In late July, employees at Lectra, a French fashion technology company, were told to stay home from its Bordeaux-Cestas campus as wildfires swept through the southwestern Gironde region. In less than four days, the fires burned an area roughly four times the size of Paris.
Out of about 800 Lectra employees, 200 were evacuated from their homes. They were part of a larger group of 220,000 people across the region who had to seek safety while authorities struggled to contain the flames. Lectra says it expects the three-day closure to have only a minor long-term impact on its operations. But Lectra wasn’t the only company affected, and it won’t be the last.
Wildfire disruption spreads throughout fashion supply chains, from growing raw materials to manufacturing. Cestas is a major industrial area, home to companies like Le Roy Logistique, GXO Logistics France, Cdiscount, and La Poste. These businesses support fashion brands with services such as distribution, inventory management, warehousing, and logistics. Concerns include delivery delays during a key sales period and damage from smoke.
Although the wildfires affecting Cestas were devastating, they are just one part of a larger pattern that defined the summer. Across the EU, 1,407 wildfires (and counting) have been detected since the start of the year, burning 434,976 hectares — far more than the 346,836 hectares burned in 2025. Fire and rescue services in England and Wales have responded to 706 wildfires so far in 2026. Argentina, Greece, Spain, Canada, and the US are among many other countries also fighting their own wildfires.
Beachgoers sit on the coast of Moutchic in Lacanau as clouds of wildfire smoke rise into the sky.
Photo: Getty Images
“Wildfires have always been a natural hazard, but the frequency of fires and the extreme fire behavior has greatly accelerated, especially in recent decades, and much of that is driven by climate change,” says Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist at forecasting services company AccuWeather.
The effects of climate change are no longer abstract future predictions; they are a current reality that both people and businesses must adapt to. As a result, companies are now calculating climate risks. What does that mean for how wildfires threaten supply chains?
Understanding the risks
“The feeling of living through a fire is incomparable,” says Antonio Tucci, a regenerative livestock farmer and trainer who is part of the Commonland network. Tucci’s farm in Vilariño de Conso, Galicia, in northwestern Spain, saw intense wildfires in August 2025. “You don’t just see the danger of your house burning; you see the danger to your own life, because you try to stay with the animals until the last possible moment. But above all, you watch the very land that sustains you burn. Of the 160 hectares of communal land we use, only 20 were saved in last year’s wildfires. What people don’t understand is that many of us feel our means of production slipping away.”
Individuals can easily get lost in corporate risk calculations, but Hazem Krichene, senior climate economist at financial services company Allianz, stresses the importance of thinking holistically. “When we talk about adaptation and resilience, first you have direct resilience — your production unit — and then you have the resilience of your value chain. You can make yourself the most resilient business, but if one supplier is in a risky area and they are affected, you cannot produce anymore or you will produce with much more expensive inputs. You really have to understand the different levels of your supply chain.”
French luxury group Kering says it does this through a scenario-based climate risk assessment, evaluating physical risks under multiple scenarios and time horizons. “Assessments are carried out across assets, operations, strategic suppliers, and sourcing regions,” the group explains. Wildfires are one of several hazards assessed alongside droughts, heatwaves, water stress, floods, and storms, helping to identify key risks such as potential yield losses.Quality deterioration, supply disruptions, and higher costs for raw materials are all potential consequences.
A map from forecasting company AccuWeather shows the level of fire risk across the US for fall 2026.
Photo: Courtesy of AccuWeather
In its 2025 climate risk report, outdoor brand Patagonia also highlighted wildfires as a climate hazard. The listed risks and potential impacts include direct damage or loss of facilities (including inventory), indirect effects from poor air quality, and temporary or complete operational shutdowns. However, the brand focused only on its operations in California and Nevada, despite having a global supply chain. Patagonia said this decision was due to California’s SB261 climate risk disclosure law, which requires reporting that follows the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) guidelines.
Kim Drenner, director of supply chain environmental impact at Patagonia, explains: “Since this was our first year producing a climate risk report, and to meet TCFD requirements, we limited the assessment to our most financially significant operations and geographic areas within our global supply chain, evaluating risks and opportunities across different warming scenarios. Our goal for future reports is to expand both the operations we cover and the climate risks we assess.”
Right now, it’s mostly up to each brand to decide its own risk scope, but a broader approach will soon be required, says Sue Lloyd, vice chair of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), which sets a global baseline for reporting sustainability and climate risks to investors. “Over 45 jurisdictions, representing about 60% of global GDP, will soon require companies to use ISSB standards to disclose important information about the physical risks they face from climate change,” she says. “Investors increasingly want information to assess how companies are identifying and managing these risks to stay resilient over the short, medium, and long term.”
