Since 2010, Hermès has been collecting the leather, silk, crystal and porcelain offcuts left over from its workshops and handing them to artisans to turn into new objects, under the name petit h. There's no sustainability campaign. No press release. Pascale Mussard, sixth generation of the Hermès family and the project's founder, sums up the logic in one line: "Luxury is what gets repaired."

That gesture — reusing instead of discarding — has run for fifteen years without needing a moral argument to back it up. And that's what most sustainability strategies miss: Hermès didn't convince anyone of anything. It normalised a habit until it stopped looking unusual. Aristotle explained it twenty-four centuries earlier: virtues aren't acquired through argument, they're acquired through the repetition of acts. No message, however well-reasoned, transforms an already entrenched habit. What transforms a habit is another habit — one simple enough to imitate without effort.

Sustainability isn't announced. It's normalised. And only what's easy enough to copy gets normalised.

Sociologist Georg Simmel distinguished between two kinds of people: those who act for their own reasons, and those who act simply because that's what most people do. Sustainability communications almost always speak to the first group — data, arguments, impact figures — while ignoring the fact that most of the market doesn't move by conviction. It moves by watching what the people it already follows are doing.

This has a direct consequence for any brand or designer: being right isn't enough. The correct behaviour has to be visible, repeatable, and easy to copy. Petit h never explained why recycling matters. It set up the workshop, brought in artisans and artists, and let the finished piece speak for itself. Fifteen years on, it still works — without ever needing a manifesto.

What a brand communicates about sustainability isn't just a message: it's an invitation to imitate. When that invitation lands, it becomes a shared norm. When it doesn't, it stays a message — and a message, without repetition, changes nothing.

Role models, not campaigns

Model the behaviour before you ask for it

Repeatable gesture

Design what gets copied, not just what gets read

The imitator matters

Most people act from habit, not conviction

The question every brand should ask before launching its next sustainability campaign isn't whether the message is true. It's whether someone could imitate it tomorrow, or whether they can only read it today.

Based on research by Florencia Garrido Larreguy, "Estética, ética y política de la moda: hacia hábitos sustentables," Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios en Diseño y Comunicación, 257 (2025/2026).