In October 2021, Chloé became the first major European luxury fashion house to achieve B Corp certification. In October 2024, under a completely different creative director, it recertified. No other luxury house at Chloé’s scale has done either of those things. Together, they form the most important Chloé B Corp story the industry has yet to fully reckon with: that a commitment to responsible business at a major fashion house can be built into the structure of the organisation rather than into the personality of the person leading it.
This case study unpacks how Chloé got there, what it actually changed operationally, and what the October 2024 recertification tells every other luxury brand working on its own sustainability programme right now.
Chloé B Corp certification: The result
Chloé’s B Corp certification was first awarded in October 2021, making it the first major European luxury fashion house to achieve B Corp status. The maison was recertified in October 2024 under Creative Director Chemena Kamali, one year after Gabriela Hearst’s departure. During Hearst’s tenure, Chloé reported a 400% reduction in the carbon footprint of her debut FW21 collection compared with the previous year, alongside a shift from air freight to sea freight. The maison also moved to biodegradable and compostable packaging, while maintaining Fair Trade partnerships with Made51 in Geneva, Mifuko in Kenya, Manos del Uruguay and Akanjo in Madagascar. A Sustainability Board comprising independent external experts is also operational.
The starting point
When Gabriela Hearst was appointed as Creative Director of Chloé in December 2020, the house already had a CEO, Riccardo Bellini, who had publicly signalled his intention to rebuild the brand around a purpose-driven, community-based commercial model. But intention is not the same as infrastructure. When Hearst arrived, Chloé had a vision for Chloé B Corp but none of the operational systems required to achieve it.
Hearst came into the role with an unusually strong foundation to build from. Her eponymous label, launched in 2015, had been built from the beginning around principles of slow growth, quality and sustainability. She understood not just the ideology of responsible fashion but the operational reality of what it takes to source differently, manufacture differently and sell differently at a luxury price point. That knowledge is what made the 18 months that followed as productive as they were.
The first thing Hearst and Bellini did was establish a Sustainability Board. This is the detail that most coverage of Chloé B Corp has glossed over, but it is the most important structural decision the house made. The Board included independent external experts alongside internal team members, which meant that sustainability governance at Chloé was not purely self-referential. External experts set standards, challenged decisions and held the house accountable in ways that an internal committee alone could never do. The Board’s existence meant that sustainability at Chloé was a governance function, and that distinction is what ultimately made recertification possible after Hearst left.
What Chloé actually changed
The B Corp assessment covers 200 to 300 questions across five areas: Governance, Workers, Community, Environment and Customers. Each area requires specific, verifiable operational changes. Here is what Chloé built in each one.
Governance: The Sustainability Board with independent external experts was the primary governance change. Beyond the Board itself, Chloé updated its governance documents and policies to reflect the house’s commitment to social and environmental responsibility as a core business obligation rather than an optional extra. Riccardo Bellini, who was CEO of Chloé at the time, was explicit about this in public statements, saying the house had “upgraded its operations, governance and policies in a way that allows us to operate in a more environmentally and socially responsible manner.” Bellini left the role in December 2023 and was succeeded as President and CEO by Laurent Malecaze.
Workers: Chloé introduced a formal employee volunteering programme that gave every member of staff one day per year to spend on community impact work. This is a small but significant operational commitment because it creates a recurring organisational behaviour around community engagement that becomes part of the workplace culture over time.
Community: This is where Chloé B Corp becomes most tangible from a product and supply chain perspective.Chloé deepened its partnerships with Fair Trade certified social enterprises across four markets. Made51 in Geneva creates products with refugee artisans. Mifuko in Kenya works with basket weavers and craft communities. Manos del Uruguay supports female artisan cooperatives producing hand-knitted and woven textiles. Akanjo in Madagascar works with local artisans using organic materials and natural dyes. Each of these partnerships represents a long-term commercial relationship built into the supply chain, not a one-season collaboration that can be dropped when priorities shift.
