Fashion’s detrimental environmental impact should not be news to any of us. However, what is perhaps not so well known is how clothing impacts the soil upon which we all depend.

Soil is miraculous. It contains more than three times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and four times the amount stored in all living plants and animals. Each year, soil removes about 25 per cent of the world’s fossil fuel emissions and sequesters it underground… Because almost half the land that can support plant life on Earth has been converted to croplands, pastures and rangelands, soils have actually lost 50 to 70 per cent of the carbon they once held.

Brands big and small have started to sit up and pay attention. The North Face, Burberry, Timberland, Patagonia, Stella McCartney and Eileen Fisher have all invested in regenerative agriculture. The Kering luxury group, whose houses include Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen, was a co-founder of the Regenerative Fund for Nature, aimed at adopting regenerative practices across one million hectares of crop and rangelands.

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