Sustainable Fashion: an industry R-EVOLUTION – first impressions
Yesterday in the very centre of Milan, in an historical and beautiful building, took place an interesting and important conference entitled “Sustainable Fashion: an industry R-EVOLUTION” organized by “Camera della Moda“ – the Italian Fashion Chamber” – and the British Consulate General in Milan with the support of ISKO – a Sanco Group Company.
The idea was to bring together some of the most important Uk based and Italian initiatives from an industrial and an academic point of view and at look at figures and data coming from different surveys and case studies.
Here a list (in Italian) of the different interventions.
It is well known how crucial is terminology when talking about Sustainability and that this is an unsolved issue.
Nevertheless it was undoubtedly a surprise to understand that for “Camera della Moda” sustainability is a question of environmental respect, omitting completely the social component of the discourse.
Many and interesting have been the case studies presented by both profit and non-profit organizations, locally as well as globally.
There was the chance to know the progress made by large corporates like Gucci in terms of sustainability, maybe they are still making small steps but with great intent and commitment to have a dialogue with the stakeholders. Hopefully these will soon concretize.
Very interesting to understand how sharing a common vision could bring two important industries in the Denim World to create a brand that keeps sustainability and transparency at its core. In this way it was born and continues to be developed Haikure, good, well dome and beautiful jeans.
Two phrases are emblematic of the Sate of the Art in terms of Sustainability in Fashion between the Italiand and the British scenario.
Anna Zegna – VicePresident of the “Camera della Moda” – stressed that it is time to create a table where to find a definition of sustainability for Italian Fashion.
On the other hand the British University representatives while presenting themselves and their work explained that are now more then 15 years since in the UK both the academic and the industrial world have started talking about this.
Une detail above all. While presenting the history of sustainable fashion in the UK, Rebecca Earley – Director of the Textile Futures Research Centre at Central Saint Martins – and Dilys Williams – Director of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London Collage of Fashion – of course used a beautiful picture of a Katharine Hamnett campaign where t-shirt become a strong social communication vehicle. This very t-shirts are now eventually arrived also in Italy thanks to a collaboration between the designer and Coop supermarkets (see a previous post for details). Pity that such a praiseworthy, hopefully ground breaking, initiative is arrived with at least 20 years of delay.
Ethicalista 