By Kahina – @The CFO Diary
Image courtesy: Getty Image
We live in an era where the same houses preaching mindfulness launch ten new collections a year. Where #ConsciousChoice trends beside #NewIn. Where “responsibility” has become fashion’s most elegant accessory, easy to wear and easier to drop.
The call for conscious fashion is real. But the harder question is accountability. Who carries the burden of change first: the industry that engineers desire, or the consumers who fuel it through clicks, unboxing, and dopamine-driven novelty?
Recent headlines tell us where priorities lie. Burberry quietly cut its global head of diversity in a restructuring move. Proof that conscience is often the first cost-saving measure. Meanwhile, giants like LVMH and Chanel continue to expand, diversify, and communicate at full volume. Responsibility exists, but growth remains the real religion.
The Chanel 25 bag became an instant icon. Waiting lists formed before most women even saw it in person. Conscious initiatives coexist with campaigns calibrated to make us buy more, not less. And even the most mindful among us rarely consume less, only differently. I plead guilty. I might buy better, but always more.
A hundred billion garments are produced each year. A truckload of clothes is burned or buried every second. Yet the only fire we feel is the dopamine hit when the package arrives, filmed, tagged, shared. The unboxing isn’t content; it’s conditioning.
Brands know it. That “forgot something?” email when you abandon your cart, the retargeted ad that follows you across apps, the countdown clock whispering three items left. None of it is coincidence. It’s behavioral design. Novelty releases dopamine, the same chemical that drives addiction. Every scroll, every “new drop,” every little red notification is a system engineered to override long-term thinking.
Entire livelihoods depend on this loop. The influencer economy thrives on excess; the algorithm rewards abundance. Unboxing has become a business model built on overconsumption. The real war for conscious fashion isn’t about carbon or cotton. It’s about who controls desire. Luxury houses have perfected the cultural engineering of aspiration. They decide what we celebrate: novelty, accumulation, display. Until desire is rewired, responsibility will always be traded away.
Maybe the new flex isn’t the unboxing but the reboxing — showing a piece five years later and still proud. Maybe repair should be luxury, not compromise: Bouguessa’s repair program, Bottega Veneta’s lifetime guarantee. Maybe capsule wardrobes should be the new privilege. Owning less, but better. These shifts don’t erase the dopamine; they redirect it from the thrill of acquisition to the pride of endurance.
Some voices are beginning to push back. British influencer Lydia Millen, once famous for her Hermès collection, sold her bags and returned to her first Mulberry heirloom. She now collaborates with Fairfax & Favor, a brand built on heritage and longevity. A small act, maybe, but proof that conscious fashion can be aspirational without being performative.
Yes, consumers can become more literate. Measuring cost per wear instead of sticker price, embracing pre-loved pieces as status, demanding transparency from brands. But as long as quarterly growth remains fashion’s North Star, enlightenment alone won’t undo systemic excess. Conscious fashion, in its current form, is incompatible with an industry designed for endless expansion.
Policy can set boundaries where goodwill can’t. France now bans the destruction of unsold stock and offers repair bonuses covering up to sixty percent of costs. The EU’s Digital Services Act outlaws manipulative “dark patterns,” those fake scarcity banners and guilt-trip pop-ups designed to push us back to checkout. If cars are capped on carbon and banks on capital ratios, why not fashion on waste? The tools exist; what’s missing is the will to use them.
Earlier this month, the European Parliament voted to relax sustainability-reporting and due-diligence rules, narrowing their scope to fewer companies and simplifying disclosure requirements. The move, framed as “business-friendly,” exposes how even well-meaning regulation bends toward corporate comfort when profit is at stake.
Meanwhile, the Gulf is writing a different narrative. In the UAE, Chalhoub is piloting circular retail models and regional recycling initiatives. Chalhoub Group has committed to reach Net Zero by 2040.
Panels and industry voices will keep urging us to buy more consciously, and they’re right to. But the bigger truth is structural: nothing in the system is designed to help us buy less. Every reminder, every algorithm, every collection drop is tuned to make us spend more.
The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed. The question is whether we have the courage, or the will, to redesign desire itself.
