The Italian fashion industry and its quest for the green transition

The fashion industry makes a sizeable contribution to climate change. This paper investigates the end-of life circular practices implemented by "born-circular" Italian fashion companies. The paper focuses on upcycling and remanufacturing, that have been neglected by the literature and whose widespread implementation has been deemed suitable to reduce the overall carbon footprint of the industry. The analysis of several in-depth interviews with companies and industry key experts results in a process model that is apt to provide granular insights on the implementation of end-of-life circular practices. From the findings it emerges that in the quest to reduce the carbon footprint, the implementation of upcycling and remanufacturing needs to rely on the assessment of the multiple barriers that attain circularity, that the latter can be boosted by adequate marketing positioning strategies, and that companies need to spend considerable effort in filling the cultural gap, by also implementing other end-of-life circularity practices.