For the Global Fashion Summit 2023, more than 1,000 representatives from various fashion brands, retailers, non-governmental organizations as well as policy makers and manufacturers returned to Copenhagen this week.
The event also brought together some of the world’s biggest fashion groups such as PVH and VF Corp, luxury goods groups LVMH and Kering, sportswear giants Nike and Puma, and smaller innovative textile start-ups such as Circulose.
The Summit, launched by the Global Fashion Agenda (GFA) in 2009, addresses some of the industry’s most pressing issues in relation to social and environmental sustainability. This year, the focus has been on the introduction of new laws and regulations to tackle bad practices in supply chains.
On the first day of the summit, which will take place on June 27-28 in the Danish capital’s sprawling concert hall, Federica Marchionni, executive director of the summit, expressed optimism despite increasing environmental disasters such as wildfires and flash floods around the world.
“We have the opportunity to redesign and optimize the entire value chain, from sustainable sourcing and manufacturing practices to ethical labor standards and conscious consumption, so that we can reverse our current path,” she said.
Announcements and Introductions
The summit not only stimulated much-needed conversations about the many harmful practices in the industry, but also served as a launch pad for various tools and concepts designed to guide the fashion industry towards sustainability.
For example, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the UN Climate Change Commission have launched the Sustainable Fashion Communication Playbook, while the Global Fashion Agenda (GFA) has launched the Global Textiles Policy Forum, a platform that brings together companies and to help governments agree on a sustainability course for the industry and global political framework.
The brands also used the event to announce new sustainable initiatives, goals and products. The shoe and clothing brand Allbirds provided one according to their own statements “Net Zero Carbon Shoe” and a toolkit that competitors can use to draw inspiration from the innovation.
This notion of sharing ideas and innovating was one of the predominant themes of this year’s summit given the increasing pressure from consumers, investors and policymakers for more environmental action.
Industry collaboration is key
“Personal meetings are important for building relationships and mobilizing people around important issues,” Eva von Alvensleben, Managing Director and Secretary General of the Fashion Pact, told FashionUnited.
Launched in 2019 at the G7 summit in France, the Fashion Pact is a voluntary initiative in which brands and players in the textile industry commit to three important environmental goals: stopping global warming, restoring biodiversity and protecting the oceans .
Alvensleben stressed the need for alliances and collective action, acknowledging that the challenges facing the industry are complex. She added that “there is no other way forward than joint action on the ground at industry level”.
The idea of taking real, tangible action – rather than making more empty promises or vague goals – was widely discussed both on and offstage at the Global Fashion Summit. And that has to be done quickly.
‘The window of opportunity is closing’
“Our industry has made some positive strides in recent years, but this collective work needs to be accelerated to reach the global 1.5-degree carbon target by 2050,” Marchionni said. The goal can still be achieved, she said, but emphasized that the window of opportunity is closing quickly. “This is indeed a pivotal decade in our human history.”
Nicolaj Reffstrup, the founder of the Danish brand Ganni, had a similar opinion. “I wish there was less talk and more action,” he said, referring to the speed at which the industry is shifting to more sustainable practices.
Ganni was one of several companies presenting innovative new materials at the summit. The brand has teamed up with Californian start-up Rubi to introduce a breakthrough “carbon-negative cellulose textile” which it says is made directly from carbon emissions through a “fully enzymatic process”.
Reffstrup emphasized the importance of forums like the Global Fashion Summit “as platforms that bring decision-makers together and try to get them to make right, concrete decisions”.
Regulation – a much-needed change
It is becoming increasingly clear that relying solely on brands’ good intentions is not enough to reform the fashion industry. Stricter laws and regulations will be key to enforcing real change. This necessity was a central theme at the Global Fashion Summit, which was summarized under this year’s motto “Ambition to Action”.
And there are early signs of real advances in the regulatory landscape, offering a glimmer of hope for real change in an industry long plagued by bad practices hidden behind glitzy marketing campaigns and — when uncovered — by PR apologies and flimsy promises of improvement have been resolved.
Just this month, the European Parliament voted in favor of a bill designed to ensure big companies take action against suppliers who don’t follow certain rules related to their social and environmental practices. More than a dozen pieces of legislation are currently in the works to improve the textile sector, addressing critical areas such as greenwashing and fiber recyclability.
Brands need investment to keep up
Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius spoke at the summit on the EU strategy for sustainable and circular textiles: “Textiles are global, so we have to face the consequences of this fact. For too long the challenges have been out of sight and out of mind, but doing nothing is no longer an option.”
Of course, the introduction of such far-reaching new regulations will pose major challenges for companies and will require significant investments in areas such as improved data collection in their supply chains.
“There is an enormous data gap across the entire value chain in this industry,” said James Schaffer, chief strategy officer at data platform Worldly. “We need new tools, new thinking. We have to measure the right things.”
Worldly, formerly known as the Higg Index, was renamed earlier this year after the Norwegian Consumer Authority (NCA) found its product-based system an insufficient basis for environmental marketing claims. Parent company SAC has since released updates to its index.
Sustainability and greenwashing have increasingly gone hand in hand in recent years. Because, as Environment Commissioner Sinkevičius put it: “Green sells.” However, at the 2023 edition of the Global Fashion Summit, it was again emphasized that the days of superficial sustainability claims and unethical practices may be numbered as politics will force companies to change their behaviour.
Eva von Alvensleben emphasized the need to promote common approaches and collaborative thinking across the entire value chain. “This means we need to include all stakeholders in the conversations, from suppliers and manufacturers to retailers and brands. Regulation will play a key role in giving us all a clear framework.”
This post originally appeared on FashionUnited.uk.