The two-day Global Fashion Summit: Copenhagen Edition centred around the theme ‘Alliances for a New Era’ came to a close 8 June with leaders coming together to foster pre-competitive collaboration within the fashion industry and examine atypical cross-industry alliances, in a bid to accelerate the transition to a net positive industry.
- The slew of announcements include the GFA Monitor—a new report which presents consolidated guidance towards a net positive fashion industry according to five core sustainability priorities.
- The Global Circular Fashion Forum (GCFF), supported by GIZ, was launched to spur local action in textile manufacturing countries to accelerate and scale recycling of post-industrial textile waste.
- Uniting corporate entities and philanthropy, the Apparel Impact Institute announced the lead funders for a new $250 million Fashion Climate Fund.
The two-day Global Fashion Summit: Copenhagen Edition ended on 8 June, with a number of brands and organisations announcing a host of initiatives and measures geared towards the transition to a net positive fashion industry.
The Summit was centred around the theme ‘Alliances for a New Era‘. Under the theme, the event brought together leaders to foster pre-competitive collaboration within the fashion industry and examined atypical cross-industry alliances, in a bid to accelerate the transition to a net positive industry.
A SLEW OF ANNOUNCEMENTS: Multiple companies chose to announce their latest sustainability measures at the landmark event. Highlights include:
- GFA published The GFA Monitor—a new report to guide fashion leaders towards a net positive fashion industry. It presents consolidated guidance according to five core sustainability priorities. Building alliances through shared industry knowledge, each priority includes expert insights from GFA’s Data Partner, Higg, and its Impact Partners including: Fair Labor Association (FLA), the Social & Labor Convergence Program (SLCP), Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Apparel Impact Institute, and Textile Exchange.
- GFA also announced the launch of the Global Circular Fashion Forum (GCFF), a global initiative, which will be supported by GIZ, to spur local action in textile manufacturing countries to accelerate and scale recycling of post-industrial textile waste. The forum will convene stakeholders across various circularity programmes and regions, sharing knowledge and building upon best practices in an effort to achieve a long-term, scalable, and just transition to a circular fashion industry. The GCFF builds on the Circular Fashion Partnership in Bangladesh (2020-2021) that demonstrated the potential to scale the recycling of post-industrial textile waste to create new textiles. It will aim to establish similar locally owned and led programmes in other regions, beginning in Vietnam and Cambodia.
- Ralph Lauren Corporation announced its new Live On promise to enable its past and future products to live on responsibly by 2030. The new promise is part of Ralph Lauren’s Timeless by Design approach to ensuring its philosophy of timelessness is embedded from inspiration through to products’ every use and re-use across generations. As part of the unveiling, the Company also revealed that its iconic cashmere sweater will be the first-of-its-kind luxury Cradle to Cradle (C2C) Certified product.
- Apparel Impact Institute announced the lead funders for a new $250 million Fashion Climate Fund: Lululemon, H&M Group, H&M Foundation, and The Schmidt Family Foundation. Uniting corporate entities and philanthropy, the fund will help decarbonize and modernize fashion industry supply chains.
- Fashion Revolution highlighted its new ‘Good Clothes, Fair Pay’ campaign which calls for legislation on living wages across the garment sector. This year-long campaign will be the single biggest EU campaign on living wages to date, requiring 1 million signatures from EU citizens.
- Danish affordable luxury brand GANNI launched three fabric innovations as part of their ‘Fabrics of the Future’ initiative, an ambitious in-house programme dedicated to researching and developing innovative materials that will help inform the transition towards a more circular and lower impact fashion industry.
- TrusTrace, a platform for supply chain transparency and product traceability within the fashion and retail industries, in collaboration with Fashion Revolution and Fashion for Good, unveiled The Traceability Playbook. The comprehensive, open-source guide offers an in-depth analysis of the evolving market dynamics and incoming legislation moving traceability from a nice-to-have to a must-have, and includes practical advice on how to leverage traceability to achieve their goals.
- British luxury lifestyle brand Mulberry announced the introduction of Digital IDs to its leather goods in an initiative to revolutionise the way luxury brands and customers connect, and steward circularity in luxury fashion. As part of Mulberry’s commitment to introduce Digital ID to all products by 2025, Mulberry begins digitisation of pre-loved and vintage bags from Mulberry’s circular economy programme, the Mulberry Exchange – connecting each bag with a Digital ID powered by EON, retail’s leading enterprise software Product Cloud platform.
- In continuation of a round table at the Summit on Establishing Circular Fashion Systems in Indonesia, the Indonesian G20 Presidency, the EU, the Italian Ministry of Ecological Transition and the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce, will host a workshop to explore formats for international cooperation and exchange to help drive circular fashion throughout G20 value chains.
- 22 textile manufacturers that are members of Net Zero Pakistan—and represent 15% of Pakistan’s exports—discussed how Pakistan’s textiles industry can collaborate with global fashion brands to identify and scale sustainable interventions across the supply chain.
