About

The Billion Dollar Collection

The fashion industry needs radical change. Sustainable innovation is part of the puzzle and there are plenty of innovations out there. Yet, innovators and entrepreneurs struggle to attract the necessary support to scale up their innovations and create real impact. In fact, billions of dollars are required annually to support sustainable innovation in order to reach the Sustainable Development Goals in time for 2030 and reinvent the fashion industry as we know it.

To highlight this issue and help speed up the transition towards a sustainable fashion industry, we have created a virtual fashion collection – the Billion Dollar Collection. Each garment represents a ground-breaking, Global Change Award-winning innovation that has the potential to shape the fashion industry of tomorrow, if scaled up today.

The price tag of each garment corresponds to the support that each start-up estimates is needed to create large-scale impact until 2030. To demonstrate what impact these 10 innovations could have, Accenture has brought its 360-degree value approach to the collection with the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals in mind. The model shows each innovation could have a big positive impact for the planet, if given the opportunity to scale.

It’s crucial to support sustainable innovation if fashion is going to make the shift to a more sustainable industry. The Billion Dollar Collection highlights this untapped opportunity.

Karl-Johan Persson, board member of H&M Foundation and Chairman of H&M Group

Who are we?

The H&M Foundation uses collaboration and innovation to co-create, fund and share solutions for the world’s most urgent challenges. To help safeguard the welfare of humanity the foundation is catalyzing the fashion industry to become planet positive and accelerating development for inclusive societies. Breakthrough innovations and findings are openly shared for anyone to adopt and scale, in order to contribute to systems change.

We therefore revised our strategy in 2020 and are initiating projects focusing on reaching a planet-positive fashion future and creating inclusive societies for all.

The Billion Dollar Collection shows how the H&M Foundation helps to disrupt traditional systems through unexpected collaborations. We strongly believe that change is best achieved when a diverse group of people join forces to solve complex challenges.

Are these 10 innovations enough to save the planet? No, but they all play an important role in the transformation needed for future-proofing the planet. With this collection, we want to make people aware that there is still time to act, but it needs to be done today.

Together, we can create a shift in the fashion industry and make way for a planet positive fashion future.

The making of the campaign

The ten innovations are represented by garments in a virtual fashion collection – the Billion Dollar Collection – designed by French creative director Pauline Chardin.

The collection – characterized by asymmetrical details, trinket-like finishing, non-standard colors and bold volumes – has been exclusively created in computer-generated imagery by Mackevision, part of Accenture Interactive.

Using the latest CGI character design technology, Mackevision created a unique digital avatar from scratch, which brings the textures and intricate details of the collection to life through movement.

“The collection is an edgy but low-key wardrobe of gender-fluid, evolved casual classics. Instead of a monotonous and controlled future, we wanted to portray a sense of originality in the garments through asymmetrical details, trinket-like finish and bold volumes. The color palette consists of a range of colored clays, soft flower tones and vibrant spice hues inspired by nature.”

Pauline Chardin, Designer