Environment: Two decisions stand out here. The first was switching the supply chain from air freight to sea freight for logistics, which reduced the carbon footprint of the house’s operations significantly. Air freight is estimated to produce between 40 and 60 times more carbon per tonne-kilometre than sea freight, so this was a meaningful operational change rather than a marginal one. The second was making all packaging biodegradable and compostable across every product category. These are operational infrastructure decisions that require supplier changes, procurement policy updates and budget commitments. They are also decisions that cannot easily be reversed once made, because the supply chain relationships supporting them become embedded.
Customers: Chloé launched a resale programme under Hearst, creating a formal channel for pre-owned Chloé products that acknowledged the secondary market as part of the brand’s relationship with its customers rather than something happening outside the brand’s control. This is a relatively early example of what is now becoming a mainstream luxury strategy, though Chloé adopted it from a values position rather than a commercial necessity position, which gave it a different character.
The creative director transition and why it was the real test
Gabriela Hearst departed as Creative Director in late 2023 after three years at the house. Her departure prompted a reasonable question from across the luxury industry: would Chloé B Corp survive without the person who had been its most visible champion?
Chemena Kamali was confirmed as her successor in October 2023. Kamali had worked at Chloé twice previously in her career before becoming Creative Director, and she came into the role with a genuine familiarity with the brand’s identity. She had also spent years as a design director at Saint Laurent, giving her experience operating within the commercial and creative demands of a major luxury group. By all accounts she arrived at Chloé committed to continuing the sustainability work her predecessor had built.
But the genuinely important thing about what happened next is that the question of whether Chloé B Corp survived was not ultimately down to Kamali’s personal commitment. It was down to the systems Chloé had built. The Sustainability Board with its independent external experts continued to operate. The Fair Trade supply chain partnerships with Made51, Mifuko, Manos del Uruguay and Akanjo continued to function. The sea freight logistics policy remained in place. The biodegradable packaging standards continued to apply across all products. And in October 2024, one year into Kamali’s tenure, Chloé went through the full B Corp recertification process and passed.
The B Corp Standards Advisory Council sets the performance requirements for recertification and those requirements are as rigorous as the original assessment. Chloé had to demonstrate continued and verifiable performance across all five impact areas. The fact that it did, without Hearst, is the clearest possible evidence that Chloé B Corp had become institutional rather than personal.
The commercial tension the case study has to acknowledge
Honest case studies acknowledge the complications alongside the achievements, and the Chloé story has a genuine commercial tension running through it that the industry should understand.
Under Hearst’s tenure, Chloé built extraordinary sustainability credibility and earned significant critical recognition for both its environmental commitments and its creative direction. However, the house struggled commercially in the category that matters most at a luxury house: leather goods. Handbags and accessories are where luxury brands make the margins that sustain everything else, and Chloé found more commercial success with lower-priced items like the knitted Nama sneaker than with the premium leather goods that anchor a house’s revenue at the top of the market. Richemont does not break out individual revenue figures for Chloé, so precise analysis is not possible. But the commercial narrative surrounding Hearst’s departure from the house included reference to this performance gap.
This raises a question that the industry is still working through: does sustainability leadership and commercial performance at a major luxury house move in the same direction or in tension with each other? The honest answer based on Chloé’s recent experience is that they can coexist, but that they do not automatically reinforce each other. Building a B Corp certified supply chain does not automatically produce handbag sales. And a house that earns critical acclaim for its sustainability commitments still needs to convert that credibility into revenue through product categories where margins are substantial.
What Kamali’s tenure is now beginning to explore is whether Chloé can find the balance between its sustainability identity and its commercial ambitions that Hearst’s period was still in the process of establishing. The October 2024 recertification confirms the sustainability infrastructure is intact. The commercial question is still being answered in real time.
What the industry learns from the Chloé B Corp story
This Chloé B Corp case study has three practical lessons for every luxury brand currently building or reviewing its own sustainability programme.
The first lesson is that governance structures matter more than individual champions. The single most important thing Chloé did was create a Sustainability Board with independent external experts. That Board created accountability that did not depend on any one person staying in their role. If your sustainability programme rests on one internal champion with no external accountability mechanism, it is at risk every time that person’s contract comes up for renewal.
