Fashion Pact names Óscar García Maceiras of Inditex as steering committee co-chair

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

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

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

Several retail groups and apparel manufacturers are also part of the consortium, which includes a number of major industry players, and whose mission is to share ideas and solutions on environmental issues. Last year, Fashion Pact’s stated objectives were to “play a role in launching and developing innovative solutions, in using these solutions to take concrete action on a large scale, and in transforming the entire supply chain to significantly reduce the industry’s environmental footprint.”

Fashion Pact focuses on shared tools and common benchmarks with regards to issues like fighting climate change, preserving biodiversity and safeguarding the oceans. Its critics consider these pledges as vague, underlining the lack of binding commitments by Fashion Pact’s members, and the low degree of transparency of their actions.

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

“As founding members of the Fashion Pact in 2019, we at Inditex, along with our fellow pact members, are committed to contributing to a net-zero and nature-positive fashion industry,” wrote García Maceiras in his June 10 post on LinkedIn. “Now, we must do more to drive innovative solutions and materials that help make fashion circular, reduce environmental impact, and create positive outcomes for water, biodiversity, and climate,” he added.

He will undoubtedly be taken at his word by NGOs and consumers who are paying close attention to the industry’s pledges.