LONDON — Black, white — and green?

The last color may not be very Chanel, but it’s becoming a larger part of the palette as the brand digs deeper into sustainability, presses its signature camellia into action and furthers its work with Fondation Chanel, particularly at the intersection of women, climate and the environment.

Kate Wylie, who joined Chanel in 2021 as global chief sustainability officer and president of Fondation Chanel, has been driving an ever-more ambitious agenda that involves its more than 36,500 employees, and hundreds of outside partner organizations, including NGOs, industry associations, governments and academic institutions.

That agenda includes the updated goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across Chanel’s value chain by 2040, validated by the Science-Based Targets initiative, or SBTi; a new, women-led climate resilience program, and millions more dollars in funding for the Fondation Chanel, which aims to empower women and young girls across the world.

In an exclusive interview, the first since she joined the French luxury brand, Wylie talked about Chanel’s progress against Chanel Mission 1.5 goals; its latest environmental moves, and the staff’s day-to-day efforts to battle climate change.

It’s Not Easy Being Green

“I’ve always had a strong conviction that business, nature and people can thrive together,” said Wylie, who joined Chanel after more than a decade at Mars, the U.S. food and beverage firm, where she served as global vice president of sustainability.

“It’s both an art and a science. The art is about reimagining what’s possible, thinking about the vision, creating the future you want, and finding the partners you want to work with. You then need to marry that art with rigor, accountability, depth of thought that you would do with science,” she said during the interview at Chanel’s London headquarters in Mayfair.

Despite her passion and conviction, Wylie’s ideas were often misunderstood. “It hasn’t always been easy,” said Wylie, who worked in sustainability for a variety of small and medium-sized businesses before joining Mars in 2010.

“Organizations didn’t know where to put me. I’ve sat in corporate communications, corporate affairs, supply chain and even research and development,” said Wylie, adding that the game of musical chairs meant she was able to learn about every aspect of a business, and the role each one can play in making it greener.

Chanel, by contrast, knew exactly where to put her. The French brand, similar to some of its luxury peers, sees sustainability as a key management pillar alongside human resources, finance or legal. “It’s not an afterthought,” said Wylie. “And our independence as a company means we can think long term while also acting decisively in the short term.”

It Takes a Village

Wylie was never going to tackle Chanel’s goals on her own. She’s a big believer in “collective learning for collective action” and that everyone within the organization has a role to play.

“Sustainability isn’t solved by sustainability professionals, but by partnering with people in the business. Everybody has a role, everybody is an agent for change,” said Wylie.

There are now more than 100 sustainability experts across the business. In addition, more than 500 managers and key operational team members have attended bespoke executive education programs on topics such as biodiversity, climate change and efficient usage of materials at the University of Cambridge.

Alongside the education programs, teams from Chanel Fashion have also worked with technical experts within the university’s Institute for Manufacturing. They’ve taken part in a series of intensive workshops aimed at prototyping effective solutions for Chanel and its value chain.

Chanel said the solutions have resulted in “significant energy and material use savings year-over-year.”

As part of its partnership with Cambridge, Chanel has sponsored students from underrepresented backgrounds to join the Institute for Sustainability Leadership’s master’s program as the biggest, single company supporter.

Circularity Is a Priority

During the interview, Wylie confirmed that Chanel is on track to achieve its goal of 100 percent renewable electricity across its operations by 2025, a goal laid out in Chanel’s Mission 1.5, a program aimed at tackling climate change in line with the targets of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

Some 33 company sites are already working with renewable energy, and that list is growing.

But it’s not just energy that’s renewable. Chanel, Wylie said, has been finding circular solutions across the business.

In fashion, Chanel offers a range of after-sales services, such as repair, tailoring and alterations, under the title Chanel & moi. It applies to all product lines, with services available in every boutique. Some five cities around the world, including London and Seoul, have additional stand-alone spaces dedicated to the service.

The company has also been intensifying efforts to recycle or repurpose the sets and backdrops it uses for events.

