“We have to have this conversation and we have to be held accountable”, the words of Stella McCartney summed up the last edition of Copenhagen Fashion Summit, concluded yesterday after two days full of meetings and presentations with the most important international speakers of the fashion industry, politics, NGOs, academia and the media. The theme is, of course, sustainability in fashion, of which McCartney has always been a staunch supporter. Yesterday, in conversation with Graydon Carter, former editor of Vanity Fair, on the topic ‘The 21st Century Fashion Company’, the designer, in addition to talk about its brand from its birth to now, has further deepened the discussion on sustainable practices in the sector, giving in this sense useful advises to the brands and designers alike in the audience, who have just begun or are looking to make a start in becoming more sustainable.
McCartney’s statement marks an edition which has seen the presence of 1,300 key players from more than 50 countries across the globe, with a massive presence of top managers and with a 60% growth in participation from Asia, a sign that the interest of emerging economies towards a sustainable approach is growing.
If the previous editions of the Summit have been characterized by so many ‘words’, as comments Eva Kruse, CEO of Summit organiser Global Fashion Agenda, the Summit’s internal forum, in which nothing has been done but talk, talk and talk during meetings and roundtables, stimulating but always confined at the time of the conversation, this year more action was added to the event, because the need of companies to support and accelerate change is now urgent. The launch of a new exhibition space, the Innovation Forum, in which 50 exhibitors, including some of the most noteworthy sustainable solution providers to the fashion industry, such as Piñatex and ECONYL®, presented their sustainable solutions, has allowed for example to create an opportunity to meet directly with suppliers.
So more action and less words, more willingness to change immediately and less procrastinating to a near future because the times of fashion, especially fast fashion, are fast and there is no planet B, at least for the moment, that waits for us.
