Lisa Bergstrand is the founder of Bergstrand Consulting and has worked with fashion and textile brands on sustainability strategy since 2017. With a background in design and product development in Paris-based luxury fashion, she now advises brands ranging from early-stage labels to established Nordic companies, with clients including Our Legacy, A Day’s March, and Nordic Knots.
In this conversation, we discuss the current mood in the fashion industry following Copenhagen Fashion Week, where Bergstrand sees renewed creative energy alongside a need for clearer direction on sustainability. We explore how brands can move beyond box-ticking, what the slowdown in EU regulation means in practice, and where concrete progress is already happening. The conversation also covers overproduction, traceability, digital product passports, and why the real opportunity lies in embedding sustainability across the organisation rather than isolating it within a single team.
Key takeaways
Sustainability has lost momentum, but not relevance
Bergstrand argues that brands still care about sustainability, despite negative headlines and regulatory uncertainty. “Working with a lot of brands, I would say that brands still care.”
Pulling back EU regulation damaged trust
The rollback of parts of EU sustainability reporting has slowed progress and created uncertainty, especially for smaller brands. “You kind of lose trust in a way, because you tell the management this is coming, you need to prepare, and then it gets pulled back.”
Sustainability cannot sit with one team
One of the biggest structural problems is that sustainability is often isolated rather than embedded across the business. “When it only gets stuck within a sustainability team, it doesn’t really do as much as it could within the whole organisation.”
Most brands still lack real supply chain visibility
Even established brands often have limited knowledge of where materials come from and how they are processed. “They might know who did the weaving of the fabric, but they don’t know who did the spinning of the yarn, and they absolutely do not know what’s the farm.”
Traceability should be an enabler, not a threat
While digital product passports create anxiety, Bergstrand sees traceability as a practical tool for improvement rather than compliance panic. “It’s been more of a scare than something that can push them in a positive way, but traceability is really the red thread through all of it.”
