCD College of Business Centre for Business and Society (CeBaS) which is a large, multi-disciplinary centre designed to understand and directly contribute to the advancement of business and to provide academic, science-based research solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems.

Other recent publications and initiatives that contributed to the award include: 

• Just Transition In Fashion: Call for just transition in fashion 
• COVID-19 and the Fashion Industry: The power of Tier-2 suppliers and behaviour of luxury fashion brands during COVID-19 
• Bio-Circular Economy: Why businesses need to embrace the bioeconomy
• Transparency in Supply Chains: Tools and technologies of transparency for sustainable global supply chains
• Sustainable Supply Chains: Governing sustainable supply chains
• Fashion Supply Chains: Does the devil wear Prada and other lessons for luxury fashion 
• Vogue Business article, Emissions from fashion supply chains 
• Vogue Business article, Nobody left behind: Why fashion should strive for a ‘just transition’ 
• Vogue Italia article, Justice in fashion supply chains
• Eco Age article, What is just transition not? A response to the latest greenwashing fad in the fashion industry
• Lampoon Magazine, Just transition in fashion
• Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion, Open Letter to the Industry on Climate Change and Just Transition, April 11th 2023 
• United Nations article, Project FReSCH and the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals)
• European Commission article on Project FReSCH, How can fashion supply chains cope with future crises and disruptions? 
• Horizon The EU Research & Innovation Magazine, Sustainable fashion aims to make green the new black
• European Commission Article on Project FReSCH, Tracing the way for an environmentally and socially fair fashion supply chain

“We really don’t have any option but for businesses to decarbonise and stop exploiting workers in their supply chains. We have the solutions to the climate emergency and we know how to stop exploiting people.  Now we need governments and those with influence to have the bravery to take a stand on the actions we need to decarbonise and to ensure respect and dignity for everyone,” concluded Professor Marshall.

Read the full Vogue Business 100 Innovators list here.