Sustainability professionals are boldly ambitious about the possibility of institutional and structural change.

They believe policy can change, even as landmark legislation gets watered down and brands lobby against the very regulations designed to hold them accountable.

They believe circular infrastructure can be built, even inside a fragmented system where the supply and demand for recycled materials remains deadlocked.

They believe brands can move away from overproduction, even when their business models are tied to volume, novelty, and growth.

They believe supply chains can be decarbonized, even when suppliers lack access to financing, manufacturers bear the cost of a transition they didn't create, and progress toward emissions targets are stubbornly slow.

And yet, the underlying assumption is that change is possible.

But the moment consumer behavior comes up, that optimism disappears. Suddenly, behavior is too difficult to change, too unpredictable to influence, and outside the industry's control.

The irony is that the industry treats consumer behavior as the hardest variable to change, while regularly taking on challenges that are arguably far more structurally complex and deeply entrenched.

Consumer behavior is constantly changing. Sustainability just hasn’t figured out how to shape it.

Fast fashion changed behavior.
Social media changed behavior.
E-commerce changed behavior.
Influencers changed behavior.
Amazon and Shein changed behavior.
TikTok Shop changed behavior.
Resale changed behavior.

The issue isn't that consumer behavior can't change; it's that sustainability often approaches behavior change as though it's some mysterious, uncontrollable force rather than something shaped by incentives, friction, convenience, social norms, identity, perceived value, and design.

It seems to be easier for the industry to focus on building the systems than to confront the adoption problem those systems still depend on. Because as we’ve seen over the past decade, and especially recently...🫣without consumer participation, even the best-designed infrastructure struggles to create impact.

I saw this contradiction play out in real time last week at the Pacific Northwest Textile Circularity Symposium, hosted by the Washington Department of Ecology.

The room was full of people working on circularity from every angle: policy, recycling, infrastructure, finance, sorting, brand strategy, and everything in between.

As you’d expect, consumer behavior came up a lot throughout the day because, at some point, every circular system runs straight into human behavior.

But the most interesting moment for me came during a conversation about the emotional weight of working in sustainability.

One participant described herself as deeply optimistic, the kind of person who believes change is possible even when the systems you’re trying to change feel massive, slow, fragmented, and resistant. She half-jokingly offered herself up as the cheerleader we could call whenever we needed a pep talk.

But when the conversation turned to consumer behavior. She looked at me, knowing this is the area I spend my time thinking about, and said she loves MY optimism about behavior change…because she just doesn't see it happening.

Here’s someone who genuinely believes the industry can redesign supply chains, influence policy, build circular infrastructure, and navigate the enormous complexity of systems change. But consumer behavior? THAT’S a bridge too far?

I get why.

Unlike fast fashion, Amazon, social media, or buy now, pay later, sustainability is trying to change behavior in the opposite direction. Those systems didn’t reshape consumer behavior by asking people to do harder things. They made consumption easier, faster, cheaper, more emotionally rewarding, and more socially reinforced. They worked with human psychology, not against it.

Sustainability, on the other hand, has often asked for the opposite: more restraint, more patience, more friction, higher prices, more effort, less novelty, and delayed gratification. That’s a fundamentally harder behavioral ask.

But I don’t think this proves consumer behavior can’t change. I think it proves that sustainability has often approached behavior change with the wrong playbook.

Behavior rarely changes through guilt, more information, or moral obligation. It changes when the desired behavior feels rewarding, identity-affirming, socially relevant, convenient, and emotionally satisfying.

Resale is a great example of this.

It wasn’t that long ago that buying secondhand carried social stigma. For many people, it was a matter of economic necessity, and it definitely wasn’t mainstream fashion behavior.

Today, resale is a booming market, projected to outpace broader apparel growth, fueled not because of sustainability, but because secondhand got a rebrand.

Today, resale isn’t associated with lack. It’s associated with taste, individuality, savvy, access, and increasingly, status.

We can debate all day about the potential for overconsumption in secondhand (and we will at SFF26), but resale is blowing up because it has made a more sustainable behavior feel desirable. Which suggests the problem isn’t that consumer behavior can’t change. It’s that sustainability has often struggled to make the desired behavior competitive with the alternatives.

The reality is, we didn’t accidentally create a culture of overconsumption and overproduction. We designed it. Which means the real question isn’t whether consumer behavior can change. It’s whether sustainability is willing to design for the behavior it wants, instead of simply asking people to care more or assuming that because we build it, they will come.

In order to break the rules, you have to understand the rules. It’s about damn time we started learning.

P.S. I obviously have thoughts on the whole Shein x Everlane news. I’ve been watching Everlane for a while, and let’s just say, I have notes.

I may be quoted in an article, so depending on when or if that comes out, I’ll hold off on sharing more for now. But I WILL be back.

When Alix Earle launched her skincare line, Reale Actives, everyone was talking, not just about the products, but about the launch itself.

ICYMI, before the brand was officially announced, Earle seeded unlabeled products in her content, launched cryptic social accounts, sent puzzle pieces to creators, and let her audience piece together what was coming.

After the company hit $1 million in sales in under five minutes, $5 million by late afternoon, and sold out at around 4 p.m. on its launch day, many called it a “masterclass” in how collective speculation and audience engagement can drive demand.

But Reale Actives isn’t the only example of curiosity as a business strategy.

Merit Beauty (yes, we’re talking about Merit again) did something similar when they launched their tinted mineral sunscreen, The Uniform.

Before revealing the product, Merit launched a campaign celebrating iconic figures who owned their signature look. The early messaging focused entirely on routine and ritual, leaning into the metaphor without ever mentioning what “uniform” they were talking about.

They did such a good job creating mystery that people were convinced they were launching a clothing line.

By the time the product finally dropped, it already had context, identity, and status attached to it. It launched with a pre-loaded philosophy that differentiated it from every other tinted sunscreen on the market and a built-in audience that was already waiting to buy.

After the product dropped, Merit doubled down on the concept. They opened a "Uniform Dry Cleaners" pop-up in New York and partnered with Brooks Brothers on a limited-edition button-down shirt embroidered with "Do Less" on the cuff.

In both cases, the product didn’t create demand on its own. Anticipation and mystery were the demand-building tactics to build perceived value and emotional investment before the product was even available.

Why Curiosity Converts

Psychologically, this works for a few reasons.

Curiosity gaps keep people engaged by leaving them wanting resolution. When audiences invest effort, like decoding clues, they begin to value the outcome more.

Social proof, whether through public speculation, waitlist numbers, or early sellouts, signals demand and scarcity, which together amplify desirability.

Limited access to information or early entry creates a sense of exclusivity, making participation feel special. And being part of the journey fosters emotional connection, making the eventual product feel more personally meaningful. It’s a kind of psychological ownership, a form of the IKEA Effect: we value what we help build.

These are basic demand-building tactics that are used daily across fashion and beauty. Just not, apparently, for sustainability.

More often than not, sustainable products and collections are launched with no fanfare and no excitement. They’re just announced and left to perform…or not.

20,000 Jeans and a Missed Opportunity

Last month, Madewell announced that it had turned 20,000 jeans from its take-back stream into a three-style circular denim capsule, partnering with textile recycler Re&Up and fabric manufacturer Isko.

It could've been a moment, but instead it was a product page update, a press release, a few social media posts, and a missed opportunity.

While Merit and Reale Actives sold an identity, a mystery, and an invitation for their customers to lean in, Madewell sold a supply chain achievement. They made their customers passive recipients of technical information rather than active participants in a discovery. There was no emotional equity built into the collection, making it feel like a corporate milestone, not a community win.

It assumed that the sustainability credentials would carry the product, rather than designing the conditions that make people want to be part of the brand's world in the first place.

For sustainability, this kind of launch is a quiet killer.

Inside fashion brands, sustainability is fighting an uphill battle. It’s seen as a cost center with more expensive materials, harder sourcing, and slower timelines.

If and when a sustainable launch/initiative underperforms, even because it was marketed poorly, that poor performance becomes evidence of the attitude-behavior gap. “Proof” that customers don't actually care, and data leadership uses to justify pulling back.

What’s absolutely fascinating is that brands know how to market and create perceived value around conventional products. But when sustainability enters the chat, many abandon those same consumer instincts and default to messaging that feels technical, moralistic or removed from why people buy fashion in the first place.

Listen, I get the hesitation.

Sustainability teams are already fighting for internal credibility, and a hyped, mysterious campaign is a hard sell to legal and comms teams bracing for greenwashing accusations. Safe, factual messaging feels like the responsible play. But responsible and effective aren't the same thing, and the gap between them is where low engagement and mediocre sell-through live.

How Boring Launches Prove Themselves Right

It’s a self-fulfilling cycle.

Launches are marketed cautiously with limited budget and low creative risk. The messaging is safe, flat, and factual (read: boring). Then, when engagement is low or sell-through is underwhelming, that performance is used as proof that consumers don’t really care. So next time, there’s less budget, less risk, less creativity.

Breaking the cycle could solve problems for two teams at once. For sustainability teams, this is where the business case gets interesting.

A curiosity and anticipation-led launch strategy could align marketing’s engagement KPIs with sustainability’s commercial goals. Marketing gets curiosity, conversation, clicks, and momentum. Sustainability gets something it too rarely secures on its own: a clearer path to sell-through, stronger brand loyalty, and even customer acquisition.

By tapping into anticipation, specifically curiosity, social proof, exclusivity, and emotional investment, a sustainable product becomes desirable before it even launches. And when the messaging is specific and concrete rather than abstract, those feelings translate even more directly into purchase intent.

Design demand before the launch, and sustainability stops being a cost center and starts driving revenue.

A quiet launch isn’t safe. It’s a silent killer.

Until sustainability stops treating technical progress like the selling point and starts translating it into consumer desire, teams will keep mistaking weak launches for weak demand. And the work will keep getting judged by the very conditions that were never designed to help it succeed.

On paper, this sounds straightforward. In practice, this is exactly where most teams get stuck because they haven’t figured out how to operationalize consumer psychology inside organizational constraints.

That’s the problem SFF26 is designed to work through. Not the idea that sustainability needs better storytelling, but the harder question of how brands actually design for adoption when legal, marketing, sustainability, product, leadership, and consumers all have different incentives.

Knowing it works is the easy part. Building the internal case, language, and strategy to actually do it is where the real work begins.

→ Join us in Portland, October 28–30
If you’re working on this inside a brand right now, get in touch.

Whenever I hear H&M talk about sustainability, I can’t help but think about that Mean Girls scene: “I’m not a regular mom, I’m a cool mom.”

That’s the energy H&M gives off.

They want you to know they’re not just another fast fashion brand. They’re a “sustainable” fast fashion brand.

H&M dropped its annual sustainability report, and one of the media’s talking points was that, while other fashion companies have deprioritized sustainability internally and scaled back their messaging and reporting, H&M has stayed the course.

In an interview with BoF, when asked why they continue to keep sustainability front and center, CEO Daniel Ervér emphasized that it’s part of a long-term strategy, saying, ‘We have long-term beliefs, and those don’t change, regardless of what’s happening in the world around us.’”

The numbers are real. So is the skepticism.

H&M is trying hard to prove that sustainability genuinely matters to them.

They want you to see the real money they’ve invested, the real work they’ve done, and the real commitment they've made by integrating sustainability into their business. They want you to see everything that sets them apart from other fast-fashion brands. And to be fair, you’ve gotta give credit where credit is due.

H&M has absolutely made meaningful progress behind the scenes, especially on emissions, materials, and supply chain operations.

They’ve cut Scope 3 emissions 34.6% from 2019 levels, putting them more than halfway to their 2030 target of 44%. 91% of their materials are now recycled or sustainably sourced. They also reduced freshwater use by nearly 23% in 2025 compared with a 2022 baseline, surpassing their target of a 10% reduction for that period and staying on track for a 30% reduction by 2030. They’ve significantly reduced the number of supplier factories using onsite coal, with a full phase-out targeted by 2026. And in 2025 alone, they invested nearly $300 million into decarbonization and material innovation.

And it's not just H&M's own reporting.

