Last week Gisele Bündchen arrived to the annual MET Gala in a silver gown by Stella McCartney. Her dress was made for the Green Carpet. Not a new emerald walkway, but a challenge to fashion’s elite to pair glamour and ethics, with the aim of raising the profile of global sustainability and social welfare.

Like so many industries, the inner workings of fashion, how the clothes are made and where the fabrics come from, are not the story that brands choose to tell. Whilst there are a growing number of ethical and transparent labels emerging, most of the time, we’re kept in the dark.

So, when a company like Stella McCartney not only catapults sustainable style into the spotlight, but publishes its first global environmental profit and loss account for the year dating 2015, a transparency benchmark is set for businesses of all kinds.

In a recent survey of over 10,000 consumers from around the world, 78% of consumers said it is ‘somewhat or very important for a company to be transparent.’ And 70% said that ‘these days I make it a point to know more about the companies I buy from’ (Havas, February 2016).

By using EP&L accounting, a company can quantify its impact on the planet. But what about our individual trace? In Finland, financial institution, Bank of Åland, wanted to reposition themselves as a responsible player. So they developed the Åland Index, a way of using data to calculate the individual carbon footprint of each credit card transaction, thus creating the first bank index for everyday environmental impact.

Our access to information – over half of the population owns a smartphone – makes it easier to learn about the good, and bad, being done in the world. In an age of post-truth, it’s hard to work out who to trust: Volkswagen; the Panama Papers; giving £350m a week to the NHS; Hillary's emails, I could go on. When Donald Trump's senior adviser Kellyanne Conway coined the term "alternative facts" to refer to press secretary Sean Spicer's false claims about attendance at the president's inauguration, we seemed to enter a new Orwellian dimension.

"We inhabit a climate of trust as we inhabit an atmosphere and notice it as we notice air, only when it becomes scarce or polluted," said the late philosopher Annette Baier. We may be in a post-truth age, but that shouldn’t stop brands leading the march towards a more transparent world.

My Oxfam shows the real impact of donations

Public disillusionment and apathy towards charitable giving is at an all-time high; trust in charities has been eroded, with many supporters believing that charities misspend their donations, or that their donations will not have a material impact on seemingly insurmountable problems.

Oxfam's new app puts charitable donors in charge. With the ‘giving dial’ users can control their monthly contribution in seconds, see the real impact of their aid, and be the first to know when disaster strikes.

My Oxfam enables supporters to access regular video, articles and updates from beneficiaries and support staff on the ground, all focused on the projects that are made possible by the donations. When an emergency hits, supporters can see regular, authentic updates rather than curated, professionally produced content, helping them stay on top of the news and get support to the people who need it most.

When a supporter puts forward their hard-earned money, they do it because they care about the cause and the outcome. Through an onboarding program, Oxfam is able to identify the topic that motivated the supporter to sign up in the first place and carry that into the first experience with the product.

Agency: Hi Mum Said Dad, London