Goals and progress
Environment | Our program in action
Green product design
Location: North America
Summary: Earth-friendly fashion won’t happen overnight, but it will happen, says Banana Republic’s VP for Design. She’s excited by the possibilities — and determined to create clothes that are not just sustainable, but also chic and reasonably priced.
Alessandra Brunialti, vice-president for Design and Product Development at Banana Republic, has heard people in the fashion world say that if clothes can’t be 100 percent earth-friendly, why bother? She takes a different view. Her mantra is “greener, one step at a time.”
To her, every day brings a new opportunity to push further, experimenting with fabrics, dyes and processes, and working to strike the right balance between style, price and environmental impact. Ever the optimist, Brunialti is helping to set the vision for Gap Inc.’s progress in sustainable design.
“If we don’t start small, we’ll never get there,” she says. “There’s a chance to plant positive seeds that could potentially grow into bigger ideas. We’re just at the beginning.”
Born in Rome, Brunialti says she’s long had an interest in how we use natural resources. She launched Banana Republic’s Heritage Collection for women last summer, diving deep into research about emerging materials. The collection featured silk made from soy and also incorporated hemp and organic cotton.
It can be challenging, Brunialti notes, to maintain the same standards for style and price while pushing to become more sustainable. For instance, using a higher percentage of organic cotton led to a dulling of color, and a high-quality “eco-merino” wool proved to be too expensive.
“If we alienate the consumer with too high a price point, she’ll lose interest,” Brunialti says. It’s a balancing act of trying to do the right thing and keeping things viable for our market. That’s been my passion. I pushed the designers and said, ‘Let’s try to make this really accessible.’” Brunialti was excited to strike that balance with the Heritage Collection, which looks great and has been embraced by consumers. “It’s not by any means an earthy, crunchy line,” she says.
In the future, she hopes for innovation across Gap Inc.’s brands — such as Gap and Old Navy — noting that, together, they may be able to influence industry trends because of their large scale. Meanwhile, she and her team are exploring designs using recycled paper and hemp fiber. She hopes to create a committee to look at everything from design details to packaging, marketing and selling in stores.
“There are so many small choices, like where does a shell button come from?” she says. “Do we have a hang tag? Is it recycled paper? Every day is a new challenge. It’s really fun and exciting. I feel proud to take something like this forward.”