Fashion Revolution’s 2025 What Fuels Fashion? report, which looks at climate and energy-related transparency across major fashion brands, ranked H&M first out of 200 companies, up from third place the year before. Stand.Earth’s Fossil Free Fashion Scorecard, which grades brands on how they’re phasing out fossil fuels across their supply chains, shipping, and materials, placed H&M at the top of 42 global fashion companies for the second year in a row, with a B+ overall and the only A+ in climate commitments and transparency.

And yet, no matter how much work they do, no matter how many independent assessments back it up, they’re still accused of greenwashing and lumped in with the worst offenders. None of it has done much to shift how H&M is perceived.

The problem isn't what they're saying. It's who's saying it.

According to the interview, H&M’s leadership seems to think the disconnect is a communication problem.

From their perspective, the average customer doesn’t care about abstract metrics like Scope 3 emissions or million-dollar investments, which is why all the work happening behind the scenes isn’t landing with their customer.

Their answer is to make sustainability feel more tangible and relevant, to translate it into terms customers already understand and value, like better materials, durability, quality, convenience, and even financial benefit.

And to some extent, they’re right.

There are decades of research showing that more information doesn’t just fail to change behavior. It can actually reinforce existing beliefs.

But this is where H&M is getting it wrong.

The company seems to think the gap is mainly a messaging problem, that if it makes sustainability feel more tangible, relevant, and consumer-friendly, the perception gap will close.

But once a brand gets mentally filed under "fast fashion," that label sticks. New information doesn't change the file.

That’s the power of cognitive heuristics. People rely on mental shortcuts to make sense of things, and “fast fashion” already comes loaded with associations around overproduction, disposability, low value, and social/environmental harm.

So even when H&M shares real progress, many people don’t read it as proof of change. They read it through the assumption that it’s still a fast fashion company just trying to improve its image.

Confirmation bias only reinforces this. People are more likely to absorb information that validates their existing beliefs and discount information that complicates them. If H&M is already perceived as part of the problem, people won’t read sustainability claims as real improvements.

H&M’s leadership is right that customers care more about tangible value than abstract sustainability claims. But that alone won’t solve their problem.

Case in point: most people probably don't know that H&M sells mending and repair kits, wash bags, and hemming tape. Or that most online products come with a detailed care guide as well as a material composition breakdown, and supplier information.

H&M already offers tangible sustainability, but it’s not changing their public perception because the gap isn’t just about knowledge and understanding. It’s about trust.

Blaming the consumer, they built.

I’ve written about H&M’s sustainability reports before. And every time one drops, people say the same thing: greenwashing, not enough, still part of the problem.

It's a pattern I've watched play out consistently, and this interview explains exactly why it keeps happening.

It's not that the work isn't meaningful. It's that H&M never talks about it from a place of accountability. It comes across as holier-than-thou. Guess what we did. Look at our emissions numbers. Look at our Insights Board. Look how different we are from those other fast fashion brands.

H&M built an empire on volume, speed, and disposability, and now, in this same interview, Ervér keeps returning to consumer behavior as the barrier, the thing that needs to change.

He’s not wrong that the attitude-behavior gap is real. But there’s something incredibly annoying and utterly diabolical about a company that spent decades conditioning people to expect constant newness and ultra-low prices now talking about changing consumer behavior without acknowledging that they helped create it. And are still creating it.

Across two decades of public statements, five CEOs, and multiple sustainability officers, H&M has never (that I can find) explicitly admitted that its own business model caused or contributed to fashion’s environmental and social harms.

What it’s done instead is develop a remarkably consistent vocabulary of soft concession, acknowledging that problems exist while distributing responsibility to “the industry,” “the system,” or “all of us.”

Consumers are expected to change their habits. But when H&M is asked directly about production levels, its answer isn’t to produce less. It’s to produce… differently.

The ask isn't silence. It's honesty.

In the ten years I’ve worked in the sustainable fashion space, I’ve learned that few things spark debate (read: piss people off) like fast fashion and greenwashing.

But since at least 2022, I’ve been asking, “What role should fast fashion brands have in the sustainability conversation?”

Because every time we accuse H&M of greenwashing, the unspoken alternative is that they just… stop.

Stop publishing reports.
Stop investing.
And eventually decide the work isn’t worth the headache, especially when consumers aren’t consistently shopping their values anyway.

And honestly, I get why a brand in H&M’s position might want to.

H&M has been called out, investigated, and sued multiple times (all cases were dismissed) over its sustainability claims.

From its “Conscious Choice” collection to its use of Higg MSI data, the brand has been under constant scrutiny across the U.S. and Europe, with regulators, watchdogs, and media outlets all questioning how it communicates impact.

At a certain point, talking about sustainability publicly stops feeling like an opportunity and starts feeling like a liability, where every claim invites backlash. So it’s not exactly surprising to see that H&M has pulled back from making sustainability a visible part of its consumer-facing marketing on Instagram and TikTok.

The problem is that those social channels are exactly where perceived value gets built. It’s where desire is formed. It’s where H&M should be reaching the mainstream consumer with a different story about what fast fashion can look like.

But instead, likely because of the backlash, H&M uses those platforms to push trends, culture, product, and newness.

This isn’t what I want. And I don’t think it’s what the industry should want either.

H&M has the scale, capital, and supply chain leverage to move operational sustainability forward in ways smaller brands can’t. Beyond that, it also reaches a massive global customer base that most niche sustainable brands and retailers never will.

If H&M can be an on-ramp, if it can make better materials, circular systems, and lower-impact options more visible, more accessible, and desirable to a mainstream customer, then I absolutely want it to keep doing the work.

But what I don’t want is for H&M to keep framing itself as separate from the fast fashion system it helped build and still operates within.

Own what you are.

The question of how brands should talk about sustainability comes up constantly, especially when their business model isn’t inherently “sustainable.”

My answer is always the same. Lead with honesty.

Once people file a brand under “fast fashion” or “mass-market,” more information doesn’t change that perception. You can publish more reports, share more data, and highlight more initiatives, but it rarely moves anything.

We see this with H&M.

But when a brand says something people don’t expect, especially something that works against its own interest, it triggers a credibility heuristic that makes people stop and reconsider.

“We’re trying really hard on sustainability” is exactly what you’d expect H&M to say, so it carries almost no weight. “We’re a fast fashion brand, and our model has real limits” is the opposite. It undercuts the brand, which is exactly why it feels believable.

Domino’s Pizza is a great example of this.

In 2010, Domino’s had a real brand problem. Sales were slipping, the stock was stagnant, and their own focus groups were calling the crust cardboard and the sauce ketchup.

Instead of hiding from that, they leaned into it.

They shared real customer feedback in national ads, put their CEO and leadership team on camera, and essentially said: our pizza was bad, you were right, and we're fixing it.

As a result, same-store sales grew more than 10% after the campaign, and the brand went from a punchline to an example of what honesty can do for a brand.

The turnaround worked because the admission came first. Nobody would have believed the pizza was better if Domino’s hadn’t first admitted the old version was bad. The cost of that admission is what made the follow-up credible.

H&M’s communication issue isn’t translating scope 3 emissions. It’s that it keeps trying to use the work to distance itself from what it is, while still benefiting from everything that defines it.

H&M wants to be seen as a leader in sustainability. But leadership here doesn’t look like perfection. It looks like the self-awareness to say: we’re a fast fashion brand. We’ve contributed to the problem. We’re trying to reduce harm within a model that still has real limits, and that tension doesn’t disappear just because we’ve made progress.

Until H&M starts communicating from that place, honesty as the strategy instead of the risk, their sustainability message won’t read like progress: it’ll keep reading like greenwashing.

Own the contradiction. And do the work.

Nerd out with me. Can a fast fashion brand ever be taken seriously on sustainability, or is the contradiction too big to overcome? If H&M owned that contradiction instead of trying to work around it, would it actually change how you see the brand? Join the conversation and drop your thoughts in the comments below.

Leave a comment

Welcome to Green Behavior, a newsletter and podcast exploring the intersection of psychology, culture, business, and sustainable fashion. Not on the list? Sign up here.

Subscribe now

Shein dropped its annual circularity report and honestly, it was a painful read.

Officially, the report was meant to understand how customers think about circularity, but in reality, it reads more like a strategic attempt to push back on the idea that Shein’s business model is inherently fueling reckless overconsumption.

Most of the findings are presented as though they reveal something profound about consumer behavior, but many of them feel incredibly obvious, especially when you consider that they’re drawn from a self-selected group of Shein shoppers.

If you survey consumers of one of the cheapest fashion platforms globally, it's not exactly groundbreaking to learn that they prioritize price. Shein has a notoriously questionable reputation, so it's not surprising their customers aren't swayed by brand reputation. And I'm quite certain most people aren't buying an $8 top with resale value in mind, so I'm not surprised to learn Shein shoppers don't center their purchases around secondhand.

I had a similar reaction to the report’s claim that Shein customers aren’t trend-driven, which is a hard one to say with a straight face.

On a platform like Shein, trends are literally baked into the experience. The products are trend-led, the algorithm pushes what’s current, and the entire business model is built around rapid trend replication. By the time someone is adding something to their cart, they may not consciously think they’re shopping based on trends, but they are, because the platform filtered the choices for them.

This is why I tend to take survey data with a grain of salt.

There’s almost always a mix of social desirability bias and self-reporting bias in survey data where people’s answers tend to reflect how they think they behave, or how they want to be perceived, rather than how they actually act in real life.

There’s also sampling bias where surveys are shaped by the specific community being surveyed, which means the results can easily be skewed by who’s in the sample.

It’s similar to Vestiaire Collective identifying “got nothing to wear” as a widespread emotional problem, then finding that their active buyers experience it less frequently than non-buyers, as if engagement with the platform is the cure. Of course your active community is going to report a better relationship with their closet. They’re already part of the ecosystem and are much more likely to describe their habits in ways that reinforce the platform’s logic.

But where Shein’s report does land on something useful is in who it represents and how this customer group tends to interpret sustainability.

When U.S. customers were asked what comes to mind when they think about sustainable or circular clothing, 54% said durability and long-lasting quality. By comparison, 34.2% pointed to environmentally friendly materials, and 28.1% mentioned ethical labor practices.

For this customer, sustainability seems to be understood first through durability. In other words, if something lasts longer, it’s more likely to register as sustainable or circular. Other ideas commonly associated with sustainability, like materials or labor practices, appear to play a smaller role in how it’s defined.

So rather than pointing to a broad or consistent understanding of sustainability, the responses suggest that durability is doing most of the heavy lifting.

But even then, that association doesn’t necessarily carry through to behavior.

When asked what they actually consider when shopping, only 23.4% said they always consider social responsibility and labor rights, 18.6% always consider sustainable materials, and just 13.7% always consider secondhand.

So it’s not that this mass-market consumer segment doesn’t know what sustainability means on a high level, it’s just not a part of their purchasing process, which is especially important to consider as the industry builds the systems that these consumers are expected to engage with.

Case in point: digital product passports.

Digital product passports, or DPPs, are basically digital ID cards for products. When a shopper scans a QR code on a garment, for example, their smartphone opens a web page that can include details like material composition, where it was made, its environmental footprint, how to care for and repair it, and how to recycle or resell it.

The fashion industry has latched onto DPPs as a tool for regulatory compliance, supply chain visibility, and end-of-life management. In Europe especially, they're being positioned as foundational infrastructure for circularity under the EU's sustainable products framework.

But based on the report, only about 15.6% of Shein respondents said they would actually use them, preferring tangible options like resale, takeback programs, and repair services they can easily participate in. All information-based initiatives performed poorly, once again debunking the myth that more information will move the needle on sustainability for the mainstream consumer.

So while the industry debates what should and shouldn’t go into DPPs, this report highlights a more fundamental problem: the system only works if people actually engage with it. And right now, the evidence suggests most won’t, at least not among the 15,000+ people in Shein’s ecosystem surveyed here.

If DPPs remain designed for the most conscious consumers while the majority ignores them, the infrastructure doesn't scale. It just becomes another compliance exercise.

