Last month, Coach and Kate Spade parent company Tapestry inked a 10-year partnership with Swiss carbon removal startup Climeworks.
It’s a bold move. A decade-long partnership is the kind of long-term support most climate solutions can only dream of. And sustainability is an increasingly flammable topic for US businesses. The Trump administration is rolling out a systemic crackdown on climate action, rewriting and removing critical climate databases, cutting funding for scientific research, and creating a culture of fear for corporations publicly committed to the cause.
“This was an opportunity for us to establish a long-term partnership and send market signals that this type of innovation is needed,” says Tapestry’s global head of ESG and sustainability, Logan Duran, in an exclusive interview with Vogue Business. “There are going to be emissions that we’re unable to address, and we need credible, long-term, durable carbon removal solutions to address them.”
There are several reasons why this is not a silver bullet: the partnership was designed to offset Tapestry’s Scope 1 emissions, but the majority of fashion’s emissions lie in Scope 3. Likewise, carbon removal is a nascent and relatively controversial approach to offsetting carbon emissions, and carbon offsetting itself is generally considered a last resort.
But it’s still rare progress for a US fashion company in the current climate. And the reason Tapestry is able to make investments like this is because Duran and his team have doubled down on the business case for sustainability, he explains. It’s a complex process, and every brand seems to have a different approach. Tapestry’s is focused on figuring out how to quantify climate risks, presenting the cost of inaction — the subject of a recent Apparel Impact Institute report — and positioning sustainability as central to both present and future business resilience. Here’s how they did it.
The Tapestry Foundation has a multi-year partnership with World Wildlife Fund (WWF), worth $3 million, which is designed to advance more sustainable leather production and biodiversity protection. This includes projects that prevent deforestation, restore degraded landscapes and create sustainable livelihoods for local communities, addressing key climate risks identified in the scenario analysis.Photos: Silas Ismael / WWF Brazil
Mapping climate risks
In 2022, Duran’s team completed its first climate risk scenario analysis — a technical name for a dynamic process, designed to help Tapestry understand how climate change will impact its business moving forward. It’s a multi-year undertaking, the accuracy of which has evolved over time.
For the second iteration, completed at the end of 2025, Duran’s team focused on two different types of risk: physical risks and transition risks. “The physical risks are generally a little more straightforward,” he explains. “We identify around 250 sites across the organization, from corporate offices and retail stores to fulfilment centers and suppliers across Tier 1 and Tier 2. We’re looking for risks like the potential for flooding or droughts and extreme heat, and how those issues might impact the organization in the long run.”
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