Eileen Fisher, Reformation, and Everlane have joined forces with Apparel Impact Institute to co-invest in textile-mill decarbonization, aligning with broader movements from COP30 to Uniqlo’s intensified climate goals.
Eileen Fisher, Reformation, and Everlane are joining forces on a coordinated push to cut carbon emissions deep in the textile supply chain. Guided by Apparel Impact Institute (Aii), the trio is jointly investing in decarbonization projects at shared mills and dye houses, tackling the processes that generate most of fashion’s emissions long before a garment reaches a cutting table.
The collaboration began in 2024 when Aii identified several suppliers used by all three brands and proposed a collective approach. Instead of asking factories individually to complete separate sustainability upgrades — a burden suppliers say has become unmanageable — the brands agreed to co-sponsor six emissions-reduction programs that address early operational fixes such as automated shut-offs and improved insulation.
According to Aii, Tier 2 — the material-processing stage that includes dyeing, finishing, and chemical treatments — accounts for 55 percent of a retailer’s total greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet it’s also the part of the supply chain where brands typically have the least leverage. Dye houses and fabric processors often serve dozens of customers, each with its own requests. The result, suppliers say, is “initiative fatigue.”
Susan Scow, sustainability impact specialist at Eileen Fisher, summed up the unusual nature of this alliance with humor. “Everleenformation? Reformationfisher?” she joked, according to Sourcing Journal.
A new model for supply-chain climate action
One of the first mills to undergo these shared upgrades is Foshan Chicley Textile Co., a dyeing and finishing facility in southern China that works heavily with cotton, linen, and man-made cellulosics. With technical support from Aii and partners including Reset Carbon and BluWin, the three brands are co-funding deeper, capital-intensive interventions that individual brands often struggle to finance on their own.
For General Manager Victor Li, whose team at Foshan Chicley fields sustainability requests from many global brands, the coordinated approach is a relief. “If everyone’s asking for their own decarbonization project, I’ll work myself to death,” he said. A unified roadmap is easier to follow and avoids contradictory demands.
Katina Boutis, Everlane’s senior director of sustainability, said the shared structure is what makes the project possible. “I think that this is a really novel approach,” she said, applauding the companies for taking this next step of “coming together to co-invest in the real piece that’s very capital intensive,” she said. “This is the way that we can actually have really meaningful, tangible, long-term changes.” She added that itt takes a lot to get funding mechanisms at a supplier level “to be able to transform or make this type of capital improvement.”
Carrie Freiman Parry, senior director of sustainability at Reformation, said the combined influence has transformed how suppliers respond. “Before, we were only using the leverage and relationships that Reformation had as an individual brand,” she said. “Now, we’re able to credibly say, ‘Hey, it’s not only Reformation that is asking for this,’ and make a real case for why it’s needed at an industry level.”
A wider movement
This collaboration is landing at a moment when the fashion world is facing mounting pressure to show measurable climate progress. At COP30, climate researchers and labor advocates pushed brands to move beyond incremental targets and invest directly in supply-chain decarbonization, adaptation, and worker protections — arguing that partial measures can no longer keep pace with rising climate risk.
Other global players have recently signaled similar urgency. Fast Retailing — parent company of Uniqlo — raised its supply-chain emissions-reduction target from 20 percent to 30 percent by 2030, expanding efforts to cut energy use and scale renewable power across its manufacturing partners. The company said the shift reflects a need to accelerate reductions in the parts of the supply chain where emissions are highest.
The Eileen Fisher-Reformation-Everlane partnership fits squarely into this broader movement: a shift away from brand-by-brand sustainability efforts toward multi-brand initiatives that address shared suppliers, shared risks, and shared emissions hotspots.
Aii’s senior manager of strategic management, Andrés Bragagnini, said the efficiency gains are clear. When brands aligned on budgets and outreach, he explained, “everything is handed over to our programs team to enroll engineers, measure capacity, and start the program calendar.”
As Parry noted, the long-term success of this work will require even more brands to join. “We’d love to invite more brands to participate; at some point, we’ll exhaust our list of shared suppliers,” she said. “We’ll need more brands to join the collaboration so that we can continue these streamlined decarbonization projects across different supply chains.”
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