Ahead of the report’s release, someone from Shein’s ESG and policy team reached out to share a preview, emphasizing that they agreed with my focus on consumer behavior and that circularity needs to be designed around real life, not abstract ambition.

I agree with that wholeheartedly.

If circularity is going to scale, it has to work in everyday life. That means building around real life: how people shop, what they prioritize, and what they’ll realistically engage with, not what the industry hopes they’ll do.

But the report is also doing something more diabolical than “just” sharing consumer insights.

Instead of keeping the focus on overproduction, volume, and ultra-low prices (the biggest criticisms of Shein’s model), the report shifts the conversation toward consumers and how they shop. So the story becomes less about whether Shein is driving overconsumption and more about whether people are simply asking for this kind of system. It’s a pretty convenient reframing because it makes Shein look like it’s responding to demand rather than helping shape it.

The report makes a valid case that circularity needs to fit into everyday life. But by treating consumer behavior as something to design around rather than something shaped by the system itself, it stops short of interrogating how that behavior is produced in the first place.

Around the same time, Shein released a separate survey on festival shopping, showing that nearly 58% of attendees plan multiple outfits per day and that most are looking to pay $25 or less per item.

Isn’t it a little ironic that in its circularity report, Shein tries to position its customers as practical, moderate shoppers who aren’t especially driven by trends, while its festival survey highlights a shopping culture built around multiple looks per day, social media inspiration, and event-specific dressing?

And it’s not like Shein is just observing that behavior from the sidelines. It’s actively enabling and capitalizing on it.

The company also launched a festival pop-up inviting shoppers to shop “festival ready looks” and refresh their wardrobes, turning the exact kind of trend-driven, event-specific shopping its circularity report downplays into a branded retail experience.

Behavior isn’t neutral. It’s shaped by the system. And when you build a model around speed, volume, constant newness, and trend-driven moments like festival season, you also shape the expectations and habits that come with it.

Merit Beauty is widely regarded as one of the best-marketed indie brands in the beauty space right now.

From their casting choices to their campaign concepts, Merit is one of those rare brands that built an organic cult following of beauty and marketing lovers.

But when Merit launched its fifth-anniversary sweatshirt in collaboration with Donni, the comments were… what they always are.

The sweatshirt checked just about every sustainable fashion box. It was hand-dyed in Merit’s signature blue, made from 100% organic cotton, produced in a small batch of 800, manufactured in Los Angeles, and embroidered with the brand’s tagline, “All Things With Intention.”

It also cost $184.

“In this economy? Absolutely not!”
“So tone deaf.”
“I love you, but 184 dollars?!?”

Between the heart-eye and fire emojis was comment after comment from customers who couldn’t believe the brand would charge that much for a…sweatshirt.

Of course, those weren’t the only comments.

Plenty of people loved the collaboration, and clearly plenty of people bought it, because despite the criticism, nearly every U.S. size sold out, which pretty much sums up the current state of consumer behavior.

The State of the Consumer

Feeling broke and spending anyway was the mood all of 2025, and it’s carried into 2026.

In March, expectations for personal finances fell 10%, as people felt increasingly squeezed by everyday costs like groceries, gas, and rent. And yet, the National Retail Federation is predicting retail sales will grow 4.4% to roughly $5.6 trillion this year. (For context, this is higher than the yearly average.)

People are out here going to Chick-fil-A on their first date to save money, so who exactly is pushing retail to “stronger-than-usual highs”?

The short answer: not everyone.

Higher-income households are driving the growth, while lower-income households are pulling back and leaning more heavily on credit and Buy Now, Pay Later for essentials, and soon their rent.

This is the K-shaped economy: the top arm keeps moving up, buoyed by stock market gains and asset wealth, while the bottom arm keeps falling. It explains why people can feel terrible about the economy, and comment sections can be flooded with affordability conversations while national spending numbers still look strong.

But what’s starting to emerge in 2026 is what Macy’s CEO Tony Spring and other economists are now referring to as an E-shaped economy.

The E-economy is essentially the next iteration of the K-shape, but instead of two groups moving in opposite directions, there are now three distinct consumer segments behaving in very different ways.

The biggest shift is in the middle class.

In the K-economy, middle-income consumers were largely tracking alongside higher earners. Now, they’re breaking off into their own lane.

The middle class isn't under the same financial pressure as lower-income households, but they're not spending with the same ease as the top tier and are becoming increasingly particular about what they're willing to spend on and how much.

You can see that tension play out in Merit’s comments.

High-income consumers likely bought the sweatshirt with little hesitation. Lower-income consumers were likely never the target customer to begin with. But the middle-income consumer was critiquing the price point in the comment section.

What makes this criticism interesting is that Merit isn’t a budget brand.

Their concealer is $38, their serum is $42, and they just announced they're raising prices. These aren't the most expensive products in beauty, but they aren't drugstore either (although these days, drugstore prices are getting damn near close). And yet their customers buy them anyway, sometimes stretching in order to do it, because the brand and the product has enough perceived value to justify the cost.

But when that same brand asks them to spend $184 on a sweatshirt, the calculation breaks down. Not necessarily because $184 is truly impossible for everyone, but because the sweatshirt doesn’t have enough perceived value to justify the stretch.

This is mental accounting: the idea that people don’t treat all money the same way.

We mentally sort our spending into different categories or “buckets,” and we have different feelings about spending within each one. We set informal budgets and limits, often unconsciously, and we evaluate purchases based on which bucket they’re coming from, not just the price tag.

For Merit’s customer in the middle of the E-shaped economy, beauty is a bucket they’ve decided is worth investing in. But clothing might not carry the same permission. So when Merit asks them to spend $184 on a sweatshirt, no matter how much they love the brand, it’s not just a price objection. It’s a bucket mismatch.

But it’s not just the Merit customer.

Fashion Is Losing Its Monopoly on Status

According to Highsnobiety’s new Status Economy report, clothing as a category is losing its cultural ground.

After surveying more than 1,700 consumers, Highsnobiety put language to something that has been building for years: fashion is no longer the default category for cultural status.

For the past decade, fashion has been one of the clearest and most socially legible ways to signal identity, taste, and wealth. Now it’s one signal among many. Your bathroom shelf, your grocery cart, your gym membership, and your dinner reservation can carry just as much cultural weight as what you’re wearing, and in some cases, even more.

Social media accelerated that shift by expanding what people can see and assign meaning to, which means identity isn’t just communicated through your outfit. It’s constructed across a collection of signals that together create a more complete picture.

When asked what signals being culturally “in the know,” getting a reservation at the most sought-after restaurant, and wearing an obscure fragrance no one can name ranked higher than owning the latest product from an “it” brand. And 86% said being friends with the chef at the best restaurant in town is a bigger flex than wearing something from a luxury house.

To be clear, fashion isn’t irrelevant. But it’s losing its monopoly on status, and the cultural weight it once held has fragmented across multiple categories.

That reframes the Merit comments entirely. It’s possible that the very people critiquing the $184 price tag could have had the money to spend on the sweatshirt.

If that’s the case, the objection isn’t really about the money. It’s about whether a sweatshirt, even an intentionally produced one, passes their mental accounting. Perhaps they’d rather put that $184 toward a Pilates membership, their monthly matcha runs, a dinner reservation they’ve been waiting weeks for, a shelf of carefully chosen skincare.

Merit responded to a few comments explaining the sustainability credentials behind the price point. But if clothing is competing for a shrinking share of identity spend, sustainability credentials aren’t what closes the gap.

Emotional Obsolescence

There’s a more specific reason clothing is losing ground, and it goes beyond shifting status signals.

Fast fashion trained people to treat clothing as disposable. When products are designed and marketed to be constantly replaced and are easy to repurchase, investing in them starts to feel pointless.

Why spend more on something when a cheaper alternative delivers a similar look? Why take care of something when you can replace it for $30 and get the dopamine hit that comes with buying something new?

That conditioning didn’t just lower what people think clothing is financially worth. It weakened the emotional relationship people have with what they own.

New research from Vestiaire Collective puts numbers to that disconnect.

Despite having closets full of clothes, 84% of the 5,000+ people surveyed said they feel like they have “nothing to wear,” and nearly one in three feel that way weekly or more.

According to the report, that feeling has less to do with a lack of options and everything to do with a lack of emotional attachment to what people already own.

Wardrobes expand through accumulation: things that seemed appealing in the moment, trendy pieces that felt urgent, impulse buys that never quite integrated. Over time, the closet fills with things that don’t connect to each other or to who the person is now. The result is a kind of identity drift, a closet full of past versions of yourself, but none of them are quite right for today.

“Nothing to wear” is emotional obsolescence: when what you own still works, but it doesn’t feel like you.

So when Merit asks them to spend $184 on a sweatshirt, the subconscious math is: I already have a closet full of things I don’t care about. Why would this be any different?

The Pilates membership and the matcha win not just because fashion lost status, but because people have learned, through experience, that clothing doesn’t always deliver on its promise.

Fast fashion didn’t just lower the price of clothing. It lowered what people believe clothing is capable of doing for them. That’s the environment sustainable fashion is trying to sell into.

So, What Does This Mean for Sustainable Fashion?

If clothing is no longer the primary way people signal identity and status, asking people to pay more for better clothing becomes a much harder sell.

You’re not just competing on price or quality anymore. You’re competing against entire categories that now carry more cultural meaning.

Food, beauty, wellness, travel, hospitality. These are where people are actively building identity in visible, shareable ways. Clothing still signals identity, but fast fashion commodified that signal…made it cheap, easy to replicate, easy to ignore. Which means the category itself has lost status power.

That’s the real problem. Layering sustainability credentials on top of a devalued category doesn’t change the mental accounting.

When you ask someone to pay more, they’re not just weighing price against quality. They’re deciding whether clothing is worth investing in at all. And right now, a lot of people have decided it isn’t.

Which means the opportunity is bigger than making sustainable fashion more appealing. It’s about rebuilding the perceived value of clothing as a category. And that’s not going to happen through sustainability alone.

It happens the same way it always has. Through culture and social currency.

Through brands that make people feel desire, not just virtue. The kind of meaning that makes someone want to be seen in something, not just feel good about buying it.

Sustainable fashion already stands for something. The problem is that what it stands for reads as responsible, not aspirational. And responsible doesn’t drive the same behavior as cool, or exclusive, or in-the-know. Those are the signals that move people. Sustainability can reinforce them, but it can’t replace them.

So what are most brands getting wrong about perceived value, and what does it look like when they get it right? That’s exactly what we’re digging into at the 2026 Sustainable Fashion Forum this October in Portland.

Welcome to Green Behavior, a newsletter and podcast exploring the intersection of psychology, culture, business, and sustainable fashion. Not on the list? Sign up here.

Subscribe now

How many times have you stood in front of a closet full of clothes and thought, I have nothing to wear?

This exact feeling is what new research from Vestiaire Collective and WRÅD set out to investigate when they explored what they’re calling the ‘Got Nothing to Wear’ phenomenon.

After surveying more than 5,000+ people in the Vestiaire ecosystem, they found that this frustration is nearly universal within their community. 84% of respondents experience it, and nearly one in three feel it weekly or more.

It turns out, however, this feeling has almost nothing to do with your clothes and everything to do with psychology.

Why We Feel Like We Have Nothing to Wear…When We Probably Do.

The culprit comes down to identity.

Fashion often gets dismissed as superficial, but it’s rooted in identity and belonging.

As humans, we’re wired to want social acceptance, and clothing is one of the fastest ways we signal who we are, or who we want to be seen as.

Even if you “don’t care” about what you wear, the clothes you put on still signal status, taste, group affiliation, ambition, mood, and values, often before you even speak.

So when something in your closet doesn’t feel “right”, it’s not just aesthetic dissatisfaction. It’s the friction between who you are, who you want to be, and how you think you’ll be perceived.

Your closet could be full of items that are trendy and in good condition, but if they don’t match the version of “you” today, they’ll register as wrong.

68% of respondents attribute the feeling of not having anything to wear exclusively to emotional factors, not a lack of clothes.

Among those who experience it weekly or more, 72% own more than 100 items. Nearly half own more than 200.

