Fashion and Products for a Sustainable World

“Let’s recreate the equivalent of the Met ball in Europe and, rather than for the museum, give the money to environmental causes,” said the fashion world’s energetic activist Jochen Zeitz, referring to New York’s Metropolitan Museum’s annual fund-raising event.

“Fashion is a logical place to start to raise awareness for sustainable causes,” said Mr. Zeitz, who was formerly head of Puma and is now director of PPR, the French luxury group, and chairman of the board's sustainable development committee. “We should bring in an environmental attitude, and I think luxury should automatically be about sustainability and quality.”

Mr. Zeitz is not dreaming of a “green” Christmas. He has a much wider vision of a world in which environmental consciousness and sustainability is a built-in factor to product sourcing and design every day of the year. “We should make it part of the DNA of brand as a new definition of quality,” Mr. Zeitz said.

The two projects which make the executive unique are the nonprofit Zeitz Foundation, founded in 2008, which supports ecologically and socially responsible destinations and programs across the world from its epicenter on its Segera reserve in Kenya.

That initiative was celebrated last month at the London Zoo, where the Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt offered his support and one of his yellow and green Jamaica running vests for the auction.

After nearly two decades, Mr. Zeitz stepped down last month from his role as chairman of Puma, where he took the helm in 1993 at age 30 and transformed the ailing brand from sportswear to leisure. He also embraced designers in the PPR group from Hussein Chalayan through Alexander McQueen to Stella McCartney.

The other innovation is The B Team, founded in October by Mr. Zeitz and Richard Branson on the proposal that modern business needs a “plan B” as a global initiative to help transform capitalism into a driving force for social, environmental and economic benefit.

Mr. Branson takes the line that “business needs to move away from a focus on immediate profit to one where it invests and operates for the long-term good of people and the planet.”

Mr. Zeitz said leaders in the private sector should help to move toward an “equitable and sustainable future.”

The mantra of each project is that sustainability does not need to come at the sacrifice of economic prosperity. But rather the opposite: that a holistic system integrates the four C’s: conservation, community, culture and commerce.

For Mr. Zeitz, therefore, sustainability is for life, not a short-lived gift for Christmas — and the new year is just the time to start good, sustainable practices.

Are green pine needles and conifer trees going out of fashion?

Anyone who has felt guilty that acres of pine forest are chopped down to satisfy Christmas consumers should have been at the auction of designer “trees” in Paris last week.

From digital projections, through the neon art works of Jean Charles de Castelbajac and Stella McCartney to the cluster of metallic poles by Elie Saab, it seemed that any Christmas tree is stylish — as long as it is not cut from a living plant.

Marie Christiane Marek is the force behind 17 years of imaginative “Sapins de Noël,” which were put up for auction in favor of a cancer charity. Jean Paul Gaultier, whose tree was made of a stack of Coca-Cola tins, was on site to watch the bidding, along with Chantal Thomas, with her light-as-lingerie, white-feathered creation.

The Lesage tree, a black embroidered “plant” in homage by Hugo Barriere to the late embroidery king François Lesage, struck a wistful note; while Pierre Hermé’s tree made up of multicolored macaroons won the children’s vote.