The second is that supply chain commitments create structural continuity. The Fair Trade partnerships with Made51, Mifuko, Manos del Uruguay and Akanjo are operational relationships that are difficult to unwind once established. They involve contracts, community relationships, production planning and brand storytelling that all depend on those partnerships continuing. By building sustainability into the supply chain rather than just into the collections, Chloé made it much harder for a future leadership transition to simply choose not to continue the work.
The third lesson is about external verification as a commitment mechanism. The three-year B Corp recertification cycle is not just an assessment. It is a scheduled accountability event that a brand has to prepare for and pass regardless of what else is happening internally. That external deadline creates organisational pressure to maintain performance that internal sustainability targets alone cannot replicate. Choosing to certify with B Corp, or with any rigorous external third party, is a decision to make your sustainability commitments auditable and therefore harder to walk away from.
Why Chloé B Corp certification matters more in 2026 than it did in 2021
When Chloé first achieved B Corp certification in October 2021, the broader luxury industry responded with a mixture of admiration and scepticism. The admiration was genuine. The scepticism was also reasonable: would this survive commercial pressure, leadership change and the inevitable tension between sustainability idealism and business reality?
The October 2024 recertification answers the sceptics. And it does so at exactly the moment when the stakes for getting sustainability right have become significantly higher. The EU Digital Product Passport legislation, part of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation passed into EU law in July 2024, will require all fashion and textile products sold in Europe to carry a verified digital record of materials, supply chain origin and environmental footprint by 2027 to 2028. This means sustainability infrastructure is rapidly moving from a reputational asset to a legal compliance requirement.
Brands that have built documented, verified and auditable sustainability systems, as Chloé has with its B Corp certification, will have a meaningful head start in meeting the Digital Product Passport requirements. The governance frameworks, supply chain documentation and environmental reporting that B Corp demands are structurally similar to what the DPP will require. Chloé B Corp, in other words, is not just a good story. In the context of what European regulation is now mandating, it is also a commercial advantage that will compound over the next three years as other brands scramble to build the infrastructure Chloé has been developing since 2021.
Read next: Found the Chloé B Corp case study interesting? Explore how Pandora increased revenue by 49% while cutting emissions by 17%.
(All image credits: chloe.com)
FAQ
What is the Chloé B Corp certification and when did the house achieve it?
Chloé B Corp refers to Chloé’s status as the first major European luxury fashion house to achieve B Corp certification, awarded by the nonprofit B Lab in October 2021. B Corp certification assesses companies across governance, workers, community, environment and customers using a rigorous 200 to 300 question framework. The certification is valid for three years and requires recertification to maintain. Chloé recertified in October 2024, confirming its sustainability infrastructure had survived a creative director transition from Gabriela Hearst to Chemena Kamali.
What operational changes did Chloé make to achieve B Corp certification?
To earn its B Corp certification, Chloé built a Sustainability Board with independent external experts, switched its supply chain from air freight to sea freight, made all packaging biodegradable and compostable, introduced an employee volunteering programme of one day per year, and deepened its partnerships with Fair Trade certified social enterprises including Made51 in Geneva, Mifuko in Kenya, Manos del Uruguay and Akanjo in Madagascar. Creative Director Gabriela Hearst also reduced the carbon footprint of her debut FW21 collection by 400 percent compared to the previous year through the use of lower-impact materials including deadstock textiles, by-product shearling and eco-leather with non-chemical dyes.
How does Chloé B Corp connect to the EU Digital Product Passport?
The EU Digital Product Passport, part of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation passed in July 2024, will require all fashion and textile products sold in Europe to carry a verified digital record of materials, supply chain origin and environmental footprint by 2027 to 2028. The governance frameworks, supply chain documentation and environmental reporting that B Corp certification demands are structurally similar to what the Digital Product Passport will require. Chloé, which has been building and documenting its sustainability infrastructure since 2021, is better positioned than most luxury houses to meet these compliance requirements when they come into force.
