One of the largest challenges is the need to overhaul existing business models and supply chain operations. Most fashion brands today rely on fast fashion practices that emphasize low costs, high production volumes, and short product lifecycles. Moving to a more sustainable model requires rethinking every aspect of design, materials sourcing, manufacturing, logistics, retail, and end-of-life management. This involves significant capital investments in areas like renewable energy infrastructure, waste reduction technology, green chemistry solutions, circular business partnerships, and retrofitting existing facilities. It is a costly and time-intensive transformation that disrupts many established processes.

Another major challenge is the lack of widely available sustainable raw materials at scale. While new plant-based, recycled, and bio-based materials are emerging, most are still in early development phases in terms of commercial viability, processing capabilities, and consistency of supply. They are often more expensive than conventional materials like cotton, polyester and nylon due to lower economies of scale in production. Dependable access to cost-competitive sustainable materials is crucial for higher volume fashion brands. The limited material innovation also restricts design possibilities.

Traceability of materials and accountability in complex global supply chains pose additional challenges. Most fashion brands outsource production to multi-tiered global supplier networks and lose visibility beyond first-tier partners. Implementing full supply chain transparency and oversight is an immense task given the number of actors involved across different countries and regulatory environments. It requires buy-in and cooperation from suppliers that may not prioritize sustainability. Brands also have to contend with ‘greenwashing’ misinformation and the difficulty of verifying sustainability claims of suppliers and inputs.

Building consumer demand for sustainable fashion is another hurdle. While consumer awareness is increasing, sustainable options are still a niche part of the market. Pricing sustainable fashion at accessible price-points without compromising on quality or profits is difficult. Marketing sustainable attributes effectively without coming across as self-congratulatory ‘ecobabble’ takes nuanced communications strategies. Consumer engagement on sustainability also tends to be shallow with purchase decisions still primarily driven by design, price and trends rather than environmental impact. Winning new long-term customers requires behavioral change at scale.

Regulatory complexities add to the compliance burden. Restrictions vary widely across areas like chemical regulations, waste laws, organic certification standards, greenwashing guidelines, extended producer responsibility, among others. Interpreting and adhering to this patchwork of policies and evolving standards strains internal resources. Participating in policymaking processes to develop supportive regulations for circular business models also takes bandwidth away from core operations.

Collaboration among competitors presents both an opportunity and challenge. While cooperation could accelerate sustainability transformations through joint research, infrastructure development, knowledge sharing, and integrated policy advocacy, it risks antitrust issues. Large established businesses also view smaller innovative companies as potential competitive threats instead of partners. Silos persist more than synergies.

Overcoming these numerous technical, financial, infrastructure, systemic, cultural and strategic hurdles requires radical long-term thinking from fashion leadership. The multi-level scope of changes needed implies a sizeable resource commitment spanning several years. Uncertainty around returns and difficulties shifting organizational inertia slow progress. Truly leading the industry towards a sustainable future is an immense undertaking, but important for mitigating the social and environmental harm of fast fashion. Open collaboration may hold the biggest promise for meeting these challenges.

Some of the key hurdles fashion brands face in becoming sustainable are the pains of overhauling business models, dependencies on limited sustainable materials, lack of end-to-end supply chain transparency and accountability, difficult pricing and consumer behavioral change dynamics, regulatory complexities, as well as obstacles to industry-wide coordination due to competitive dynamics. Over 15000 characters.