SustainabilityStatistical analysis, data visualization

Fashion Sustainability Analysis

What fashion brands say about their practices versus what they actually do, across 247 of the world’s largest apparel brands.

View codePortfolio write-up
Transparency versus sustainability scatter
247brands analyzed
49brands in both indexes
r = 0.37transparency vs. sustainability
14%of variance explained

The question

The Fashion Transparency Index measures what brands say about their practices. Good On You independently rates what they do for people, planet, and animals. Does one predict the other?

Dashboard with score distribution, year-over-year change, top brands, segments, and trend
Part 1: what 247 brands disclose, from score distribution to the 2018–2023 industry trend.

Approach

Part 1 is an exploratory analysis of the 2023 Transparency Index: score distributions, year-over-year change, industry segments, and sub-category scores. Part 2 merges the 49 brands that appear in both indexes to test whether disclosure tracks independently rated behavior.

Heatmap of sub-category transparency scores for the top 30 brands
Sub-category scores for the top 30 brands show where even leaders fall short.

What I found

Transparency and sustainability are related, but weakly: r = 0.37, meaning disclosure explains only about 14% of the variation in actual performance. A brand can score 80% on transparency and still be rated "Not Good Enough."

Scatter plot of transparency score against sustainability rating
The central finding: a weak but real relationship (n = 49).
Quadrant chart of brands by transparency and sustainability
High transparency with low sustainability is the most populated quadrant.

Responsible AI check

Weak is reported as weak. r = 0.37 is a real relationship but a modest one, and the write-up leads with the 14% of variance explained rather than the fact that a correlation exists.

Data quality first. I found and corrected a normalization error present in earlier public analyses of this data before drawing conclusions.

Stated limits. Only 49 brands appear in both indexes, and both are third-party ratings with their own methodologies, so this is evidence about disclosure, not a verdict on any single brand.