The True Cost of Fashion

You are the creative director of a growing fashion label. Every product forces trade-offs across five dimensions: environmental pressure, worker wellbeing, circular design, traceability and profit. The objective is not to maximise one score in isolation, but to build a viable collection that accounts for the costs commonly hidden from the price tag.

The classroom sprint includes 18 decisions and works well as an introduction. The full supply-chain challenge includes all 36 decisions and ends with a printable socio-environmental report card and a complete decision audit.

The game uses short, classroom-friendly fact cards. The statements are intentionally concise and should be read alongside the underlying sources.

1. European Environment Agency (EEA): Textiles — environmental and climate pressures from European consumption. Open source
2. EEA: Circularity of the EU textiles value chain in numbers. Open source
3. European Parliament: Fast fashion: EU laws for sustainable textile consumption. Open source
4. UN Environment Programme (UNEP): Sustainable and circular textiles. Open source
5. UNEP: Minimizing fashion's environmental footprint. Open source
6. International Labour Organization (ILO): The Rana Plaza disaster ten years on. Open source
7. EEA: PFAS in textiles in Europe's circular economy. Open source
8. EEA: Microplastics from textiles: towards a circular economy for textiles in Europe. Open source