When Your Clothes Don’t Match the Version of “You” in Your Head.

Body changes can widen the gap.

Maybe you gained weight and still identify with a smaller version of yourself. #same Or maybe you lost weight, and your sense of self hasn’t caught up yet.

Even when you buy clothes that fit, they can still feel completely wrong because of the gap between how you look IRL and how you see yourself, or want to be seen.

The clothes might literally fit the body in front of you, but they don’t fit who you are inside. This is self-discrepancy theory in action.

It's also why lecturing people to “wear what you own” flops.

When your clothes exist in this gap, logic doesn't override the friction.

After a decade of running the Sustainable Fashion Forum and having hundreds of off-the-record conversations with global brands and retailers, the pattern I keep seeing is that most sustainability leaders are trained to build systems, not engineer participation.

The result is almost always programs that look great on paper but underperform in the real world.

Which is what makes this research notable.

Vestiaire investing in consumer psychology research signals a shift from treating sustainability as just a messaging challenge to treating it like what it is: a behavior design challenge.

But, as much as I love the report, I don’t love their takeaway.

Resale Isn’t Therapy.

For me, the wardrobe audits were the most interesting part of the study.

After spending an hour physically going through respondents’ closets, 7 out of 10 people reported having a significantly better relationship with their closet, at least for the moment.

This is what I expected Vestiaire to build the campaign around.

Instead, the solution they offer is: sell what no longer serves you….and shop on Vestiaire Collective.

In a press release, Vestiaire’s Impact Director framed the research as moving the conversation from “circularity is good for the planet” to “circularity creates a healthier relationship with consumption,” arguing that resale rewires how we relate to fashion.

But does resale actually resolve the friction?
Does resale actually rewire how we relate to fashion?

A peer-reviewed study suggests it doesn’t.

More specifically, the research found that shopping secondhand often correlates with buying more new clothes, not fewer.

The researchers found that people who spend more on secondhand also tend to spend more on new clothes, suggesting resale complements rather than displaces new consumption.

Which makes the real question: are we reducing the underlying need, or just giving it a new outlet?

(Sidebar: this hasn’t been announced yet, but one of the study's authors will be speaking at the 2026 Sustainable Fashion Forum this October! You’re the first to know!)

If emotional obsolescence, feeling like your clothes no longer fit who you are, is rooted in vulnerability and self-doubt, redirecting that impulse to a secondhand platform doesn’t resolve the trigger. It just changes the channel.

If you haven’t figured out why you don’t feel connected to what you own, you’re going to keep buying things and feeling the same way.

Maybe you buy more mindfully. Maybe you buy secondhand. But the cycle continues.

Vestiaire talks about emotional connection, but their campaign still treats the solution as a transaction: sell what doesn’t serve you, then shop preloved.

What I wanted to see was the actual intervention they proved works: the wardrobe audit. Not just as an internal research method, but as the product. A downloadable guide, a step-by-step questionnaire, or a self-directed audit that helps people reconnect with what they already own before they do anything else.

They could’ve even made it scalable through a partnership with a digital wardrobe platform like , which helps people digitize their closet, build outfits, and track what they actually wear. Now THAT would’ve been a collaboration!

First, you rebuild your relationship with what you own.
Then you decide what no longer fits your identity.
Then you resell it… on Vestiaire.

That’s the story their own research supports, but the campaign skips past it.

TL;DR

For sustainability teams, this research is a data-backed reminder that the attitude-behavior gap is an identity gap, not a knowledge gap.

Resale’s mainstream growth proves what’s possible when you meet people where their actual motivations are, even if the underlying psychological triggers remain unresolved.

The industry didn’t grow by lecturing people about circularity. It grew by making secondhand shopping desirable.

That’s the playbook the rest of sustainable fashion needs to study.

It’s time to stop asking ‘how do we communicate sustainability better’ and start asking ‘why do people behave the way they do, and how do we design for that?’

The conversation is finally shifting from messaging to psychology, and I’m here for it!

If your team is trying to move from “awareness” to actual participation, this is the exact work I do with brands: pressure-testing sustainability initiatives through a consumer behavior lens and rebuilding the strategy around what people actually do, not what we wish they’d do.

If you wanna go deeper, come to the 2026 Sustainable Fashion Forum this October.

We’re building the conference around one question: what actually drives adoption? Researchers, behavioral experts, and industry leaders will dig into what it takes to design for participation, not just build systems.

Welcome to Green Behavior, a newsletter and podcast exploring the intersection of psychology, culture, business, and sustainable fashion. Not on the list? Sign up here.

Subscribe now

I’ve had the same conversation with sustainability leaders at global fashion brands and retailers, usually off the record and usually after an initiative didn’t perform as expected.

They mapped the supply chain (as best they could), switched to “better” materials, got third-party verifications, and checked all the “right” boxes.

And still, consumer adoption was…meh.

The initiative might’ve generated press, performed “well enough” on social media, and delivered decent sell-through, but it didn’t connect back to the business goals in a way that moved the needle or justified additional investment.

After enough of those conversations, I stopped being surprised that the biggest brands with the most resources were also stuck on how to drive consumer adoption, and I started getting curious about why.

Subscribe now

People say they’ll pay more. Until they actually have to.

If you work in sustainable fashion, you’re familiar with the attitude-behavior gap or the say-do gap, where people say they care about sustainability, but their actions often don’t reflect those values.

One of the clearest examples is transparency. Consumers say they want brands to share more information, but far fewer actually use that information when they shop.

Another is willingness to pay.

People regularly say they’re willing to spend more on sustainable products. But when it comes time to buy, that willingness often disappears.

Most sustainability leaders treat this like a communication problem.

The assumption is that better storytelling, clearer messaging, or more impact campaigns will finally push people to make different choices: repair the sweater, pay more for the “better” material, care who made their clothes, rewear what they already own, and buy less. But the issue isn’t a lack of awareness. It’s that awareness alone rarely changes behavior.

People may care about sustainability in principle, but most purchasing decisions are driven by price, fit, identity, aspiration, perceived value, convenience, and what feels rewarding in the moment.

And in today’s economic and political climate, where financial pressure and instability are shaping everyday decisions, immediate personal benefit is often far more persuasive than abstract long-term impact.

A lot gets built. Not a lot gets used.

That disconnect doesn’t just show up in survey data. It shows up in the market.

Brands invest in better materials, resale, repair, take-back programs, and circular systems, then find that consumer participation doesn’t automatically follow.

This is what I call the Infrastructure–Participation Gap: the distance between building better systems and getting people to actually use them. It’s where pilots stall, programs plateau, and sustainable capsules sit unsold.

And it’s also where sustainability teams start coming under pressure.

Inside companies, initiatives are increasingly expected to prove commercial value. Leadership wants to know whether sustainability is driving revenue, loyalty, efficiency, and brand relevance. And when participation doesn’t follow, the narrative starts to shift. Even well-designed initiatives begin to look less like growth drivers and more like cost centers.

What makes this harder is that most teams aren’t actually solving for this gap.

After a decade of running the Sustainable Fashion Forum and having dozens of off-the-record conversations, one pattern keeps surfacing: most sustainability teams are trained to build systems, not engineer participation.

They’re rarely trained in the psychological, cultural, and behavioral forces that shape how people actually shop. So the work defaults to what teams are structured to do: build better systems, then hand off adoption to marketing.

But marketing operates under a completely different set of KPIs, along with increasing scrutiny and legal risk around sustainability claims, which makes it difficult to create perceived value around sustainability in the first place.

The result is programs that look good on paper but struggle in the real world.

At this point, it’s a pattern.

This isn’t a niche problem or a few isolated cases. It’s showing up across brands, markets, and categories.

Talk to enough teams and the pattern starts to look familiar. The same friction points. The same questions. The same frustration when initiatives don’t translate into sustained demand.

I’ve watched this pattern repeat for years. I’ve talked about it, written about it, and woven it into past SFF programming as one thread among many. But this year I decided to make that gap the center of the conversation because the reality is, that pressure is only getting harder.

Sustainability teams aren’t just being asked to show impact. In a climate shaped by economic strain, political scrutiny, price-sensitive consumers, and growing caution around sustainability claims, they’re being asked to show performance. To tie their work to revenue, retention, efficiency, and brand relevance. To justify continued investment in an environment where budgets are tighter, scrutiny is higher, and patience is thinner.

And if sustainability can’t prove its value in the terms leadership is prioritizing, it stops looking strategic and starts becoming one of the first things to lose momentum internally.

So what actually drives adoption?

We’ve spent years building sustainable systems, assuming adoption would follow. But adoption isn’t automatic, it has to be designed around how people actually behave which means understanding how people make decisions, what they value, and what actually drives action.

This is the gap SFF26 is designed to address.

If your team is being asked to move from awareness to actual participation, SFF26 is designed to help you pressure-test sustainability initiatives against real consumer behavior and understand what’s getting in the way of adoption in the first place.

October 28–30 in Portland, OR, we’re bringing together behavioral scientists, consumer psychologists, and senior leaders from brands, retailers, tech platforms, and government to tackle the gap between sustainable systems and the participation required to make them scale.

This isn’t a feel-good conference or an industry pep rally about sustainability.

SFF26 is a business conference for teams being asked to make sustainability perform under real market conditions.

Every ticket also includes the SFF26 Intelligence Report, a Monday-ready playbook with partner research, case studies, and data you can use to redesign programs for participation, scale what works, and cut what doesn’t.

If your team is being asked to drive adoption, defend budget, and prove commercial value, this is where that work starts.

Early-bird tickets are available now!

See you in Portland!

Welcome to Green Behavior, a newsletter and podcast exploring the intersection of psychology, culture, business, and sustainable fashion. Not on the list? Sign up here.

Subscribe now

For those of us following Gap Inc.’s move to becoming a content engine, the company is now staffing the strategy.

In January, Gap Inc. brought in former Paramount executive Pam Kaufman as its first-ever Chief Entertainment Officer, tasked with building a "Fashiontainment" platform that weaves music, film, sports, and gaming into the business through licensing deals, partnerships, and content.

CEO Richard Dickson, the architect behind Mattel’s Barbie cultural resurgence, is rebuilding Gap Inc. as a cultural production engine.

With Kaufman, CMO Fabiola Torres, and creative director Zac Posen, the company is slowly shifting from a traditional retailer to something that looks more like a content studio that happens to sell clothes.

The latest hire is a Head of Consumer Products, reporting directly to Kaufman, overseeing inbound and outbound licensing across all four brands globally. The posted salary range is $350K to $500K, which tells you everything you need to know about how seriously they're taking this.

Gap is betting its turnaround strategy on culture as a demand driver…and it’s working.

Seven straight quarters of positive comparable sales, a 4-year quarterly high of +5% comparable sales growth, and $2.5B in cash reserves, under Dickson's leadership, the bet is paying off.

As a marketing and strategy girlie at heart, I’m LOCKED IN, watching how this all unfolds. But from a sustainability standpoint, it's also worth paying attention to.

The company isn't making this transition in the name of sustainability. Still, the mechanism they’re betting on, using culture to drive perceived value and demand, is the exact mechanism sustainability teams have been underusing for years.

They're not the only ones reaching for this lever.

More and more we’re seeing brands across categories lean into this playbook.

Starbucks, in the middle of its own brand reset under CEO Brian Niccol, is returning to what made it Starbucks in the first place.

The brand built its identity on being more than coffee: an accessory, a third space, a cultural fixture. Then it drifted, prioritizing mobile orders and throughput over experience. Niccol is pulling it back.

Debuting the House of Coffee at Milan Men's Fashion Week, backing five emerging designers at NYFW, and hosting what looked like an epic 10am rave with DJ LP Giobbi, the brand is finding its way back to being a brand people want to be seen with, not just a product people grab on the way to something else.

As their Chief Global Brand Officer put it:

“Tapping into cultural relevance matters more than ever... Fashion is a powerful expression of identity.”

When a legacy retailer and a global coffee chain in turnaround mode reach for the same lever, that's no coincidence.

And there's data behind why.