Adaptation as risk management
Once a company has identified its exposures and weaknesses, the next step is to put adaptation plans in place. What that looks like depends on which part of the supply chain is being examined.
In recent years, many homes and businesses have moved into what experts call “wildland-urban interface areas,” where developed spaces sit close to natural areas like forests. This raises the risk of wildfires affecting supply chains, says Porter. Aside from relocating homes and businesses away from wildlands, some possible adaptation measures include managing vegetation to create buffer zones and covering vents to block embers that can start fires.
A firefighter works to put out a forest fire burning in the mountains of the rural area of Epuyen, Argentina.
Photo: Getty Images
Diversifying the types of fibers used is another key step, suggests Kari Stoever, head of impact at the non-profit Canopy, which partners with brands to keep ancient and endangered forests out of fiber supply chains. Beyond sourcing viscose from certified forests, using alternative fibers further reduces pressure on the source, says Stoever. Canopy encourages brands to explore using agricultural waste as raw material and to recycle textiles back into textiles. In an upcoming report shared exclusively with Vogue Business, Canopy says that a 5% adoption rate of textile-to-textile recycling by 2028 would be a “low-regret” starting point for brands. This could encourage larger-scale adoption and save brands tens of millions of dollars over the next decade, as conventional viscose becomes more expensive.
Viscose producer Lenzing’s 2025 annual report seems to support these price concerns. The report states: “Commodity prices (for example, wood, pulp, and chemicals) could rise due to energy availability and price swings caused by climate change… Climate change impacts such as heavy rainfall or forest fires could disrupt Lenzing’s key pulp supplies.” The company is diversifying its own suppliers and supply routes.Yes, reducing reliance on Europe and expanding into countries such as Brazil.
Data from EFFIS and NASA’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite shows a map of active wildfires, the spread of burned areas since July 22, and how far the active fires are from Bordeaux, France.
Photo: Getty Images
Beyond diversifying to lessen the impact on businesses, adaptation means working with nature to create conditions that make disruptions less likely in the first place, and building systems that can withstand them when they do happen. Take cotton, for example. Efforts are underway to make this highly flammable crop—widely grown in regions recently hit by fires, including Greece and Spain—more resilient.
“Resilient cotton starts with resilient land,” says Marjory Walker, co-director of the US Cotton Trust Protocol, a voluntary program that sets standards for responsibly grown cotton. “Through practices like cover cropping, reduced tillage, and crop rotation, our growers are improving soil health so the soil holds onto moisture better when it gets hot or dry. It’s not a quick fix—it’s steady, year-on-year work, and it adds up. Since 2015, our growers have cut soil loss by 89% and improved water-use efficiency by 87%, and that’s verified, field-level data, not an estimate.”
Luxury sourcing specialist House of Tengri works with nomadic Mongolian herders. Their culture and livelihoods depend on the dry, treeless steppe, which has become more prone to wildfires as the land degrades. “Desertification and wildfires create a dangerous feedback loop. As rangelands degrade due to climate-induced drought, vegetation becomes drier and more vulnerable to fire,” says Nancy Johnston, co-founder of House of Tengri. As of April 2026, 72 forest and steppe fires had already been recorded across Mongolia, she notes, citing reports from the Mongolian National Broadcaster. The company is helping its partners use traditional nomadic grazing methods, moving livestock seasonally to give vegetation time to recover, which reduces land degradation and exposed soil. Multiple studies have shown that targeted grazing can help reduce fire severity.
Following traditional nomadic grazing practices reduces land degradation and exposed soil, making the land more resilient to the spread of wildfires.
Photo: Courtesy of House of Tengri
Resilience-focused agriculture can’t eliminate fire risk entirely. But it can create conditions that resist ignition, slow the spread of fires, and help the land recover faster. Despite the clear benefits, some brands are hesitant to cover adaptation costs, and the fashion industry often resists the idea of expenses that would either be absorbed internally or passed on to consumers. In fact, manufacturers have long complained they’re bearing too much of the financial burden for decarbonization and adaptation measures that ultimately benefit brands.
Allianz’s Krichene believes that reluctance to invest now is unwise. “If you don’t price it in now, you’ll pay the bill at some point,” he says. “Cost-benefit analysis shows adaptation is worthwhile. You’re winning because you’re making your business more sustainable and resilient.”
The experts Vogue Business spoke to agree that adaptation is a key part of reducing wildfire risk, but it’s not enough on its own. We face a future with more extreme heat and drought, leading to more wildfires, which in turn can cause flooding. So knowing how to respond to disasters after they happen is also crucial.
