fashion: Social accountability fashion

Trust is a key component of luxury.

Trust is made up of two key elements-- transparency and the ethics underneath what you do, how you do business. Transparency is driven today by a few key factors. One-- social media. What a company does, what happens, can be known within seconds around the world. And we see an example of that this year where companies have acted a certain way toward a customer, and their stock price has even been impacted within hours. That's how fast the speed of social media is today. Also we have rising expectations of consumers for companies to act responsibly, to be more environmentally responsible, to take care of the people in their supply chain, to guard human rights.

To take all this in consideration when you're doing business. And lastly, laws. Laws are changing. We see new laws-- the Modern Slavery Act in the UK. We see the Devoir de Vigilance-- the Duty of Care-- in France. And before that we had the California Transparent Supply Chain Act that's been around for a few years now, providing a model for these other laws to draw on. With these three forces, transparency is becoming the new normal. And for companies, whether they're in luxury or any other industry, it's really important that we communicate using this new transparency in a positive way to help inform consumers better and to help transform the industry.

Historically, transparency has been about risk management, but now it's about much more. It's about how you relate to your customers, how you relate to your investors. It's the new normal. And this kind of radical transparency is a powerful force of transformation. Transparency provides a window into the decisions that you and I make every day, and it's those decisions that make the basis of trust.

Ethics is the way we do business every day. It's decision that you and I make that actually create the fabric of a business that really matter. Transparency provides an-- if you want-- a magnifier effect of that. But in fact, it's something that we've thought about for a long time at Kering. We've had a code of ethics for many years, and have endeavoured to make sure that everyone understands and applies that code. But what's that mean to you and me? One, we have a duty to know. In other words, we should know what the right actions are, what the impacts are of the decision. So that's tools like the environmental profit loss.

That's using frameworks like the UN Guiding Principles on Human Rights. It's really taking time to understand issues and understand the impacts of decisions that you can insure, then, that you're making the right decision that is not going to create negative consequences for the environment or people. So what's important to bear in mind is in the new age of transparency, everything that we do matters. Not just because our stakeholders may see it, our customers may see it, but because we see it. And our values are that we're supporting the environment, supporting people, caring for the planet, and empowering people as part of the way we do business.