Lyst’s Q4 2025 index showed that five of the ten hottest products came from sub-luxury labels. A Ralph Lauren quarter-zip was the single most in-demand product of the quarter, with searches up 132% over the past three months. For context, in Q4 2017, no non-luxury brand was on the list. Lyst’s VP of brand and communications calls it “a restructuring of aspiration itself.” 

Shoppers today want the cult status of a piece rather than the prestige of a brand.

The playing field has shifted. Cult status doesn’t come from a logo. A brand doesn't need a century of heritage to win attention. It just needs to show up in the right cultural moment with the right product.

We saw exactly this mechanism rewrite the narrative around resale.

Platforms like ThredUp, eBay, and The RealReal didn't just build better marketplaces. They kept showing up inside the cultural moments that shape perceived value, through celebrity closet drops, TV cameos like Vestiaire Collective’s appearance in Emily in Paris, and collaborations like their 800-piece edit inspired by Carolyn Bessette's '90s minimalism timed to the premiere of FX's Love Story.

When tastemakers and celebrities started aligning themselves with secondhand visibly, it shifted from economic necessity/stigma to cultural status.

Yes, affordability matters. But without cultural relevance, resale would still be coded as cheap instead of savvy. The reframe from "I can't afford new" to "I'm financially savvy and have taste" is what made it stick.

Here’s where this becomes a sustainability story.

When a product is tied to identity and belonging, people hold onto it longer, repair it, treasure it. Strong perceived value means garments retain resale price, which makes the secondary market more viable. Cultural demand lets brands sell fewer units at better margins with less discounting, shifting the model away from volume-and-markdowns toward fewer, better pieces that move because people want them. And ongoing brand relationships give companies repeated opportunities to bring customers into lower-impact behaviors over time: resale and repair.

Every single one of those outcomes is measurable. Every one of them maps to metrics leadership already cares about: demand, margin, retention, and lifetime value.

But there’s a catch-22.

You can't get budget without proving consumer participation. You can't drive consumer participation without cultural relevance. And you can't build cultural relevance without budget.

Here’s the thing, you don't need Gap's licensing ambitions or Starbucks's marketing spend to overcome this. You just need to understand what both of them know: cultural relevance isn't about being everywhere. It's about being where it matters.

As we plan SFF26, I’ve been deep in off-the-record conversations with sustainability leaders at global brands. Everyone understands that consumer behavior is the lever. The question is always… how do you actually pull it?

October 28–30 in Portland, we’re bringing behavioral scientists, consumer psychologists, and brand strategists together to answer exactly that. If the how is what you’re after, SFF26 is where that conversation is happening.

Depop, freshly acquired by eBay for $1.2B (in cash!!!), launched three new, totally relatable U.S. campaigns, and sustainability isn't mentioned once. Instead, the sell is financial savvy, social currency, and effortlessness.

The attitude-behavior gap tells us that what people say they care about and what actually drives their decisions are two very different things.

Consumers consistently report caring about sustainability, but when it comes to actual purchase behavior, self-interest wins.

What Depop is doing instead is placing the brand inside real life, awkward yoga class run-ins, roommate standoffs, the small everyday moments where their platform becomes an obvious solution. Not a values statement. A situation you recognize yourself in.

When asked, Steve Dool, director of brand and creative at Depop, said the intention was to “meet people where they are, financially and culturally.” More of this!

The Kelis casting is also worth noting as she stars in the campaign alongside her 2003 hit ‘Millionaire.’

Personally, I don’t get the connection, no shade, but I can’t help but wonder if that choice was at least partly inspired by Gap’s viral moment using Kelis’s “Milkshake” in their Katseye campaign.

Meanwhile, Allbirds launched a new three-shoe collection and their marketing is a perfect example of the difference between storytelling that builds desire versus storytelling that justifies a purchase.

Buried under explainers about plant-protein leather alternatives, responsibly sourced materials, and carbon goals is the actual product benefit: comfortable dress shoes that don’t require a break-in period.

It’s the same mistake nearly every sustainable brand makes: lead with materials, explain the innovation, showcase the environmental credentials, and then almost as an afterthought, mention why someone would actually want the thing.

Here’s what I’d do instead: lead with the benefit, then explain how you achieved it.

Hook people with something they immediately want, comfort, style, no break-in period, and then show them that the material innovation is HOW you delivered it. That way sustainability becomes the explanation for superior performance, not a separate reason to buy.

So instead of: we use plants because we care about the planet, and also the shoe is comfortable.

Try something like: ‘shoes that actually feel comfortable from day one, built from the ground up with plants instead of traditional leather.’

Same story. Completely different order. One builds desire…the other low-key kills it.

• Yes, we will absolutely talk about Reformation’s epic post-valentines Dump Him campaign ft. Divorce Lawyer Laura Wasser.

• I came across this research paper that tested whether impulse-control training can reduce fast-fashion shopping. It’s an interesting concept. But also: how would this scale outside the study?

I spend a lot of time looking at job descriptions while running the SFF job board. Some of them stop me cold and make me think: ‘in another life, I would apply to this in a heartbeat!’ Here’s a few from this week:

• The RealReal | Senior Consumer Insights Manager
  San Francisco, CA | Hybrid · Full-Time | 7+ yrs exp | $135k–$170k/yr

  • Why I’d apply: This is a consumer insights and market research leadership role. You’d own the full insights function…brand tracking, NPS, qual and quant research, TAM analysis, and competitive intelligence, while integrating behavioral and transactional data to build a complete picture of what clients say versus how they actually buy and consign. A role that’s literally built around the gap between stated consumer behavior and actual behavior, at a luxury resale company redefining how people relate to ownership? Yeah, I’m down!

• Gap Inc. | Senior Analyst, Consumer Insights
  San Francisco, CA | Hybrid · Full-Time | 2–4 yrs exp | $96.7k–$125.7k/yr

  • Why I’d apply: This is a consumer research and insights role supporting Banana Republic's brand and product strategy. You'd design and execute qual and quant research (focus groups, IDIs, surveys, concept testing), synthesize findings into story-driven recommendations, and partner cross-functionally to translate customer psychology into business decisions.

• Function of Beauty | Consumer & Category Insights Manager
  New York, NY | Hybrid · Full-Time | 5+ yrs exp | $120k–$140k/yr

  • Why I’d apply: This is a consumer research and category strategy role for a personalization-first beauty brand. You’d lead qual and quant research, analyze category trends and competitive dynamics, partner with R&D on product validation, and translate consumer behavior into brand positioning and go-to-market strategy across retail and DTC. A brand whose entire existence is built on the idea that people are different and want to be treated that way? The consumer psychology here writes itself. I’d never be bored.

• Elf Beauty | Sr. Director, Insights & Voice of the Consumer
  New York, NY | Hybrid · Full-Time | 10+ yrs exp | $160k–$205k/yr

  • Why I’d apply: This is a senior consumer insights leadership role at one of the fastest-growing mass beauty brands in the US. You’d synthesize behavioral, psychographic, social, and CRM data into strategic narratives, lead primary research across qual and quant methods, own consumer segmentation and trend foresight, and serve as the organizational conscience for consumer-centricity across brand, innovation, and marketing. Part detective, part strategist, part storyteller” … Elf literally wrote my job description and accidentally forgot to put my name on it.

If you enjoyed today’s newsletter AND you got to the end of it, hit reply/comment below and tell me: What's one brand you think is winning at building cultural relevance right now, fashion or otherwise? Bonus points: what are they doing that sustainability teams should steal?

Follow me on LinkedIn
Want to partner? Get in touch

Welcome to Green Behavior, a newsletter and podcast exploring the intersection of psychology, culture, business, and sustainable fashion. Not on the list? Sign up here.

Subscribe now

Listen now on Spotify | Apple Podcasts

Too often, sustainable brands opt out of culture out of fear of looking like a traditional fashion brand.

But in doing so, they remove themselves from the very spaces where attention is captured, desire is built, and trends take shape.

Meanwhile, mainstream fashion brands drive hype through pop-ups, experiences, loyalty activations, and unexpected partnerships that spark desire and cement their place in the cultural conversation.

If you want to shift consumer behavior at scale and move the needle on sustainability in fashion, you have to meet people where they are. Not where you wish they were, not where you think they should be, but where they actually are.

That means showing up in culture, in the moments, spaces, and conversations that already have their attention.

Cultural moments are where brands become part of social conversation. They create relevance, status, and emotional connection. If you’re absent, you miss the chance to build the momentum that drives purchasing behavior.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve been watching Rothy’s approach closely.

From a Times Square activation to a pizza party with Emily Sundberg, the brand is showing how sustainable brands can build mainstream relevance without massive budgets or leading with eco messaging.

I spoke with Zoë Richards, Director of PR & Communications at Rothy’s, about how the brand balances sustainability messaging with cultural touchpoints that generate mainstream buzz while keeping sustainability in the story, just not always at the front of it.

Let’s connect on LinkedIn!
Wanna partner? Get in touch

I’ve been struggling.

Personally. Professionally. Mentally. Emotionally. Physically. Every day has felt like a fight.

When life is hard.
When up feels like down.
When your chest feels heavy before your feet even hit the floor.
When the smallest tasks feel impossible.
When your wins don’t feel like wins.
When you look around and don’t recognize your own life.
When the things you worked so hard for start to feel hollow.

That’s where I’ve been and what I’ve been carrying. I wish I could say I’m on the other side of this but I don’t have a clean conclusion. I’m still in it and trying to figure it all out.

When people feel lost, depleted, or like everything’s slipping out from under them, the instinct is to look for comfort. To self-soothe. We reach for something—someone, anything—that might help us feel even slightly more okay. That might give us back a sliver of control or familiarity or warmth.

Sometimes that comfort is healthy. A friend. A routine. A therapist. A walk. A good cry. Other times, it’s impulsive. Texting the ex. Doom scrolling. Pouring another drink. Obsessing over work. Buying something we don’t need.

In the sustainability space, we talk a lot about the attitude-behavior gap. Or at least I do😜. The disconnect between what people say they value and how they actually behave. When people say they care about sustainability, but their behavior tells a different story

So many sustainability leaders chalk that up to apathy. That people don’t care enough. That they don’t have enough information. That they need better labels. More education. Clearer incentives. Blah, blah, blah.

But the reality is that in those moments— standing in line, clicking “add to cart,” swiping their card for something shiny and unnecessary, it’s often not because they’ve stopped caring. Or that they don’t care about the planet, about garment workers, about rising carbon emissions, or whatever.

It’s that the ache they’re feeling is louder than the impact of their choices. And in that moment, comfort feels more urgent than conscience.

Humans are wired to avoid pain and seek relief. Emotional or physical, it doesn’t matter. The brain doesn’t always distinguish. It just wants safety.

This is why understanding consumer behavior in the context of sustainability work is so incredibly important.

People’s choices aren’t made in a vacuum. They’re driven by stress, identity, fear, hope, insecurity, and survival. If we reduce behavior down to logic, education, or morality, we miss the opportunity to shift it in a meaningful way.

From economic to political, from personal to psychological, there’s a lot happening in the world. People are carrying more than ever.

The only way forward is a human-centered approach to sustainability.

An approach that respects the complexity of what people are navigating. An approach that understands behavior change is not just about more information.

So I’ll ask you:

How are you acknowledging the weight your customers, your community, and your peers are carrying? Not just in words, but in action.

Everyone’s carrying something. Are you paying attention?

Emotions have always shaped how we shop—especially in fashion, where status, identity, desire, and belonging influence not just what we buy, but how we see ourselves and how we want to be seen.

It’s why influencers are so damn good at selling us stuff. And why consumers say they’ll pay 25% more for the brands they love, even if they have to stretch their paycheck to do it.

On a consulting call last week, my client asked about Parke and how they’re able to sell a $125 sweatshirt that’s just...a sweatshirt.

If you haven’t heard of them, Parke is the fashion brand launched by TikTok creator Chelsea Kramer, best known for their oversized mock-neck sweatshirts that have become a Gen Z status symbol.

Think Supreme, but instead of sneakerheads chasing sneaker drops, it’s matcha-drinking college girls lining up for sweatshirts.

