The yearly encounter for sustainable fashion leaders

Last edition of the Copenhaguen Fashion Summit took place this week and EIG was there, together with several partners in the road towards a circular fashion. It was great to find there our clients and colleagues, sharing experiences.

This week 1,300 key players from more than 50 countries across the globe representing the fashion sector, politics, NGOs, academia and the media gathered for the sixth edition of the world’s leading annual business event on sustainability, Copenhagen Fashion Summit.

“Getting to where we need and want to be would require leadership. Bold leadership at all levels, from governments to designers to manufactures,” declared its patron, Her Royal Highness the Crown Princess of Denmark in her opening speech on Day 2. With almost 60% of participants coming from top management, 14 percentage points higher than last year, sustainability is clearly a top priority. (extracted from Coopenhaguen Fashion Summit website).

Stella McCartney, one of the first to join Fashion Positive Initiative, shown her leadership in this movement, where you can count now several of the fashion global leaders as H&M and C&A.

It was a great opportunity to meet innovation in textiles, additives, colorants and everything related to the garment industry. The most encouraging was to find out that many of this great solutions are inspired in the Cradle to Cradle® design framework. To mention some of them: Colorifix (growing colors with bacteria), Agraloop (banana based fabric) and Haelixa (synthetic DNA tracker).

This year there was a new section, the  Innovation Forum, an exhibition space for sustainable solutions. With 50 exhibitors, including some of the most noteworthy sustainable solution providers to the fashion industry, such as ISKOTM, I:CO, Piñatex, ECONYL® and Sustainable Angle, to name a few, Summit participants had an excellent opportunity to meet with sustainable providers covering the entire value chain.

General consensus is that Circular Economy is the way to go and this is only possible with Cradle to Cradle®. We know it can be hard but designing for good is the ultimate strategy and we all know that, including those that try to gain time with “less bad” approaches.