Tommy Hilfiger has urged the fashion industry to "do the right thing" and embrace "sustainability".
Tommy Hilfiger
The 68-year-old designer has warned that brands won't survive beyond the next two or three years if they don't start adopting a more eco-conscious approach to manufacture.
He said: "I think that we have to as an industry do the right thing for society. And I really believe that upcycling and recycling, making fabrics out of plastics and cleaning the oceans is our duty to the world and to ourselves. Sustainability is something that every brand has to embrace.
"Because in two to three years if a brand is not sustainable, it will be out of business...
"I really believe that there are some businesses and some companies that are awake and some that are not. We are very woke."
For the new TommyXLewisXH.E.R. capsule collection, over 75 per cent of the range "features sustainable elements" and the designer explained his approach to denim, shunning the typical dying process which uses thousands of litres of water for just one pair of jeans.
He said: "All of the denim is sustainable, recycled, upcycled, we're washing with lasers instead of water, we've been doing it for over five years."
And the brand are planning to make even more changes to help the environment.
Tommy added in an interview with the Independent.co.uk: "We're also looking at different ways of everything from packaging to using recycled yarns to using vintage and upcycling a lot of what would normally go to landfill.
"So, it's a big project but we would like to be leaders in it and we're taking it very seriously."
In September 2016, the brand adopted a see-now-buy-now business model and though it's required some major changes, Tommy is proud of how successful it's been.
He said: "It is very complicated to do, because you have to change your entire way of doing business, your entire design calendar, supply chain, but we've had great success with it.
"People want immediate gratification. They see it on the runway, they want to buy it and wear it the next day. They don't want to wait six months. By the time six months goes by, they may be tired of it, they may have moved onto something else.
"So, my philosophy has been to always listen to the consumer."
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