Last weekend, the brand hosted a three-day pop-up in SoHo, where fans started lining up at 3 am, some traveling in from New Jersey and Connecticut, to get the limited release drop.

Sidebar…it’s giving The Row.

Every year, New York’s most quiet-luxury-obsessed stand in line for hours outside The Row’s infamous sample sale.

Last year, the line wrapped around multiple city blocks with some waiting overnight, some hiring line-sitters, and others flying in from across the country, all ready to drop thousands on neutral sweaters and suede bags.

Even at 75% off, many walked out spent enough to cover a month’s rent, sometimes more…

Watching the frenzy around Parke/ their latest pop-up brought back the same question I had observing the dedication of Row fans…

Can you think of a sustainable fashion brand that’s ever sparked this kind of hype?

Not press coverage. Not industry praise. I mean actual cultural momentum—lines down the block, fans camping out, shoppers ready to drop hundreds.

So why are Gen Zers willing to stand in line up for hours to drop $125 on a sweatshirt (while calling sustainable fashion too expensive)?

As I told my client: it’s not about the sweatshirt.
It’s about identity. Status. Community. Belonging. Emotional ROI.

The product isn’t premium in the traditional sense of materials, craftsmanship, or function. But in the emotional economy, it delivers high-value: confidence, connection, and cultural currency.

Parke doesn’t sell clothes. It sells proximity to a lifestyle, and access to a community that defines its identity by emotional closeness, aesthetic alignment, and the feeling of being part of something that not everyone else gets yet.

Chelsea is the brand. Parke is just the merch.

Her followers see her as aspirational but attainable—someone who feels polished and just effortless enough to feel natural without being out of reach.

That’s why people who already own five Parke sweatshirts still wait in line for six hours to buy another. They’re not (necessarily) loyal to the product—they’re loyal to her, to the version of themselves they see in her, and to the community that makes them feel like they belong.

Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman famously said that 95% of our decisions happen subconsciously. Influencer marketing is built to sell to the subconscious converting through:

• Identity projection → “That could be me.”

• Emotional relatability → “She feels like someone I know.”

• Aspirational authenticity → “She’s successful, but she’s still just the girl next door in a hoodie”

• Social proof at scale → “Everyone on my For You Page is wearing this.”

And because it’s all wrapped in casual storytelling with GRWMs, hauls, and “just-talking to my friend” videos, it feels personal, not promotional.

Influencers collapse the distance between content and consumption by tapping into our emotional self-concept. Not through features, benefits, or value props, but through emotion.

Emotional instinct has built billion-dollar empires for influencers and celebrities. Now, apparently, it’s reshaping how trend forecasters and brand strategists think.

Last week, WGSN released a new white paper called Future Consumer 2027: Emotions, outlining three key emotional drivers—Strategic Joy, Witherwill, and Suspicious Optimism—and forecasting how brands can respond to what consumers will feel and want in the years ahead.

The report promises a roadmap to future-proof your business by anticipating how consumers will want to feel—and building products, experiences, and strategies that align with that emotional landscape. Sounds good.

But here’s what I don’t get. In promoting the report, they said things like, “Our emotions are becoming a key driver of purchasing behavior, influencing how we shop, what we buy, and the brands we want to engage with.”

In the report itself they say, “emotions are the new strategy.”

“Becoming?” a key driver?

A “new” strategy?

Emotions have been the driver and have been the strategy.

Emotion has always shaped behavior, especially in fashion and beauty, where purchases are more about identity and aspiration than function or need.

I asked the team for clarification. BRB with what they say…

UPDATE: We’re closer to getting an answer…

What I think they meant, and how I’m interpreting it, is not that emotions are becoming a key driver of consumer behavior. What’s changing is the cultural fluency around them, the tools to track them, and the pressure on brands to respond to them in real time.

What I’m taking away is that emotion should become more central to brand strategy. Brands should stop treating emotion as just a tool for ad copy or aesthetics and instead, bake it into product design, customer experience, and business models.

Emotions like burnout, climate anxiety, and loneliness aren’t new—but they’re more talked about, more measurable, and more searchable than ever. That creates more opportunity for brands to respond in targeted, meaningful ways.

Consumers have always looked for emotional payoff but what’s shifted is the cultural fluency around it, and the expectation that brands make that payoff more visible, more personal, and more aligned with how we see ourselves.

Influencer marketing, kidult culture, therapy-speak, parasocial relationships, these trends have normalized emotional decision-making and made emotional justification for purchases feel not just acceptable, but expected.

This shift in emotional fluency exposes the weakness in most sustainability messaging: Sustainability alone doesn’t sell.

If you want people to care, to buy, to come back—it’s not enough to be ethical, or transparent, or circular. You have to make people feel something. You have to make them feel seen. Connected. Inspired. Understood.

So, what does that look like in action?

Subscribe now

Share

Case Study: Merit

If you’re not familiar, Merit is a minimalist clean beauty brand known for its “less is more” approach to makeup. They recently launched a tinted mineral SPF called The Uniform, but instead of marketing it as just another clean sunscreen, Merit framed it as a lifestyle essential, so seamlessly woven into your daily routine that unless you knew about their launch event, you probably didn’t realize what they were selling at first.

From the name to the tone to the campaign rollout, The Uniform was positioned as the “missing step” in your routine—something that feels effortless, habitual, and instinctive. Not a chore, but part of who you are.

The campaign didn’t lead with sun protection facts or ingredients. Instead, it talked about having a uniform, something so good you wear it every day.

Effortless. Iconic. Instinctive.

It wasn’t about SPF, it was about identity. About the kind of person who doesn’t have to think too hard in the morning because their routine just works.

Finally, they reveled the tinted mineral SPF but by then, they had launched a product and a habit. A mindset. An identity shortcut. Something that felt less like skincare and more like part of your morning ritual.

And by pulling aesthetic and emotional cues from the world of fashion, they gave the product status before anyone even knew what it was.

This is emotion-led strategy at its best:

• Tease feeling before function.

• Lead with identity, not facts.

• Make utility feel iconic.

The campaign made us feel the problem before ever naming it. they built emotional tension around a shared frustration: sunscreen never becomes a staple the way your favorite white tee, go-to button-down, or favorite jeans do.

They led with identity. Familiarity. Habit. Emotional resonance.

By the time the product reveal came, you didn’t just want to try the sunscreen, you wanted to adopt the mindset. That’s emotional branding baked into strategy, not just slapped on in the final ad copy.

Merit executed a slow-burn misdirect that blurred the line between fashion and beauty. So if you thought they were launching actual clothes, it was intentional.

After weeks of dry-cleaner tags, button-down hints, and Brooks Brothers teases, they finally revealed the twist.

To celebrate the opening of The Uniform Dry Cleaners in NYC, Merit partnered with Brooks Brothers to create another essential piece of the daily uniform: a classic $125 button-down shirt with MERIT emblem and optional custom-embroidered “Do Less” stitched along the cuff ($15)—a reminder that “when it comes to your routine, you don’t have to overthink it.”

Following the same limited-drop strategy that built Parke’s cult following, only 500 MERIT x Brooks Brothers shirt will be available exclusively at the pop-up.

I’ll be curious to see if anyone brings a folding chair for this one.

If you’re in New York feel free to attend and report back.

The Takeaway for Sustainable Fashion Brands

Pulse check: Would your customers stand in line at 3 a.m. to buy what you’re selling?

👀

I think about this often, especially as we think about the next chapter of .

Parke didn’t build hype by talking about materials or mission.
Merit didn’t drive engagement by listing ingredients.

They both did something most sustainable brands don’t:
They sold identity, not information.
They made the product feel personal and culturally relevant.

That’s what sustainable fashion is missing.

I agree with the WGSN report: after years of global instability (pandemic, climate crisis, supply chain breakdowns, wars, tech burnout) how consumers want to feel is currently (😉), and will continue to be, the driving force behind what they buy and who they trust.

If your brand leads with impact stats, fiber content, or certifications, you’re operating in a rational space, meanwhile purchasing decisions are driven by emotion.

Understand emotional ROI, and start designing for it.

Want loyalty? Build identity.
Want demand? Create culture.
Want retention? Sell a feeling people want to keep coming back to.

Emotion is the strategy.

🤓🧠✌🏾

If you want to know how to build this kind of emotional strategy specifically for your brand/company, let’s talk.

Shoutout to everyone who joined my impromptu live last week!

One of my goals for 2025 is to become a better public speaker. But four months into the year I hadn’t exactly acted on that goal, so I guess the universe decided to step in.

I was invited to speak on a panel at the University of Oregon’s Summit for Sustainable Organizations. Then, two days before the event, I found out I wasn’t just on a panel…I was also leading an hour-long breakout session.

I hadn’t given a presentation in years, probably not since I was running branding and marketing workshops at Tea Bar back in 2015 or 2016.

And adding to the chaos? The irony of being asked to speak at UO is that I went to UO… and dropped out.

Which is probably why I’ve spent a good chunk of my career doing the absolute most to prove myself to whatever version of me that thought not having a degree meant I had something to make up for.

Ah, the self-inflicted baggage. 🧳

Anyway, going live and walking through my presentation with you was incredibly helpful. The feedback from the presentation was overwhelmingly positive. Good call on cutting those extra stats, by the way. I definitely went a little too hard trying to squeeze all the numbers in, ha!

Naturally, I chose to do my breakout on consumer psychology, behavior, emotion—the usual suspects.

If you’ve been here for a while, you already know that I believe perceived value is a major reason most sustainable products don’t convert and why most sustainable brands fail.

As sustainability advocates, we often assume that because consumers care about sustainability it must be their top priority. That all their values orbit around doing the “right” thing.

So we hit them with logic. With guilt. And with ethics.

But people don’t make decisions based on logic. They make decisions based on emotion, and then justify them with logic.

The pull of identity, aspiration, and cultural belonging is usually way stronger than the quiet voice of “be responsible.”

If we want sustainability to compete, we can’t just rely on values alone. We have to understand how people actually think, feel, and behave.

What I hadn’t fully sat with, until recently, is how much confusion gets in the way of that value even registering.

One major source of that confusion is the lack of consensus on what “sustainable fashion” even means.

Week/End: Sustainable Fashion News

We Need to Talk About H&M and Greenwashing

Read more

a year ago · 11 likes · Sustainable Fashion Forum and Brittany Sierra

The industry doesn’t have a universal definition. Which means brands, NGOs, regulators, consumers, we might all be using the same language, but talking about completely different things.

Sure, there’s probably some overlap. But most of it comes down to personal values.

For one person, it’s about water use. For another, it’s labor. For someone else, it’s carbon or animal welfare. Everyone has their “thing,” and that shapes how they define what’s sustainable.

And with no legal definition, no shared baseline, and certifications under fire for being vague or misleading, brands are left to fill in the blanks.

So when we talk about sustainable fashion, we’re not just dealing with a lack of clarity. We’re dealing with a tangle of competing interpretations.

And that confusion isn’t just a headache for consumers. It’s a minefield for brands trying to meet expectations and avoid getting called out for greenwashing.

When there’s no clear definition or baseline, everything starts to blur. Labels feel vague. Claims feel performative. Eventually it all just sounds like marketing. And when that happens, people stop believing any of it.

That’s what hit me reading Public Inc.’s new 2025 Conscious Consumer Report.

According to the report, nearly half of consumers have walked away from a product because the sustainability claim didn’t make sense. Even for the most “conscious” shoppers, the ones who actually care the most, that number jumps to 87%!

Let that sink in: the people who care the most are the ones most likely to abandon the purchase. If the message doesn’t click, the value doesn’t either.

We spend so much time talking about the attitude-behavior-gap, the gap between what consumers say they care about and what they actually do.

However, I’d argue the real gap is between how we present sustainability, and how people make decisions.

And when you look at the latest data, that disconnect shows up loud and clear.

The Conscious Consumer Report surfaced four insights on the attitude-behavior gap (also known as the say-do gap). I broke each one down through the lens of behavioral science to understand why good intentions still don’t lead to follow-through, and what brands can do about it.

