2025 is coming to an end – it’s high time to remember the past few months and look ahead to the coming year. To do this, we spoke to various industry experts about their expectations, wishes and highlights.
First up is Scott Lipinski, CEO of the Fashion Council Germany, who, in addition to 2025, can also look back on the tenth anniversary of the German fashion association.
What expectations did you have for 2025 and have they been fulfilled?
We also planned to grow healthily last year. We have succeeded in this in many ways: For example, we were able to further expand our team and gain several very experienced employees in permanent positions.
In addition to the entrepreneurial aspects, we also planned to expand existing projects and initiate new initiatives in the interests of our members in 2025. We have achieved that too – for example with our internationalization project “Berlin Fashion x International”, which we have expanded to include the Asian region, or with the Berlin Fashion Week, which will be even bigger and of higher quality next season.
We were also able to establish or consolidate important political contacts and found fashion supporters in and from Germany in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. All in all, we are ending the financial year in a great mood – and are already looking forward to the next one!
What was the year like for you?
For us, the year was all about our anniversary – the Fashion Council Germany turned ten years old in 2025. Naturally, this was a good time to look back at what we have already achieved. It also helped that we produced a corresponding booklet for our birthday. It makes us all very proud to see once again how a club with initially just eleven members and no permanent employees has become a council with more than 260 active members and an operational team of 24 people. The book project also reminded us of milestones such as our official visit to the Federal Chancellery – where representatives of the fashion industry had never been invited before – or the organizational takeover of Berlin Fashion Week.
A new highlight, for example, was that I went to a state banquet for His Majesty King Charles III at the beginning of December. was invited to Windsor Castle in honor of Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The Fashion Council Germany was part of the Federal President’s delegation, which also included some board members of DAX companies, on behalf of the German fashion industry.
In this respect, in addition to looking back on the past ten years, the year has of course also encouraged us to look further forward: We are looking forward to many new projects in the coming year that will take the Council and with it the entire German fashion industry a big step forward.
What highlights did the fashion industry offer you this year?
Personally, I have recently been pleased – and not just in the past year – about various situations in which fashion in and from Germany has been perceived internationally, and very positively! This affects events from other companies – such as Vogue Germany’s “Forces of Fashion” conference at the end of 2024, which Anna Wintour is attending [Anm.d.Red.: Chief Content Officer beim US-Medienkonzern Condé Nast] traveled to Berlin, or the Berlin Salon in the Gemäldegalerie, which apparently – so they say – inspired Jonathan Anderson for his first fashion show at Dior, as well as our own events.
As mentioned, in recent months we have expanded our “Berlin Fashion x International” initiative to Seoul and Tokyo. Supported by the Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Business, we have organized delegation trips to South Korea and Japan for various labels to make it easier for them to enter these important markets. Seeing how well the labels’ collections are received there and, for example, that buyers from stores like Dover Street Market or Isetan come to a “Berlin Showroom” in Tokyo that we organized was a real highlight for all of us.
Berlin Fashion Week is also becoming more and more international and we can now welcome more and more high-profile guests from the world’s most important fashion media – from US Vogue to WWD Japan. This shows me that we are on exactly the right track with our commitment.
Where does the fashion industry have to go in the coming year?
Parts of the industry have still not found credible answers to many pressing questions, especially when it comes to issues of sustainability and fairness. I think and hope that these topics will be at the top of the agenda for many companies in the coming year – and the big players in particular will recognize that small and medium-sized companies can become role models here. This is one of the reasons why we want to make the progressive work that many of our members do in these areas increasingly visible.
At the same time, we want to encourage other labels that are still struggling with such issues to rethink and reorient themselves. In the summer of next year, our “Sustainability Requirements” will come into force, which requires every brand that wants to become an official part of Berlin Fashion Week to take appropriate measures. There will be more initiatives like this in the future – hopefully not just here!
You can also initiate thought processes on the topic of sustainability with various initiatives that are particularly aimed at the next generation…
I think it is very important that young people in particular are made aware of these topics as early as possible, ideally at school age. We have some education initiatives such as “Generation Future” or the “Fashion Future” conference in collaboration with The King’s Foundation and the PVH Foundation, which are specifically aimed at teenagers. It is always impressive to see how open the young people are to these issues and the creative solutions they formulate. I would like to see many more projects like this.
What do you have planned for 2026?
We want to continue to grow in the coming year. By this I mean both our membership structure, in which we want to focus even more on a healthy balance of large companies and small labels, as well as our team, which ensures operational business. And in 2026 we want to expand existing projects and initiate new ones, consolidate existing partnerships and win new cooperation partners.
All of this should always contribute to our overarching goal, which the Fashion Council Germany set itself when it was founded: to make decision-makers from politics and business understand fashion as both a cultural and an economic good. We have already achieved a lot in this regard – most recently, at our annual general meeting at the end of November, Gitta Connemann, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, gave a very inspiring keynote and acknowledged our commitment.
We are also becoming more and more heard at the European level, not least through the founding of the European Fashion Alliance, in which traditional organizations such as the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode from France or the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana are organized and which I currently chair on behalf of the Fashion Council Germany. The fact that the value of the fashion industry is finally understood by all parties and politicians is not just our stated goal – it is an important building block to further strengthen and expand the economy in Germany and Europe!
This interview was conducted in writing.