Nature is becoming fashion’s most underpriced risk

As fashion week rolls through New York, London, Milan, and Paris, buyers and editors are working out where the money will go for spring/summer 2027.

But behind the catwalks, the people who actually make those collections are watching something less reassuring. Almost every material the industry runs on, from cotton and wool to leather and cashmere, depends on ecosystems that are increasingly under pressure from drought, land degradation, and changing weather.

Nature loss has long been perceived by the fashion industry as an environmental or reputational issue. The uncomfortable truth is that it is a supply chain one.

We have seen where this leads. Coffee is the most recent warning. Drought across Brazil and Vietnam, the two largest producers, cut harvests and drove wholesale prices to their highest in decades, forcing roasters worldwide to raise prices and take the rest on their own margins.

That is what a nature-dependent supply chain looks like when disturbed.

Fashion has not had its coffee moment yet, but the same pressures are building. Cotton is the clearest case. Around 73 percent of the world's cotton is already grown with irrigation, and warming means it needs more water as water grows scarcer, according to Climate Copernicus.

Cashmere, wool, cellulosics, and leather carry versions of the same exposure, facing declining ecosystem resilience, reduced productivity, and greater price volatility. The Apparel Impact Institute estimates that, on current trends, apparel brands could take a hit of more than 30 percent to profit margins by 2030 as climate and nature loss drive up disruption and cost.

Majority of companies are yet to finalise a nature stratgey

So why, given all this, has fashion been so slow to act? Part of it is that nature tends to live with the sustainability team, cut off from the sourcing, design, and buying decisions that actually set a brand's exposure.

And while those teams may possess detailed impact data, broken down by material and region, little of it translates into a clear "so what" for the boardroom.

When nature does reach the boardroom, it competes with store openings and margin protection; filed as important, but not urgent. Research by Biodiversify and the Nature & Biodiversity Peer Group found that, among companies already engaged on the issue, nearly three-quarters have yet to finalise a nature strategy.

What moves them off that spot is rarely more evidence, but rather, a change in language. Nature should be spoken about in the way the business already talks: in supply resilience, cost exposure, regulatory readiness, and brand value.

Different decision-makers need different entry points. The CFO hears margin risk in volatile material prices, the sourcing lead sees it in suppliers clustered in stressed regions, risk and legal in disclosure rules that keep shifting, and the brand in the credibility of its green claims.

None of this needs perfect data or a finished strategy. It just needs a start, and the brands making headway tend to do three things.

They start narrow, on one commodity where the risk is already visible, using free tools like the WWF Risk Filter before the fuller frameworks like the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) or the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN). They make it tangible for commercial teams, through plain language, or a site visit that shows rather than tells. And they build ownership beyond sustainability, appointing champions across procurement, finance, and risk to fold nature into everyday decisions.

A few are already doing it. Kering is among the first to set validated science-based targets for nature, committing to no ecosystem conversion in its leather supply chains and a smaller agricultural land footprint. That is what it looks like to treat nature as a core strategic issue rather than a reporting exercise.

Fashion can no longer treat nature as optional. The brands that turn these risks into better decisions, stronger supply chains, and more resilient business models will pull ahead, while those still treating it as a reporting exercise will spend the next decade managing shocks their competitors saw coming.

Fashion is among the most visible industries in the world, yet among the most exposed to what is happening in the natural one. Its future will be decided less by what it sends down the catwalk than by whether it sustains the materials to keep doing so.