Calvin Klein is owned by PVH Corp, which also owns Tommy Hilfiger.
In March 2020, Calvin Klein was named in ASPI’s report as one of at least 82 global brands whose supply chains were highly likely to contain Uyghur forced labour. ASPI’s report identified Calvin Klein as a customer of Esquel, a company with ties to Uyghur forced labour and labour transfers.
In July, Calvin Klein released a statement in response, however this has since been removed. An undated statement on the company’s website states that Calvin Klein “follows the laws and regulations that are applicable wherever we do business, including with respect to U.S. Government policy regarding the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).”
Calvin Klein was also named in a report from the Helena Kennedy Centre, published in November 2021, as one of many international brands whose supply chains were linked to textile companies known to source cotton from Xinjiang, who also own subsidiaries documented to have employed state-sponsored labour transfers.
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The move marks a new effort by Beijing to fight back against allegations from western officials and human rights activists that goods in the region have been produced using forced labour from the Uyghur ethnic group.
This report provides critical insight into how forced labour-made apparel is moving from the Uyghur Region into high-street and high-end brands operating and selling within the EU.
An investigation into how forced-labor-produced cotton and cotton-based goods from the Uyghur Region wend their way into international supply chains. Based on international trade and customs data, the report concludes that at the same time as Xinjiang cotton has come to be associated with human rights abuses and to be considered high risk for international brands, China's cotton industry has benefited from an export strategy that obscures cotton's origin in the Uyghur Region.
(First published 1 March 2020) The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country. Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 82 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen.
Calvin Klein’s statement on Xinjiang.
China is by many measures now the world’s largest economy, and in the wake of this boycott, major global apparel companies including Inditex and PVH have removed policies against forced labor from their websites. So far these companies are in the minority, but they own global brands such as Zara, Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. As long as there is a market for goods sourced from the Uyghur region, the Chinese government will be emboldened to keep operating the mass detention camps where Uyghur people are being held in indentured servitude.
The number of fashion brands caught in the crossfires of a heavy political storm in China over Xinjiang cotton is ballooning quickly. Foreign firms that have previously stated their concerns about cotton imports from the region are having their goods dragged down from online marketplaces in China because of it.
The U.S. Commerce Department announced on July 20 that it had added a subsidiary of one of the world's largest contract shirtmakers and 10 other companies to an export blacklist over their supply chain ties to Xinjiang, where Muslim ethnic minorities are pushed into a forced labor factory system.