Vivienne Westwood cuts office hours to two days in net zero push

The company’s late founder, Dame Vivienne Westwood, was an outspoken climate change activist – Geoff Pugh

The fashion house Vivienne Westwood has cut office hours to two days a week in a bid to hit net zero targets.

The company, whose late founder Dame Vivienne Westwood was an outspoken climate change activist, said staff at its offices in Battersea, south west London, had been told to work from home on most days as part of an energy-efficiency drive.

Vivienne Westwood, known for its eccentric designs, also said it was urging customers to buy less “to raise awareness of the environmental impact of overconsumption”.

Dame Vivienne, whose radical designs changed British fashion, died aged 81 at the end of 2022. She had devoted much of her later years to environmental work, campaigning with Greenpeace and praising Just Stop Oil protestors.

In company filings, the fashion house said: “We have implemented hybrid working, with staff working from home three days a week.”

It added: “The brand voice is used to raise awareness of the environmental impact of overconsumption urging people to buy less and buy better quality items.”

Vivienne Westwood’s shows have been famous for pushing people to cut down on consumption. The late Dame Vivienne once encouraged the Princess of Wales to rotate outfits more frequently and drove a tank near Lord Cameron’s home to protest against fracking.

The company also said it had taken measures to cut emissions with LED lights and acquire more of its energy from renewable sources.

However, it said emissions had risen as travel and high street shopping returned and the company’s business grew.

The accounts, which cover the UK subsidiary of the Luxembourg-registered Vivienne Westwood Group, showed sales climbed by 53pc to £101m in 2022 compared with a year earlier as high-street shopping recovered from the pandemic.

Profits doubled to £38.5m during the period. The company’s directors, who included Dame Vivienne until her death at the end of the year, took less out of the business, with a £192,954 payout compared to £1.7m in 2021.

The company has 10 stores in the UK, with the vast majority of the global group’s stores in China, Japan and Korea.

Researchers have claimed that working from home can cut carbon emissions, largely due to less energy consumption in offices as well as lower pollution from commuting and contributing less to traffic congestion. A study from Cornell University and Microsoft last year found that people who work from home all the time produce roughly half the emissions of full-time office staff.

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