Spearheaded by The Fashion Pact, a not-for-profit organization, the European Accelerator brings together leading fashion groups and houses including CHANEL, Ermenegildo Zegna Group, Kering, Moncler Group and Prada Group to drive forward collective action aimed at lowering emissions, boosting resource efficiency and building long-term resilience in fashion supply chains.

The name ‘European Accelerator’ reflects the initiative’s initial focus on supply chains in Europe as it is the geographical base for the participating brands. Over time, the Accelerator will expand its scope to support supply chains across other regions.

The Accelerator currently includes leading fashion groups and houses including CHANEL, Ermenegildo Zegna Group, Kering, Moncler Group and Prada Group.

Beginning in Italy, the Accelerator is structured around three interconnected workstreams that aim to accelerate supply chain decarbonisation.

Firstly, the Accelerator is working to engage the luxury fashion industry around an optional and non-exhaustive questionnaire for suppliers on relevant environmental data, aiming to strengthen the quality and consistency of environmental metrics while easing the administrative burden of reporting on suppliers.

The Accelerator will then aim to increase capacity-building efforts among suppliers, and to identify opportunities for efficiency improvements and renewable energy uptake.

Recognising that finance remains one of the most significant hurdles for suppliers to progress, the Accelerator will also work to open pathways for suppliers to access the investment needed to adopt cleaner technologies and drive long-term transformation.

The participating brands recognised that varying reporting requirements were creating unnecessary complexity for suppliers, and particularly for SMEs. By working on a template set of questions, they aim to promote clarity, reduce the administrative burden of reporting on suppliers, and enable more meaningful environmental progress across the fashion supply chain.

Through this work, the Accelerator hopes to make the process of environmental data collection more efficient, improve data quality, and potentially improve response rates from suppliers.

The template questionnaire has been harmonised by reviewing – via The Fashion Pact and Quantis and in full compliance with all applicable rules – each brand’s individual questionnaires and identifying the essential shared elements, ensuring that the resulting tool reflects the key environmental aspects needed, so that it is suitable for use across all brands involved.  Essentially, it is a set of relevant questions the answers to which will help the entire supply chain in its journey towards decarbonisation.

The questionnaire covers generic, objective and critical environmental aspects relevant to leather and textile supply chains, such as:

• Energy consumption
• Waste management
• Water consumption

Each brand will deploy the questionnaire in their preferred format.

The questionnaire will be updated by a technical committee, to ensure it is up to date with the latest regulations and best practice. In alignment with its initial development, the update process will continue to ensure that the tool evolves collaboratively and remains relevant to the sector’s shared ambition.

The Accelerator is open to any brand that is a member of The Fashion Pact and whose supply chain has a nexus to Italy.

To join the Accelerator, the brand needs to agree to active participation, meaning actively participating in group meetings and including the harmonised template of questions as a basis  in its reporting operations.

However, any brand can adopt the questionnaire, which is openly available.

There is no requirement, and the questionnaire is provided free of charge. Brands are encouraged not to edit the data points (other than filling them out) and may not resell, or host it on other websites or platforms without prior written permission from The Fashion Pact.

Adoption refers to how the brands involved will use the questionnaire. Each brand is free to implement and distribute the questionnaire according to its own internal procedures, including preferred timing, methods, and format (e.g. Excel). By choosing to use the questionnaire, brands are encouraged not to alter any of the questions. The questionnaire is not exhaustive and brands may therefore add questions or data points.

No, the questionnaire is free of charge.