How to respond and rebuild
LA’s deadly wildfires in January 2025 displaced the city’s local garment industry. “It was extremely scary for everybody involved. We had a lot of people who couldn’t be in their homes,” says Marta Miller, co-founder of LA-based garment and accessories producer Lefty Production Co. “Because of the level of smoke, it was hard to come into the office.”
Due to Covid-era measures,Some work could have been done remotely, but the company still ended up four to eight weeks behind on orders—a heavy burden for a small business. After an initial wave of sympathy, Miller says some brands grew less patient with the delays. Ideally, flexibility would have been warmly embraced, and in fact, Miller believes it’s now essential for business, with local supply chains that can quickly mobilize resources playing a key role.
“Gone are the days we can be inflexible in this industry,” she says. “The brands that have survived the last six years are extremely creative, extremely nimble, and can see the bigger picture.”
Big-picture thinking is also vital in the raw material supply chain, explains Lily Maxwell-Lwin, head of external communications at Commonland, an NGO focused on landscape restoration. That’s because restoration requires working at nature’s pace and looking beyond quarterly profit reports. In partnership with Pioneers of Our Time, a landscape restoration nonprofit, Commonland is restoring the Muga Watershed in Catalonia, northeastern Spain. A 2012 fire burned 13,000 hectares in the area, causing an estimated €200 million in ecological damage. Restoration began by building trust with people in surrounding villages to understand their biggest concerns, says Stef van Dongen, founder of Pioneers of Our Time.
The Muga Valley, northeastern Spain, lost 13,000 hectares to wildfires in 2012, causing €200 million in ecological damage. Efforts are underway to restore the land.
Photo: Courtesy of Pioneers of Our Time
The priorities that came out of that engagement were: clearing dry vegetation and creating a diverse forest; bringing back grazing to naturally keep undergrowth down; and restoring biodiversity, soil, and river health to rebuild water retention. It’s a journey that will take decades, so partnering with brands that share their values and commit to long-term purchase agreements for materials like cork has been a financial lifeline. Pioneers of Our Time has also developed a nature credit aimed at water-intensive companies. “The brand gets its material, the water-dependent company gets its hectare restored, and together they help rebuild a forest that can hold more water and resist the next fire,” says van Dongen.
As with adaptation, restoration requires fair pricing for labor, production costs, natural resources, and ecosystem services, as well as a willingness to invest now for resilience later. “It’s a patient process,” says Maxwell-Lwin. “And for that you need patient governance, patient collaboration, and patient capital.”
This will only become more important as the climate crisis continues and risks pile up. Whatever actions brands take today, Canopy’s Stoever is blunt about how seriously they should treat this. “You have to plan for volatility. It’s here to stay. Our lesson is: be prepared, diversify now, make the investments, even if you have to pay premiums to help with the transition. Ultimately, it’s a risk mitigation, adaptation, and resilience strategy for your business,” she says. “Business as usual is dead.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about how brands can handle the risks of wildfires written in a natural tone with clear concise answers
General Beginner Questions
1 Why should my brand care about wildfire risk Were not a forestry company
Wildfire smoke and evacuations affect supply chains employee safety and delivery routes Even if your office isnt near a fire air quality can halt warehouses and customers remember which brands helped during a crisis
2 What is the first step to preparing for wildfire season
Audit your physical assets Map out where your offices factories and key suppliers are located relative to highrisk fire zones Then create a list of backup suppliers and remote work protocols before you need them
3 How do wildfires actually impact a brands reputation
Its about perception If you are seen as profiting from a disaster ignoring your employees safety or contributing to climate change without action you face backlash Conversely stepping up to support communities builds massive trust
4 What does air quality have to do with my marketing team
Everything If your products require outdoor use you need a plan for Code Red days Also your social media tone must shift to empathetic posting promotional content while your city is choking on smoke looks tonedeaf
5 Is this just a problem for brands in California and Australia
No Wildfires now affect Canada the Mediterranean and parts of South America Even if your HQ is safe your remote workers or data centers might be in a fire zone and smoke can travel thousands of miles
Operational Logistics Questions
6 How can we protect our supply chain from wildfire disruptions
Stop relying on singlesource suppliers Identify which raw materials come from highrisk regions and prenegotiate contracts with alternative vendors in different climates Also keep higher safety stock of critical inventory during highrisk months
7 What should we do if our warehouse is under an evacuation order
Trigger your Business Continuity Plan immediately This means securing physical servers moving inventory to a prearranged alternate site and communicating a clear shipping delay message to customers before they ask
8 How do we keep our employees safe without shutting down the business
Implement a tiered response system For