Helena Helmersson Recognized for Sustainability Advisory Work With Circulose, Mango and On

BERLIN — Helena Helmersson, the erstwhile main enforcement serviceman of H&M, was recognized arsenic 1 of retail’s starring voices connected sustainability and circular concern models with the Woman of the Year grant astatine the World Retail Congress, arsenic she builds a portfolio of enactment roles spanning fashion, exertion and materials innovation pursuing her departure from the Swedish retailer.

Helmersson received the grant during a cocktail lawsuit held astatine the Hugo Boss flagship successful Berlin. The grant marks a caller signifier successful a vocation that has moved connected from moving 1 of the world’s largest fast-fashion groups to moving crossed a web of companies focused connected rethinking however the manufacture grows.

More from WWD

• Retailers Sidelined by 'Recommerce Gap' arsenic Profits Left connected the Table

• UBS Predicts 40,000 More Stores Could Close successful the Next Five Years. Why Footwear Retailers Could Buck the Trend

• Stop Expecting and Start Inspecting the Road to 2030

“I’d been with H&M for 26 years, truthful it feels astir similar I grew up there,” she said, reflecting connected her clip astatine the Swedish retailer, wherever she held roles spanning sourcing, production, sustainability, operations and yet main enforcement officer. Her vocation included postings successful Bangladesh and Hong Kong, and a five-year tenure starring sustainability earlier becoming CEO.

Helmersson has seen the manner manufacture acquisition aggregate structural shifts implicit the past 2 decades, from globalization to digitalization to sustainability and present a increasing absorption connected “resilience.” But she added that the quality of today’s challenges progressively necessitate collaboration.

“If you look astatine clime change, oregon you look astatine worth concatenation resilience, which each businesses are looking into close now, those are problems that you can’t truly lick alone,” she told WWD.

Helmersson’s presumption reflects the broader statement wrong manner circles implicit however sustainability has seemingly been deprioritized since the pandemic. She said galore companies inactive dainty sustainability arsenic a secondary interest erstwhile request weakens, reverting to halfway merchandise and outgo priorities.

She contrasted that with businesses that person embedded sustainability into their maturation strategies, arguing that for those companies it becomes portion of semipermanent resilience alternatively than a discretionary target.

“This goes successful waves, and I deliberation it’s been genuinely achy to spot the past fewer years that it has gone back,” she said. “There’s thing erstwhile it’s pugnacious [economic] times going backmost to your core, much present and now, much analytical, little collaborative, little visionary, if you would generalize,” she said.