Hassan Pierre is the co-founder of Maison De Mode, a luxury fashion retailer that curates a selection of the finest luxury sustainable fashion for their online boutique and concept pop-up shops. Starting as a Parsons School of Design student, Pierre launched his label reinventing high-end vintage fabrics before founding Maison De Mode with Amanda Hearst. As a pioneer of the sustainable fashion movement, he now holds a position on the Advisory Board for the 2018 CFDA + Lexus Fashion* Initiative 2.0.

We caught up with Pierre to talk about his insights and advice for designers working to make a more ethical fashion industry.

Thinking about your experiences so far working as a mentor to the CLF*I designers, what challenges do you see and equally, what areas of opportunity?

I still think the biggest challenge is making sustainability sexy. Often the quality is there but the desire in design is not. With that said, there is a huge opportunity today for ‘ethical’ brands as consumer demand has tripled in the last five years.

Is sustainability a one-size-fits-all set of strategies within fashion design and business?

No, there is no one set of rules that can be applied to fashion design and business in order to become sustainable. There are multi-size businesses, some with a larger scale than others. Each business needs to manage how they can minimize or eliminate their negative impact. For me, the easiest way for a business to start reducing their negative impact is becoming more energy-efficient. This can be done in a number of ways and can be done faster than implementing change in production, sourcing, etc.

What design principles do you feel may support success as designers begin to define their scope of intentions and craft their sustainability roadmaps?

Design to reduce energy and water use. I read that 60 percent in the total lifecycle of a T-shirt occurs in the use phase— i.e. washing, ironing, and drying. In order to reduce energy use, designers need to consider all parts of the garment’s lifecycle.

How cognizant do you feel consumers are about ecological and social change imperatives?

Consumers are finally awake. They are looking and questioning everything. The time is now— the trend began five years or so ago and has since grown tremendously. Consumers care deeply about what they eat, their health and wellness and now fashion. There’s no more being able to hide in our industry. Transparency is key.

One wish for the industry’s future…

To remove ‘sustainable’ and ‘ethical’ from our vocabularies and have those principles be the norm in our industry. It would be really interesting to see items tagged as ‘NOT ETHICAL’ or ‘HARMFUL’ in the future.

One wish for the program’s journey…

To be a beacon of inspiration for emerging design talent to want to create the most luxurious, innovative and sustainable design.