Whether you’re trying to shift consumer behavior, refine your brand messaging, or avoid wasting budget on campaigns that fall flat, these are the four shifts you need to understand right now.

Read more

At the beginning of 2025, it seemed like the culture of overconsumption was finally hitting a wall. Trend fatigue was setting in, and consumers—drained by economic pressures and sustainability concerns—were taking a step back. The era of mindless haul culture was losing steam, replaced by a push for financial discipline, mindful consumption, and more personal style choices.

The timing made sense.

Economic anxiety is at an all-time high. Inflation, job insecurity, and mass layoffs have forced people to rethink their spending.

U.S. household debt hit a record $18.04 trillion by the end of 2024, with credit card balances alone soaring past $1.21 trillion. Even high-income earners ($150K+ annually) are struggling with rising delinquency rates.

Consumer confidence just took its biggest dip since August 2021, which pretty much confirms what everyone’s been feeling—economic uncertainty is hitting hard with 1 in 3 Americans experiencing layoff anxiety.

But if you thought influencers would ease up on pushing products, think again. With the market projected to reach nearly $500B by 2027 up from $250 billion today—brands and creators are only doubling down.

While consumers were setting boundaries, brands and influencers were adapting—finding new ways to stay embedded in their shopping habits.

Enter LTK—the influencer marketing platform that powers and monetizes content-driven commerce—announced a complete overhaul of its app. Expanding beyond product tagging, LTK is repositioning itself as a social-first shopping hub with hyperlocal discovery, in-app networking, and an upgraded creator editing suite—all designed to keep users engaged (and spending).

While No-Buy 2025 gains steam, LTK is making sure consumers keep scrolling, clicking—and spending.

Read more

Social media and influencer marketing are often seen as optional luxuries rather than strategic necessities. As a result, most of the budget goes toward creating the most sustainable and ethical products possible, while brand-building …

Read more

Forget the guilt trips and the doom-and-gloom. The brands winning in 2025 aren’t just ‘doing good’—they’re making sustainability something people actually want to talk about.

From Pete Davidson playing the “Official Boyfriend” for Reformation to The RealReal going full Gossip Girl on Substack, here’s how the rules of sustainability marketing are being completely rewritten.

The Problem with Traditional Sustainability Marketing

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: most sustainable fashion marketing is boring and painfully predictable.

Across the board, many consumer-facing brands follow the same sustainability playbook. The tone may shift slightly depending on the audience, but when you line up their messaging, it’s hard to ignore how formulaic it all feels.

Trust me. I’ve done it.

I get why brands stick to the same playbook, using similar language, visuals, and narratives. But playing it safe has a cost.

With increasing scrutiny and new greenwashing laws, playing it safe helps them avoid backlash and potential lawsuits.

There’s also a fear of blending in with mainstream culture—the very thing sustainability is supposed to disrupt.

Sustainability has traditionally been positioned as “anti-mainstream’, challenging overconsumption, fast fashion, and mass production. If a sustainable brand leans too far into pop culture, humor, or trendiness it risks being perceived as inauthentic or “too commercial.”

So brands play it safe, worried that the smallest misstep will overshadow the entire message. The irony here is that sustainability is meant to disrupt the status quo. But by sticking to a formula, sustainability brands risk blending into a niche rather than breaking into the mainstream.

The fear of doing something creative, unexpected, or culturally relevant means brands end up sounding the same—causing audiences to tune out rather than engage. Worse, it creates an echo chamber, reinforcing existing beliefs rather than expanding the conversation to mainstream consumers.

In order to break the rules. You have to understand the rules.

I’m not saying sustainable brands need to act like fast fashion. But I am saying it’s okay to crack a joke.

In the rest of this 12 minute read I talk about:

• Why sometimes, the most effective way to market sustainability is to not mention sustainability at all—just ask Reformation.

• Why The RealReal’s Substack is the smartest play no one saw coming.

• Stella McCartney’s new campaign spotlights bird extinction, but it’s a miss for me.

In 2025 and beyond, the brands shaping culture will be the ones shaping the future of fashion. Want to be one of them? Read on.

Subscribe now

Read more

Let’s be honest. For many purpose-driven brands—especially smaller ones—the focus is almost always on the product first.

Social media and influencer marketing are often seen as optional luxuries rather than strategic necessities. As a result, most of the budget goes toward creating the most sustainable and ethical products possible, while brand-building and marketing take a back seat.

The assumption? That strong values and high-quality products will speak for themselves, naturally attracting the right customers.

But a great product isn’t enough. Sustainability alone doesn’t sell.

In a world dominated by fast fashion’s emotional marketing, social validation, and aspirational messaging, sustainable brands are struggling to compete. Add in rising living costs, layoffs, and shifting cultural dynamics, and it’s clear: consumer behavior is driven by more than just sustainability.

Yes, consumers care about sustainability—but they also care about identity, belonging, social status, emotional fulfillment, and self-expression. These factors don’t just influence purchasing decisions; they often outweigh sustainability, sometimes even price.

If sustainable brands aren’t competing for attention in the spaces where decisions are made (Instagram, TikTok) or aligning with the emotional and social needs that drive consumer behavior, even the most ethical products will struggle to sell.

That’s why I was especially excited to see Eileen Fisher—an OG pioneer in sustainability—not just strengthening their marketing strategy but actively investing in their influence.

Because influence matters.

Desirability drives action. And sustainability needs to exist in the same spaces where consumer decisions are made.

But how can sustainable brands leverage marketing and influencer partnerships without diluting their values or losing trust?

How can they reach new audiences without being dismissed as inauthentic or accused of “acting like fast fashion”?

How can they tap into the psychological drivers behind consumer behavior—identity, belonging, social validation—without resorting to the same tactics as the brands they seek to challenge?

Because if sustainable brands continue relying solely on logic, ethics, and guilt—while ignoring the emotional and social forces that drive purchasing decisions—they risk struggling to convert admiration and awareness into action. Even among consumers who claim to care.

Join me next week on Substack Live for an exclusive conversation with Arden Frank and Michelle Paltan from Eileen Fisher’s social and influencer marketing team!

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Why Eileen Fisher is prioritizing influence & social media—and what prompted the shift.

• How they balance marketing with mission—without diluting their values.

• What sustainable brands can learn from fast fashion’s playbook—and where to draw the line.

• Insights from EF’s recent campaigns: What’s working (and what’s not).

📅 Date & Time: February 21st 11am PST/2pm EST
📍 Where: Substack Live—You can join via the app or desktop. Enable notifications to get an alert as soon as we go live. Just tap it—and you’re in!
💬 Live Q&A included—bring your questions!

Save your spot:
Join us on Substack Live - just enable notifications to get an alert when we go live. One tap, and you're in!

Can't make it?
The replay will be available to paid subscribers only. Subscribe to Green Behavior now to secure access to the full conversation.

Teen Vogue just dropped a series called Last Stop, exposing the hidden journey of our clothes and the realities of fashion waste. Alongside it, they made a public commitment to rethink how they cover fashion, integrating secondhand into shoots, calling out greenwashing, and reshaping how trends are presented to readers.

But making that pledge as a mainstream publication means navigating some real contradictions like advertising, affiliate links, brand partnerships…the same industry relationships that keep the lights on are the ones you're now holding accountable.

I sat down with Teen Vogue’s Style Director and author of Worn Out, Alyssa Hardy, to talk through what this pledge actually means in practice.

In this episode, we get into:

• How Teen Vogue is rethinking runway coverage and trend reporting

• Why secondhand and upcycling are becoming a bigger part of their editorial strategy

• The challenge of holding brands accountable while working within the constraints of the industry

• The role of media in shifting consumer behavior and how storytelling actually changes the way people think about what they buy

• What this shift means for the future of fashion media and whether other outlets will follow

In Partnership With OEKO-TEX

I talk a lot about perceived value—why it’s so important and how it drives consumers to pay more for certain products, especially in sustainability.

But what we haven’t talked about as much is why perceived value works so well: trust.

For consumers to pay the "green premium," they need to trust that a brand is authentic about its sustainability efforts and that the product is worth the investment—whether that’s because of its quality, style, emotional connection, or all of the above.

We often talk about trust in sustainability—how brands earn it, how they lose it, and how it shapes what people actually buy. But from a psychology perspective, trust is a cognitive shortcut—it saves us from having to closely scrutinize every detail and lets us feel confident that something (or someone) is reliable.

Take the cruelty-free label on a beauty product. We don’t whip out our phones to investigate the lab or call up the manufacturer to confirm no bunnies were harmed in the making of our mascara. That little stamp says it all—and we trust it, no questions asked.

In sustainability, where skepticism about greenwashing is rampant, trust is the ultimate dealbreaker. It allows people to skip the deep dive and feel good about choosing products or brands that align with their values.

That’s where certifications like OEKO-TEX come in. In a world of side-eyes and sustainability claims, certifications are designed to act as trust signals—reassuring shoppers that the product they’re buying actually aligns with their values.

But do certifications in sustainability really work? Do people actually trust them to guide their decisions? Are sustainability-related claims just sophisticated greenwashing?

In this episode of Green Behavior, I sit down with Ben Mead, Managing Director of Hohenstein Institute America, to dig into the role certifications play in fighting greenwashing and building consumer confidence. We explore what it takes to build trust in a sea of sustainability claims, why some brands are hesitant to talk about their efforts, and how certifications like OEKO-TEX can help bridge the gap between transparency and consumer skepticism."

What we talk about:

• How certifications like OEKO-TEX operate, their role in verifying claims, and how they add value to both consumers and brands by ensuring transparency and trust in sustainable products.

• The psychology behind consumer trust and decision-making, particularly in understanding how certifications and labels influence shopping habits and build credibility.

• Strategies for brands to authentically communicate sustainability efforts without fear of backlash, even when they aren't "perfect."

• How emerging technology, shifting regulations, and increasing consumer awareness are shaping the future of certifications, traceability, and global standards.

• The disconnect between consumers noticing certifications and actually understanding their significance.

Sidebar: If you have sensitive skin, eczema, or just want to be mindful of the chemicals in your clothes, this is the episode is for you!

Catch every episode of Green Behavior on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Thank you to OEKO-TEX for supporting me, the podcast, and bringing YOU a new episode of the Green Behavior podcast!

TL;DR — I'm hosting an IRL panel discussion at TexWorld New York on Tuesday, January 21st, at 2:30 PM ET, and you're invited! Register here and use code '20Off' for 20% off tickets.

In 2025, consumer behavior will continue to be defined by contradictions—a tug-of-war between values and actions.

The attitude-behavior gap—the disconnect between what consumers say they care about and what they actually do—has always been a challenge for brands in promoting sustainability.

Now, with rising living costs, inflation, layoffs, climate anxiety, and shifting cultural dynamics, this gap is only growing wider, making it harder than ever to align consumer behavior with sustainability goals.

People care about sustainability, but their values don’t exist in isolation.

Emotional drivers—like social validation, belonging, and identity—often take precedence, with only 11% of consumers ranking sustainability as a top factor in their purchasing decisions. From this perspective, it’s no surprise that brands are deprioritizing sustainability in 2025: only 18% of fashion executives rank it as a top-three risk to growth, down from 29% in 2024.

This tension is reflected in consumer behavior: they crave individuality but follow algorithm-driven trends that foster conformity.

They express fatigue with overconsumption, yet, despite sustainability concerns, the fast fashion market is projected to grow to $309.8 billion by 2033—not because of necessity, but because of the emotional and social fulfillment tied to shopping.

Digital influence adds another layer to this contradiction. Many claim they don’t trust influencers and champion movements like "de-influencing" and underconsumption core. Yet, platforms like LTK attract 40 million monthly users and generated $5 billion in consumer sales last year, while the influencer economy surged to $24 billion by the end of 2024. Over half of brands plan to increase creator budgets in 2025, showing that even as consumers claim to be "done" with influencers, their actions tell a different story—they’re still following and they’re still shopping.

At the same time, price sensitivity is growing. Rising living costs are forcing people to manage tighter budgets and prioritize affordability.

