“We are just clients,” says Sébastien Kopp, co-founder of Veja, the French sneaker brand beloved by celebrities like Emma Watson and Meghan Markle, to a room full of reporters. We're at the facility in Taua, Brazil, which processes the organic cotton used in every one of his brand's sneakers. The point of Kopp's statement was to highlight that the finished product he sells in stores around the world in cities like New York and Madrid is just one part of an intricate supply chain filled with thousands of people throughout South America.
For Veja, involvement and collaboration with each part of its product, from soil to wearable sneakers, is at the core of the company's foundation. In 2004, Kopp and his co-founder François-Ghislain Morillion started looking into how clothing was made; they felt that brands wanted sustainability but didn't have an accurate picture of what that meant. “There was a lot of speech, but not a lot of action,” Kopp tells Teen Vogue in the car as we drive away from one of the many cotton farms the brand works within the region. We were there to see part of the brand's manufacturing in action.
After leaving their jobs in banking and spending time auditing garment manufacturers in different countries, Kopp and Morillion decided to start their own company. They found the suppliers themselves traveling to the organic cotton farms, meeting the natural rubber harvesters in the Amazon, and working with cattle farmers for leather. They are involved each step of the way, Kopp says. “We want people to make a good living from cotton, from rubber,” he explained. “We will pay the price that allows for that.”
Contrary to popular fashion industry practices, working out fair prices instead of prioritizing continuous growth and profit hasn't slowed down Veja as a brand. In many ways, focus and actionable messaging have catapulted the brand into a space of its own. (At a later event in New York City, Kopp explained it like this: “The reality is more important than the bullsh*t: the advertising and the celebrities.”)
Sustainability in fashion is often looked at through the lens of material – things like recycled plastic, upcycled nylon, and even organic cotton – but more often than not, those pieces are not contextualized. Why is it important to have certain materials over others in our clothing, and who are the thousands of people who actually handle it? And more importantly, what does it mean for them? Kopp explains that to his business, the farmers who grow cotton are just as big of a part of the operation as the person sitting in Veja's corporate office in Paris — and the design team knows them and their work just as well as any other person within the business.
João Félix de Sousa, a lifelong farmer growing organic cotton used by Veja since the brand's infancy, explains how this brand partnership has allowed for more than financial stability. At the co-op farm where he grows sesame and cotton, among other crops, supporting families through agriculture is the priority. “There is no such thing as the work of men and the work of women here. It is the work of the family,” de Sousa says.
Veja's partnerships with cotton suppliers come through a program called Associação de Desenvolvimento Educacional e Cultural de Tauá (ADEC), which promotes the use of organic cotton only – that is, cotton grown without pesticides. The price of cotton is agreed upon in advance with the farms, making it a more reliable business for the farmers and their families.
Anselmo Ferreira and Roseli Lima, a couple who are now in retirement but still working 12-hour days on their expansive farm, admit that growing support in organic cotton farming is now more crucial than ever. Despite peer pressure in the region, they continue to grow organically because it's better for their health. “The pressure to grow more by using pesticides doesn't bother me,” Anselmo Ferreira said. For him, being on the land is how he wants to spend the rest of his life, even if the work is increasingly more difficult as the impact of climate change takes hold, making the winters drier and the temperatures hotter.
When we visit Anselmo Ferreira and Roseli Lima's farm, they takes us through the fields that are lined with corn standing eight feet tall and sprawling cotton plants; Roseli grabs a blooming flower, slowly picking away the dead leaves around it, and smiles, proudly showing off her family's beautiful crops.
“I love this land. I'll only stop when I can't do it,” Anselmo Ferreira says a little later. That passion for the work, despite its difficulties, is palpable. They acknowledge that partnership and support from the people who profit off their harvest is one reason why. So many farms that grow the plants that end up in our wardrobes are invisible in the fashion industry’s purposefully obtuse supply chain, which ignores the fundamental challenges in favor of profit and glamour instead of treating each piece of the puzzle with as much care and dignity as the finished product.
The work of transparency is crucial at every stage, though. At the factory making performance sneakers for Veja, and other brands, hundreds of workers line the facilities doing every job from cutting rubber for the soles, sewing together the leather uppers, and testing the performance with machines that simulate steps.
According to the site manager, to make 1000 pairs of Veja sneakers, 200 people are involved just on the line. While the factory employs the workers, their safety and well-being are also the responsibility of the brand they work with — an idea many fashion companies seem to ignore.
When we look at a pair of sneakers at the store, we might think about how they'll look in our wardrobe or support our feet when we run in them. But before it gets to the point where we're even thinking about buying them, hundreds of people had to touch that one pair of sneakers.
Creativity and individualism are part of what makes fashion so special, but the community can't get lost in the pursuit of it. Brands are just a small piece of a very large industry – a client, as Kopp would put it – and recognizing that might be the key to moving the sustainability needle forward.
Want more like this from Teen Vogue? Check these stories out:
- Shein Pledged $15 Million to Offset Textile Waste; Will It Be Enough?
- How Fashion Brands Are Helping to Stop the Amazon Fires
- What Is Upcycling and What's the Big Deal?