Before staging the Le Grand Numéro de Chanel exhibition in Paris in 2022, Wylie said the fragrance and beauty artistic direction team took a 360-degree look at the venue, décor, production, transportation, catering and media activities.

To reduce environmental impact, 76 percent of the décor was sourced from local suppliers, and after the event, 97 percent of materials from the exhibition were repurposed. The overall carbon footprint of the final event was 68 percent lower than anticipated, she said.

In Mainland China, Chanel conducted a series of workshops for its Sublimage skin care line. It used the same build 12 times, achieving an 89 percent reduction in CO2-equivalent emissions. Chanel also rented the screens and projectors in line with its commitment to reuse, rent or redesign existing materials.

Back in London, the company created a festive lights installation last year that was inspired by the Chanel No.5 fragrance.

The installation, made from recyclable aluminium, ran from Piccadilly to Oxford Street and was meant to be a “shimmering love letter to the capital.” All the materials, including the LED lights, are set to be recycled for future projects.

Beauty Is Leading the Way

Supply chain, from fragrance to fabric, has also been under the spotlight.

Chanel was one of the forces behind the launch of Traceability Alliance for Sustainable Cosmetics, or TRASCE, which brings together 15 cosmetics players with the aim of accelerating sustainability and improving the traceability of supply chains for key components in formulas and packaging.

Chanel has also been working hard on its beauty products and packaging, with No.1 de Chanel, a line conceived with the aim of reducing carbon and other environmental impacts, the prime example.

The weight of glass jars and bottles has been reduced by 30 percent on average across the entire line, and up to 50 percent for the line’s Crème Revitalisante product, in comparison with the average weight of jars and bottles of the same capacity.

According to Chanel, refilling the jar of Crème Revitalisante twice reduces the product’s carbon footprint by 50 percent.

Chanel has also been enriching its work with Open-Sky Labs, a group of research centers around the world that focus on botanical cultivation, research and experimentation.

There are five Open-Sky Labs — in Bhutan, Costa Rica, Madagascar, the French Alps and Gaujacq, France.

At Gaujacq, more than 2,000 varieties of camellia and more than 4,000 other plants are grown, harvested and researched. Scientists and farmers at Gaujacq are also testing new methods of sustainable agriculture and extracting active ingredients.

Camellia Japonica, a key ingredient in No.1 de Chanel, is harvested in Gaujacq, while polyfractioned Vanilla Planifolia, the main active ingredient in the Sublimage skin care line, is derived from the Open-Sky Lab in Madagascar, and obtained via Vanilla Planifolia polyfractioning, a technique specific to Chanel.

Women Have a Big Role to Play

Wylie has also been spending her time refining the work of Fondation Chanel, which partners with more than 200 organizations and supports programs that reach more than 9 million women and girls.

Since she joined, Chanel has increased funding to more than $120 million a year, making the foundation one of the largest organizations in the world dedicated to promoting females’ safety and social and economic autonomy.

“Women are at the heart of Chanel, and where women thrive, the world thrives,” she said, adding that the overarching aim of the independent foundation is to “allow women and girls to be free to shape their own destiny.”

Wylie recently added another priority area to the foundation’s work: women-led climate resilience. To date, Chanel has committed more than $50 million to partners focused on women-led climate resilience.

She’s particularly proud of the foundation’s involvement with the Nature Environment & Wildlife Society, an NGO that has helped women plant 16 million mangroves since 2011. The robust mangroves, with their thick, tangled roots, help to boost biodiversity; reduce erosion and flood risks, and enhance economic and climate resilience.

Wylie said as part of the effort, a group of women called the Green Brigade has successfully restored more than 1,000 hectares of mangrove forests in the Sundarbans, in eastern India.

The planting also creates an economic source of income for the women. “Women are leading this work. They are having an impact on the climate and on their communities and also creating a source of income,” said Wylie, who is working to ensure that green becomes a signature Chanel color.