With its Frankfurt City Edition 2022, the Neonyt Fashionsustain conference presented itself on January 19, 2022 in hybrid form: limited and under strict hygiene conditions live on site or in the live stream, there were impulse insights, panel discussions and fashion deep dives on the status quo of textile and fashion industry. Among those present were the Green Button, Fond of, the German Design Council and Tchibo.
Under the motto Change the set-up, Fashionsustain, Neonyt’s international and multidisciplinary conference format, on January 19, 2022 as part of Frankfurt Fashion Week, highlighted how the textile and fashion industry can cope with the ongoing transformation process and prepare for future challenges. The focus was on the topics of consumer behavior, corporate due diligence and sustainability at the point of sale.
“The dynamic circumstances during the preparations for the current Fashionsustain show how agile we all have to be today,” says Bettina Bär, Show Director of Neonyt. “Constantly adapting to new circumstances will continue to be a key competence of our industry in the future. As part of our international and multidisciplinary conference format, all the speakers who had their say provided exciting insights into their specialist areas as to how this can be achieved.”
Change the mindset – change in consumer behavior
Neuroscientist Prof. Dr. Maren Urner with a keynote speech on Change the Mindset. The focus was on the so-called attitude-behavior gap and how we can overcome it. Prof. Dr. Urner advised a positive mindset, quoting the American psychotherapist Steve de Shazer: “Talking about problems creates problems, talking about solutions creates solutions.”
In the deep dive that followed, she reflected in a round with Karin Ziegler from Blutsgeschwister and Lutz Dietzold from the German Design Council, why people act differently than they intend and how our own attitude, and thus the attitude of the entire industry, will affect our behavior even more in the future can reflect.
On the question of whether real change should come from the individual or the system, Prof. Dr. Urner: “Both are needed: an individual and a systemic change. But the systemic change can only succeed if we start individually. Because we humans are the system.”
Change responsibilities – supply chains of the future
“Many companies report that measures such as the UN Guiding Principles help them to position themselves sustainably, for example in the areas of risk analysis and monitoring,” said Christine Moser-Priewich from the Green Button in his panel discussion on corporate due diligence with Axel Schröder from Tchibo GmbH and Hannes Weber from Fond of. Axel Schröder added: “The Green Button was a good learning journey for us in preparation for the upcoming supply chain laws.”
Change the system – revolution in retail
“Consumers with sustainable intentions are having a difficult time,” said Christian Salewski from the research start-up Flip. “You often can’t distinguish between green marketing campaigns and honest intentions.” In his insight talk, he illustrated how Flip wants to support consumers in the opaque sustainability market and ensure more transparency.
As an example, he gave behind-the-scenes insights into the sneaker hunt, one of the most discussed videos in the industry over the past year, in which Flip, together with NDR, Die Zeit and celebrities, revealed that sneakers are not always recycled in the way the brands behind them claim . “We received feedback from politicians and consumer advocates that our research was an important impetus to bring momentum back to the Circular Economy Act.”
The Fashionsustain City Edition was rounded off with a panel discussion on the topic of sustainability at the point of sale. Tanja Kliewe-Meyer from Like a Bird, Marco Schütte from the EK Service Group and Frederik Gottschling from the Hessian Trade Association discussed how trade as a knowledge broker can contribute to raising consumer awareness and what this can mean for the revitalization of inner cities.
“It is important,” says Tanja Kliewe-Meyer, “to create worlds of experience in order to bring sustainability into the cities. Gone are the mono-shops that made every city center look the same.”
Change the perspective – online and offline
Participants were able to follow the international conference format of Neonyt live on site and digitally as part of Frankfurt Fashion Week. In Frankfurt, there were representatives from Condé Nast Germany, Deutscher Fachverlag and FAZ, Hohenstein and the German Design Council. In addition to international fashion institutes, company representatives from Breuniger, C&A, Closed, Gerry Weber, Givenchy/LVMH, Hallhuber, Hessnatur and Kastener & Öhler as well as the editorial offices of Fashion United, Luxiders, RTL, Spiegel Online and TextilWirtschaft followed the live stream.