6 Women Shaping Sustainability In China’s Fashion Sector

China’s commitment to green development is vital to the global climate transition. Despite having committed to net zero emissions by 2060, it remains the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal and a major consumer of oil and gas—which accounts for a third of global carbon emissions. But change is on the horizon. Total CO2 emissions are expected to peak around 2025. And each country has a different road map in this development according to 2023’s Circularity Gap Report.

The government has a crucial role to play in preventing the climate crisis. Marketing agency Daxue Consulting argues that citizens (and consumers) are showing a growing interest in ethical practices and responsible retailing, and that this reflects a gradual increase overall in the awareness of the concept in the domestic fashion market. “While sustainability is not yet fully mainstream, this changing landscape has paved the way for the emergence of successful sustainable leaders in fashion,” Allison Mallon explained.

In a recent report, Daxue predicts that growth in China’s fashion industry will be especially notable in sustainable design and production. Such trends will be “crucial to the modern urban Chinese identity: and will eventually be seen as “sophisticated,” Malmsten continued in a correspondence. “We expect that easy-green consumption will become widespread, motivated by government requirements for green stamps and certifications on products in an effort to reach the Carbon Neutral 2060 goal.”

As China heads towards 2025, here are some of the women helping to shape the sustainability agenda in China — from disrupters, to brands, to researchers in editorial, influencing, and advocacy.

Shaway Ye

Shaway Yeh is one of China’s key opinion leaders or KOLs on fashion and culture. In 2017 Yeh founded Yehyehyeh, a consultancy combining sustainability, innovation, and creativity to instigate value-based change. It offers creative solutions and communication services to brands and institutions globally including the Copenhagen Fashion Summit—where she is a regular speaker, the Green Carpet Fashion Award, and the Kering Generation Award. Ye obtained Harvard’s Corporate Sustainability and Innovation Graduate Certificate in 2019.

Her annual Shanghia-based event Shan Future Forum brings thinkers, creatives, entrepreneurs, and innovators together to discuss major issues. Previous speakers have come from Louis Vuitton, Diesel, and the Alibaba Group. In October 2023, it foregrounded rewilding and circularity and 4 million viewers watched on SHFW’s digital Douyin channel. Prior to founding her agency, Yeh was the group style editorial director of Modern Media Group—one of China’s most influential lifestyle publications.

Jinqing Cai

Jinqing Cai has served as the president of Kering Greater China since 2018. In December of that year, the Kering Generation Award was founded in China. Designed as one of the key initiatives for innovation under Kering’s 2025 Sustainability Strategy, it aims to drive industry-wide transformation by recognizing and supporting Chinese startups that bring about positive environmental and social impact, and address challenges in alternative raw materials, green supply chain, retail and use, and the circular economy. Previous award-winning startups and well-known companies such as Icicle and Erdos have joined to contribute case studies.

In February 2024, Kering, together with Tsinghua University and Institut Français de la Mode launched a Practices Massive Open Online Course (MOOC): Fashion Sustainability—Global Perspectives and China Practices. The free course is open to individuals passionate about sustainable fashion alongside university students worldwide. Cai also serves as the Vice President of Teach for China, a non-profit organization focusing on educational inequality throughout China.

Wang Zhen

Since 2006, Wang Zhen has worked across a number of roles at the Erdos Group—one of the largest producers of cashmere. She is now the group president, helming the conglomerate as it embeds sustainability in every aspect of the supply chain—from goat rearing, green production, and designing to cashmere apparel manufacturing and retailing. The group was the first enterprise in China to obtain The Good Cashmere Standard ® (GCS ®) Certification and operates under the SFA x ICCAW Cashmere Goat Welfare Code of Practice. In 2022, it launched Erdos Eco Ranch whichdemonstrates a determination to protect and develop high-quality cashmere resources while preserving grasslands and enhancing ecosystems.

As an advocate for women in business, Wang has acted as the 13th Executive Committee Member of the All-China Women’s Federation and was selected as one of the Most Influential Businesswomen in China by media platform Fortune.

Dr. Christina Dean

For 17 years, Dr. Christina Dean has been a circular fashion advocate at the forefront of the sustainable fashion movement. She founded Redress, the Hong Kong-headquartered Asia-focused NGO accelerating the transition to a circular system in 2007. Four years later, it launched The Redress Design Award in Hong Kong, putting sustainable design talent in the global spotlight. 10 years later, Dean founded the social impact business The R Collective which rescues, reuses, and recycles luxury textile waste, using supply chains in China and Hong Kong.

Throughout her career, Dean has worked with multi-stakeholders along the fashion value chain, globally and with a particular expertise in Asia, establishing partnerships and projects with government, academia, and companies including VF Corporation and Net-a-Porter among others. Named a Global Visionary by UBS, she’s a regular speaker at global conferences and her TEDx talks have been widely viewed.

Song Youyang

Based in Berlin, Youyang Song is a textile designer passionate about biomaterial research and sustainable development. Her practice is based upon the research and design of innovative biodegradable materials, the development of materials production technologies, and the design of related products.

Song is the founder of Peelsphere, a material innovation company with the aim of solving the material waste problem by engineering the future generation of biomaterials that are 100 per cent biodegradable circular material. In 2021, Peelsphere won the first prize at Kering’s European accelerator Plug and Play – Fashion for Good and earned a German Green Design Award. Song has been selected for the Green Women Power 100 in 2021.

Bonnie Chen

Former model Bonnie Chen from Nanjing is fresh from her new role as a China Sustainability Project Initiator at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Launched this year, the global project will travle to Venice and on to Shenzhen in the coming months and see Chen move on from her pure fahsion background. Previously, she worked for brands like Louis Vuitton, Giorgio Armani, and Gucci and she was the first Asian face to appear in American Vogue. In 2023, she acted as a Voices of Fashion China speaker for Vogue China. In the same year, she was a sustainability ambassador at Shenzhen Fashion Week and a judge of The Redress Design Award.

Chen uses her substantial social media channels — from Weibo:@陈碧舸Bonnie where she has 2.5 million followers to her Xiaohongshu platform (陈碧舸Bonnie) which numbers 100,0000— to advocate for green issues. Concurrent to her fashion work, Chen has been actively involved in social causes since 2012, when she founded children’s mental health foundation Star Bunny Love. It raising funds for autistic children through charity flea markets, fashion shoots, and exhibitions.