Materials are the most material issue
To guide Reformation’s strategy, Talbot identified the four main drivers of emissions in its supply chains: materials sourcing, transportation, energy use in production processes, and a lack of circular practices throughout.
Materials sourcing accounts for roughly 66% of Reformation’s total footprint, says Talbot, which is where the brand started its transformation. Some materials have a higher carbon footprint than others, so Reformation set sub-goals to completely eradicate virgin cashmere and silk, the materials with the highest footprints.
Cashmere represents less than 1% of Reformation’s material volume, Talbot explains, but 20% of its material footprint. Over the past five years, Reformation says it has reduced its carbon footprint from cashmere by 55%, largely by developing recycled cashmere yarns and eliminating the bulk of its conventional cashmere (for the remaining percentage, Reformation says it will explore cashmere cultivated using regenerative agriculture).
Likewise, the brand set out to entirely eliminate virgin silk, but only got halfway. It blames the lack of viable, non-synthetic alternatives available at commercial scale, and says it is now pursuing organic silk as a potential low-impact alternative. (Customer demand for silk grew during this period, Reformation notes. Silk jumped from 1.5% of total materials sourcing in 2021 to 4.7% in 2023, before settling at 3.8% in 2025.)
The work is ongoing. By the end of 2025, Reformation says 97.5% of its fibers were sourced from recycled, regenerative, or renewable inputs. “I cannot underscore this enough,” says Talbot. “If we didn’t do some of our preferred materials transitions, we would not have reached our reduction targets. Even when we look at our go-forward carbon reduction plans, if we don’t keep chipping away at our use of virgin silk and cashmere, there is no clear path to meeting our goals.”
Sustainable transportation vs overproduction
Transportation was another sore spot. Reformation uses a lot of air freight, which it says can be 31 times more carbon intensive than cargo ships. But the trade-off is that air freight allows Reformation to produce smaller batches, replenish only what sells, and avoid overproduction — largely because it is faster, and therefore requires less forward planning. Between 2021 and 2025, Reformation says it reduced air freight from 40% to 33%, increased truck transportation from 60% to 63%, and kick-started ocean freight from zero to 3.5% of shipments. To avoid overproduction, Reformation says it is prioritizing slower ocean freight for “predictable, repeat bestsellers” and heavier styles such as sweaters, denim, and outerwear.
This taps into another change, which Talbot says underpins the entire venture. Over the past few years, Reformation has shifted toward a data-driven, on-demand production model, not unlike ultra-fast fashion giant Shein, or luxury disruptor Rise & Fall. Here, she says the most effective changes were not technological innovations, but organizational infrastructure. Reformation invested heavily in internal education, developing team-specific scorecards tied to achieving carbon goals and tying executive bonuses to sustainability performance.
“Our teams now use carbon modeling and carbon intensity to inform so many decisions, from transportation to lower impact materials and budgeting,” says Talbot. “That wasn’t in the original framework because it didn’t exist before, but it’s really facilitated shifts where we can navigate the trade-offs together. That’s more of a change management framework than anything else, and we’ll take it into this next phase as we try to become fully circular by 2030.”
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