THE INFRASTRUCTURE THE SECTOR ALWAYS NEEDED

FPC began as a quiet frustration. Producers were being asked to solve challenges they had no role in shaping. The issue wasn’t a lack of ideas. It was a lack of infrastructure. This is the story of how we turned backchannel conversations into something real.

Fashion’s sustainability architecture has historically excluded the perspectives of producers. Strategies are designed by people removed from day-to-day manufacturing and handed down to those expected to implement them, with little regard for how they play out on the ground.

Over time, this created a familiar pattern. Manufacturers met in group chats, back rooms, and side conversations, asking the same questions. Why are we expected to implement solutions we did not help design? Where is the space to think and act together?

The problem was not a lack of motivation. It was a lack of infrastructure.

FPC was created to meet that need.

Not as a representative body. Not as a campaign. But as a structure producers could use. A structure that lets them propose work, shape priorities, and participate on their own terms.

Most efforts to engage manufacturers come too late. They ask for feedback on solutions that are already defined and framed through a lens that manufacturers may not share. The result is a disconnect. It is not that producers are unwilling to engage. It is that they were not given the chance to shape the starting point.

And even when they do engage, the question is whether their input will influence anything. Who is making the decisions? Is the process transparent? Is there accountability? Without answers to those questions, participation becomes a risk. Input may be used to legitimize a decision the manufacturer does not agree with.

We are not trying to speak for producers. We are creating the conditions for producers to speak for themselves. And to shape the systems they are being asked to carry.