As fashion brands face growing pressure to improve traceability, sustainability and supply chain stability, many are starting to look higher up the value chain—to the farm. “Elevating Tier 4: Building Equitable Materials Systems,” a panel at Texworld last week, focused on Tier 4, the grower, and how bringing farmers into the sourcing decisions can create stronger, more collaborative supply chains and transparency.
Panelists included Meghan Erdman, head of product sustainability at Victoria’s Secret & Co., and Larkin Martin, a cotton farmer at Martin Farm in Courtland, Alabama, with moderator Liz Hershfield, executive director of Cotton Council International (CCI), the export promotion arm of the National Cotton Council of America (NCC). Together, they presented a real-world example of how direct brand-to-farmer partnerships work—from the benefits to challenges.
Victoria’s Secret began exploring a Tier 4 sourcing model in 2021 to address three goals at once: securing a resilient stream of lower-impact cotton, achieving full farm-level traceability, and aligning sourcing with its commitment to women’s empowerment. Cotton is Victoria’s Secret’s most-used fiber, making it a logical place to start.
Through industry connections, the brand identified four Alabama cotton farms—three women-owned and one Black-owned—committing to multi-year contracts and guaranteed volume. Products made with this cotton reached Victoria’s Secret in 2023. Breaking with its traditional sourcing models, Victoria’s Secret contracts directly with the farmers and owns the fiber, creating a dedicated supply chain from farm to finished product.
For growers, this approach represents a major, and a welcome, shift. “We’re used to selling cotton anonymously into the global commodity market, and now we’re working directly, and collaboratively, with a brand,” said Martin. Such an arrangement allows Martin Farm to tailor seed selection and farming practices to Victoria’s Secret’s quality needs, while offering the brand cotton visibility and data they never had before.
Long-term pricing commitments are especially important for Tier 4 growers. They give farmers the financial stability needed to invest in regenerative practices—changes that often take years to show results. With less short-term risk, growers can focus on soil health, reduced inputs and long-term resilience.
Such partnerships also give farmers a reason to keep their cotton commitment. U.S. cotton production costs have risen about 30 percent since the pandemic, with climate volatility, synthetic fiber competition and slim margins pushing some farmers away from the crop altogether.
“We need to create these equitable systems [for brand and grower],” said Hershfield “Because if you’re in the fashion industry and you use cotton in your products, it is not a given that it’s always going to be around.”
For Victoria’s Secret, the benefits go beyond strengthening access to high-quality cotton over time. Full traceability was essential to help reduce regulatory and compliance risk and support upcoming environmental disclosures.
“Cost is always part of the conversation within a brand, but as we see brands getting shipments detained, there is a value to having traceable cotton,” said Erdman.
Communicating sustainability is also increasingly important in light of greenwashing scrutiny and Victoria’s Secret is conducting a life cycle assessment (LCA) at the farm level. “Ultimately what we found is having direct access to the farmers and their farm and having that primary data far supersedes the certification. We’re now collecting that primary data from each of the farmers, and understanding what that impact is.”
While the data will help the company substantiate its claims and plot out the story it wants to tell, Erdman said the next step will be working with marketing partners on the “best way to package that for customers.”
Challenges: From Exec Buy-In to Timelines
Such farm-to-brand programs can seem abstract to those sitting at their desks in offices, so Erdman and Martin made sure to bring the Victoria’s Secret executives with real decision-making power down to the farm to create personal relationships and commit to the collaboration.
“Executives were touring the farm, they had lunch in our house. It became personal. It became the kind of relationship you want for long-term business relationships,” said Martin. “It was definitely transactional, money and numbers and volumes, but it was also building two-way trust in two-way conversations. And that’s odd in the commodity market.”
It’s also a different model in terms of money management and cash flow, as Victoria’s Secret is cutting checks to farmers to grow the cotton, versus buying it on the back end years later. From a financier point of view, that’s a lot of risk.
Victoria’s Secret started the program with core products like panties and bras, where cotton weight had less volume than apparel, helping price conversations with finance teams. “It’s all how you navigate those conversations internally, especially since there’s not a brand out there that isn’t price sensitive,” said Erdman.
Cutting out the middleman and committing to the cotton up front also puts the company almost a year-and-a-half to two years out from when the cotton shows up in their products, creating another friction point, said Erdman. “So as you can imagine, that was a completely new way of working for teams making those projections that far in advance.”
To scale the program, Victoria’s Secret is sticking to core programs that update less frequently, so they have two or three years to plan and evolve the program in 2028 and 2029.
Creating Partnerships
Putting such brand-farmer partnerships together can be daunting for companies that don’t have any relationships or know where to start. Martin admitted it probably wouldn’t have happened if not for a mutual friend who put her in touch with Erdman.
Hershfield offered up the organization’s services. “Cotton USA, Cotton Council, has a connection to the growers, and is happy to connect any brand and help you build out a program, plus the Cotton Trust Protocol is the sustainability leg, so that’s a great place to start,” she said. “We’re here for the U.S. farmers.”
The takeaway was clear: Tier 4 partnerships should not be mere pilot projects or marketing efforts. They can have a meaningful impact on how risk, value and responsibility are shared across the cotton supply chain, especially as regulations tighten and sustainability expectations grow.