According to a recent First Insight survey, 62% of consumers rank price as the leading factor in their shopping decisions, while 57% of U.S. consumers worry about a recession, with Gen X leading at 65%. In response, 31% said they plan to focus on essentials like groceries and rent, while 52% indicated that rising costs, including tariffs, will significantly impact their purchasing behavior.

Yet, despite record-high credit card debt and personal savings rates dropping to a 10-year low of under 5%, consumers spent a record $241.4 billion online alone during the 2024 holiday season—an 8.7% increase from 2023.

People are still shopping—they’re just being more intentional about what they’re buying and what they perceive as “worth it.”

Fashion, in particular, transcends utility; it’s deeply connected to identity, self-expression, and connection. Even during economic uncertainty, people are willing to invest in pieces that allow them to tell a story about who they are or align with the values and trends they care about.

For example, according to Who What Wear, some of the best-selling fashion items of 2024 included higher-priced staples like The Frankie Shop Gaia Double Breasted Wool Long Coat ($495), ARKET Alpaca-Wool Blend Jumper ($119), Reformation Mason Pant (178), and Toteme Embroidered Scarf Jacket ($1,130), among others.

The takeaway: price sensitivity doesn’t stop people from paying for perceived value.

For some, this means items that signal identity or align with cultural trends. For others, it’s about durability and quality, transforming a purchase into a meaningful investment rather than a fleeting expense.

So, how do we make sustainability feel “worth it”?

As the effects of climate change grow increasingly visible, the urgency of this question becomes undeniable. Sustainability is no longer a distant or abstract ideal—it’s an integral part of how we secure our collective future.

Yet, when faced with uncertainty and crisis, people respond differently. For some, these challenges spark a desire to act. For others, they feel overwhelming, leading to comfort-seeking behaviors like retail therapy or compensatory consumption—a behavioral response where individuals make purchases to cope with negative emotions or feelings of stress, inadequacy, or lack of control—to regain a sense of perceived control.

But history shows that when the immediacy of a disaster fades, so does the urgency many people feel to prioritize sustainability. A clear example of this can be seen in the behavioral shifts after the COVID-19 pandemic.

A New York Times article perfectly illustrates this. Early in the pandemic, many people scaled back their spending, focusing on essentials and saving money as opportunities for discretionary spending—on dining, travel, and entertainment—dried up.

This period of reflection led some to question their consumption habits, with many realizing they didn’t need or want as much “stuff.” There was a renewed focus on experiences, minimalism, and value-driven choices.

However, over time, this cautious mindset began to shift. As people adjusted to life at home, they turned to "nesting" behaviors, indulging in purchases like home goods and candles to create a sense of comfort.

When restrictions lifted, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction, ushering in a wave of "revenge spending." Consumers splurged on experiences, fashion, and dining to make up for lost time, driven by a "you only live once" mindset sparked by the pandemic's stark reminder of life’s unpredictability.

While some expected their spending to return to pre-pandemic levels, many found that new habits—like impulsive buying and reliance on online shopping—persisted. The convenience of digital payment systems further reinforced this behavior, reducing the "pain of payment" and making transactions feel less tangible.

For brands, this underscores a critical challenge: sustainability can’t just be a crisis response. It has to feel relevant, valuable, and “worth it” every single day.

Ultimately, perceived value—not fear or guilt—will drive lasting behavior change. Sustainability must align with the emotional, social, and practical motivations that naturally shape consumer decisions.

So, how do we do that?

Amid rising living costs, inflation, layoffs, climate anxiety, and shifting cultural dynamics, how can we make sustainability a daily priority for consumers?

Last month, I teased the panel discussion I’m organizing and moderating for Texworld NYC as part of their Industry Insight Series.

Today, I’m thrilled to share the details!

Join me on January 21st at 2:30pm for an exclusive panel discussion at Texworld NYC! I’ll be joined by Zoë Richards, Director of PR at Rothy's, Clay Lute, Global Merchant at Calvin Klein, and Anna Keleher, Senior Advisor at Behavioral Insights Team to dive into some of the most pressing challenges and opportunities in sustainability.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• How brands are reshaping consumer perceptions of sustainability to drive sales and loyalty.

• How to position sustainability as a desirable investment for today’s cost-conscious consumers.

• How perceived value, social currency, and emotional rewards can bridge the gap between consumer intention and action.

• Actionable, psychology-based tactics to align consumer behavior with their stated values.

Attendees will leave with actionable insights on how to communicate the value of sustainability in ways that resonate with today’s consumers, answering the key question: how do we get consumers to pay for sustainability?

Snag 20% off tickets with code ‘20Off’!

See You There!

I spend a lot of time combing through industry news and unpacking the stories that explain where sustainable fashion is headed at the intersection of business, ethics, and innovation.

This week, two articles stood out to me: WWD’s “Luxury and Fast Fashion Are Creating Billionaires Galore” and Forbes’ “A Global ‘Billionaire Tax’ Could Make A Dent In Climate Finance.”

Together, they paint a stark picture of the fashion industry’s duality: massive wealth at the top, while the resources to tackle its environmental and social challenges are stretched thin and disproportionately distributed, leaving those most affected with the least support.

Luxury and fast fashion have positioned the fashion industry as the third-largest wealth-creating sector globally, following technology and finance. According to WWD, which references Achim Berg’s analysis of Forbes’ rich lists from 2000 to 2024, the combined wealth of 14 fashion billionaires has grown to $617 billion—a sharp increase from $51 billion in 2000.

Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH and Amancio Ortega, founder and former chairman of Inditex are among the biggest beneficiaries of this surge in wealth. Ortega, for example, saw his wealth grow by $20 billion in just six months, thanks in part to Zara.

But this wealth doesn’t come without trade-offs. The business models driving this profitability—marked by rapid production and high consumption—contribute to overproduction and environmental degradation.

And while luxury is often positioned as the antithesis of fast fashion, it’s far from immune. The same pressures for growth and profitability that drive fast fashion also impact luxury, though in subtler ways.

Luxury’s historical reliance on exclusivity, craftsmanship, and scarcity as markers of value has been significantly disrupted in recent years, particularly during and after the pandemic.

For luxury, the very principles that once set it apart—limited production, meticulous quality, and high perceived value—are now being questioned as overproduction, diluted exclusivity, and unsustainable practices threaten to erode its foundation.

At COP29, referred to as the "finance COP," the spotlight was on climate finance. According to the 2024 UN Emissions Gap report, the planet is on track for 3.1°C of warming by the end of the century, far more than the 1.5°C limit outlined in the Paris Agreement.

Climate-related disasters—floods, droughts, and hurricanes—are already impacting communities worldwide. In response, nations pledged $300 billion annually for climate finance at COP29. However, this amount has been widely criticized as not being enough.

For context, it’s less than half the combined wealth of the 14 fashion billionaires identified by Berg.

Fashion’s own decarbonization efforts show a similar gap between ambition and action. Supply chains account for around 70% of the industry’s emissions. According to the Apparel Impact Institute, transitioning to renewable energy and upgrading supply chain infrastructure will require $1 trillion in investments—resources that many suppliers don’t have.

While risk-sharing is often cited as a necessary step to create more resilient supply chains, this principle hasn’t been broadly implemented across the industry.

If you haven’t subscribed yet, this button is just for you ⤵️

Subscribe now

Initiatives like the Fashion Climate Fund, launched by the Apparel Impact Institute aim to provide suppliers with loan-based financing for decarbonization projects.

With $250 million in initial funding and plans to unlock up to $2 billion through blended financing, the goal of the fund is to support things like clean energy upgrades, improved efficiency, and tools to track impact. However, this approach poses challenges for smaller suppliers that may have limited access to credit or hesitate to take on debt without assurances of long-term contracts or price adjustments from brands.

Meanwhile, brands—which typically don’t own the factories they use to produce their goods—are testing collaborative solutions like the Future Supplier Initiative, facilitated by The Fashion Pact in collaboration with the Apparel Impact Institute, Guidehouse, and DBS Bank. This initiative underwrites supplier loans to support decarbonization projects and provides technical guidance to help suppliers identify and implement cost-effective solutions.

Launched with a pilot program in Bangladesh, the initiative already has the backing of brands like H&M Group, Bestseller, Gap Inc., and Mango, with plans to expand to other key manufacturing regions.

Again, while these efforts hold potential, they also raise questions about equitable access to financing and how responsibilities for decarbonization are distributed across the supply chain. Smaller suppliers, who often face the toughest barriers, risk being left out entirely unless brands commit to sharing the financial risks and making it easier for everyone—not just the biggest players—to participate.

These challenges aren’t confined to the fashion industry. Globally, the disconnect between concentrated wealth and the resources needed to tackle climate change has spurred conversations about broader solutions, including a proposed global billionaire tax introduced at this year’s G20 summit in Brazil.

According to Oxfam, the 50 richest individuals emit more carbon in three hours than the average Briton does over a lifetime. Yet billionaires currently pay an average of 0.3% of their wealth in taxes, and fewer than 10% have signed the Giving Pledge, a commitment to donate the majority of their wealth to society’s most pressing problems.

The idea of the billionaire tax, pushed by President Lula and backed by countries like France, Germany, and Spain, is to apply a 2% annual tax on billionaire wealth. If it moves forward, it could raise $250 billion a year from fewer than 3,000 people worldwide, with the funds going toward tackling poverty, hunger, and climate change.

Advocates argue that the tax is a meaningful way to address systemic inequities, requiring those who have gained the most from wealth generation to contribute more significantly to solving global challenges. However, while experts say it could work in theory, political pushback and logistical challenges make it a tough idea to put into practice.

The conversation around fashion’s billionaires, climate finance gaps, and the challenges of decarbonizing supply chains points to a deeper issue: this isn’t just an environmental crisis—it’s a crisis of priorities.

I’ll be honest—I struggled with how to wrap this up in a way that didn’t feel like fluff or a massive ‘duh’ moment.

It’s easy to say CEOs and leaders need to take more responsibility, but will they? And it’s just as easy to throw out vague solutions like, 'we need to collaborate more' or 'we need systemic change.'

But the biggest challenge isn’t identifying solutions—it’s creating the conditions where these solutions are possible and overcoming the systemic barriers that prevent these solutions from being implemented.

It’s hard not to feel discouraged when the responsibility for sustainability so often falls on those with the least power to change the system.

But maybe that’s the point.

The two articles that sparked this conversation underscore a fundamental imbalance. On one hand, we have an industry that generates massive fortunes at the top, while on the other, we face a funding gap so massive it threatens to derail meaningful climate action.

The challenge isn’t just about identifying solutions like the proposed billionaire tax or collaborative financing models—it’s about creating the structural conditions where these solutions are actually possible.

It’s about reshaping the priorities of an industry that has long rewarded growth and profit at the expense of sustainability and equity.

Responsibility is too often pushed onto those with the least power to shoulder it—suppliers, sustainability teams with limited budgets, or the individuals tasked with solving systemic challenges without systemic support.

Meanwhile, those with the resources to drive real change—whether that’s brands, CEOs, or billionaires—rarely face accountability.

So where do we go from here?

The conversation needs to move beyond identifying the problem and into asking harder questions: How do we shift incentives at the top? How do we ensure resources are equitably distributed across the supply chain? And how do we support the people on the ground who are already doing the work, often against impossible odds?

I don’t have all the answers—because, honestly, no one does.

The solutions feel fragmented, slow, and sometimes downright impossible. Policies that enforce accountability, public pressure that disrupts the status quo, and collective action that moves beyond empty promises—all of these sound good, but how do we make them happen? That’s the harder question.

What I do know is that sitting with this discomfort is part of the process.

The system isn’t broken; it’s functioning exactly as it was designed—to prioritize profit over people and the planet. So, the work isn’t just about patching the cracks; it’s about dismantling and rebuilding entirely.

It’s overwhelming, but maybe that’s the point: if the scale of the problem makes you uncomfortable, then you’re paying attention. And if enough of us stay uncomfortable, maybe we’ll create the conditions where change—real, messy, systemic change—becomes possible.

Because waiting for billionaires to save us? That’s a fantasy the planet—can’t afford.