MILAN — Framing its efforts, investments and commitment to sustainability, luxury menswear label Canali is debuting Care, an umbrella program grouping all its eco- and responsibility-minded initiatives.
“It’s about providing an organic vision for our sustainability initiatives and strengthening what we’ve been doing for many years now” said Canali chairman and chief executive officer Stefano Canali. “It felt right now because we’re accelerating the pace and because sustainability is part of our identity.”
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In 2021 the company embraced the Life Cycle Assessment-based Organization Environmental Footprint, or OEF, methodology that required the company to assess its footprint across 16 indicators from cradle to gate, meaning from sourcing through retail, and including eco-toxicity, the consumption of water and fossil-based resources, land exploitation, logistics and retail operations.
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The initiative speaks to Canali’s vision on doing business responsibly. “We aimed for a coherent approach… we believe that sustainability needs to be measured to avoid greenwashing; it’s all about a rigorous and righteous approach,” he said.
The brand also conducted a PEF, or Product Environmental Footprint, analysis to add a further layer, such as the footprint ascribable to product use and end of life.
Both assessments fall in line with European Union recommendations on the evaluation of products’ footprints, making the choice all the more reasonable, according to Canali.
“They [OEF and PEF] are free of conflicts of interest and they’ll be implemented by the European Union in the coming years for local governments to measure the environmental impact of products and organizations, so they’ll dictate the rules of the game. To this end I think selecting a third-party tool poised to become a regulatory asset… was a farsighted move,” he said.
Measuring its products’ PEF up- and downstream through its supply chain, Canali managed to cover 59 percent of its assortment, mainly jackets and coats, crafted from solid, striped and checkered wool across three different weights. “It’s a strong and representative sample,” Canali said.
“The PEF analysis demonstrates that the sartorial manufacturing of our products made from high-quality textiles, and alterable by design, are more durable,” he said. Canali’s durability score stands on the upper end of the range set by the PEF assessment, he explained.
Durability is among the guiding principles of Canali’s fashion proposition, and it comes with an eco-benefit, too, spreading the overall footprint of each garment across multiple years, thus reducing the annual footprint by almost 50 percent compared to the average. In making the evaluation, the menswear company estimated a jacket is used 167 times over eight years and a suit 142 times over seven years.
“It also contributes to advancing the Made in Italy notion, which is not only about high quality and style but also environmental sustainability,” in addition to caring for people, he said.
The PEF assessment revealed that 67 percent of Canali products’ footprint can be traced back to raw materials, hence the brand’s pledge toward circularity.
“For us it’s been about sourcing textiles that combine the beauty, preciousness of virgin raw material with recycled or organic fibers,” Canali said, pointing out for example Care, a capsule debuted for fall 2023 produced using high-quality certified organic or recycled fabrics.
The executive is also adamant about the need for suppliers to boost their research and development into innovation, acknowledging that next-gen and more sustainable fibers per se may represent the obvious solution in the longer term. He sees sustainability as much as an ethical duty as a business tool to increase competitiveness and hopes textile makers will jump onboard.
Asked about expanding the quota of PEF-assessed garments in the range, the executive noted that, as per the assessment method, products need to be consistently manufactured through the years with little to no variance, hence the focus on core garments.
His answer to that was OEF, which “analyzes everything Canali does, triggering the company to look at the overall impact and [develop] initiatives that can enhance it,” he said.
In most recent years they included installing LED lighting at five of its plants and photovoltaic systems at its headquarters in Sovico in Lombardy, as well as at plants in Filottrano and Gissi, in the Marche and Abruzzo regions, respectively; a pledge to source electricity from renewable sources in one year’s time, thus reducing its direct emissions by 50 percent; ensuring its packaging is made up of 70 percent recycled materials, as well as implementing logistics choices to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Stepping up its circularity efforts, the brand has also been rolling out repair-and-restore services at its flagships, providing alterations and maintenance to further push back the products’ end of life. Canali is also a founding member of the Sistema Moda Italia-backed Retexgreen consortium tackling fashion products’ end of life in compliance with the 2018 European Union mandate on EPR, the extended producer responsibility.
He did not disclose the financial resources earmarked to Canali’s sustainable advancement each year, beyond saying that “investments are thoughtfully considered in light of their economic impact,” but are always taken considering the mid- and long-term eco-benefits.
The next steps in Canali’s green journey are OEF-compliant and geared at reducing its overall footprints. The CEO didn’t rule out embracing new certifications in the future but insisted that they will be selected based on their institutional relevance.
Counting 1,500 employees globally, Canali also highlighted the company’s commitment toward people and employees, which entails such initiatives as ongoing training programs and welfare measures, including a 400-euro bonus allocated to two thirds of its workforce in 2022. Through its nonprofit Fondazione Canali Onlus, set up in 2013, the company actively supports projects geared at education, health care and social issues.