Vila

How sustainable is Vila Clothes?

Best­sel­ler is a Danish fami­ly-owned clo­thing brand that has grown into a fast fashion giant since its foun­ding in 1975. The com­pa­ny employs over 41,000 people and offers its four­teen brands in over 5,300 stores in 43 coun­tries. With such a big name in the indus­try, comes a big res­pon­si­bi­li­ty. It’s very unfor­tu­nate that this res­pon­si­bi­li­ty is not being taken at the moment. The mother com­pa­ny offers a sus­tai­na­bi­li­ty report that covers all of its near­ly 20 brands. This report is main­ly filled with frag­men­ted infor­ma­tion about what spe­ci­fic brands do well, but lacks a gene­ral repre­sen­ta­tion of how the per­for­mance of either the mother com­pa­ny or the indi­vi­dual brands on sus­tai­nable prac­tises. This makes it near­ly impos­sible to gain insight into how the com­pa­ny is doing and what it is actual­ly imple­men­ting. The com­pa­ny has made small steps like imple­men­ting a Code of Conduct to ensure basic labor rights and publi­shing a list of sup­pliers. But infor­ma­tion about its car­bon foot­print, mate­rial sour­cing, wor­kers’ rights or ani­mal wel­fare is most­ly mis­sing.

When a brand offers no infor­ma­tion, there are seve­ral risks you take as a consu­mer. For example, the cli­mate impact of that par­ti­cu­lar brand or pro­duct can be much higher com­pa­red to indus­try peers. The com­pa­ny might use cer­tain harm­ful che­mi­cals or there might be ani­mals or humans har­med for the manu­fac­tu­ring of the pro­duct. For these rea­sons, we believe that you should be aware of how pro­ducts are pro­du­ced and how a com­pa­ny as a whole ope­rates in regard to our pillars. When there are no reports, you are at risk of sup­por­ting some or more of the harm­ful condi­tions men­tio­ned above.