Last week more than 1,100 people (among them designers, producers, manufacturers, academics and NGOs) gathered at the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, a biennial event on sustainability in fashion (now in its third year), to discuss solutions to environmental, social and ethical challenges, while commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster, the deadliest garment factory accident in history.
Opened by Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, the patron of the summit, this year the event featured a long program of speakers including Green Carpet Challenge founder and creative director of Eco-Age Livia Firth, Alan Roberts from the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, Vanessa Friedman, fashion editor of the Financial Times (soon to be fashion director of the New York Times), Helena Helmersson, Head of Sustainability of H&M, photographer Mario Testino, and Marie-Claire Daveu, the chief sustainability officer for the Kering group.
There were interesting suggestions made such as the launch of Clevercare.info, a label aiming to educate consumers to care for their clothes in a more sustainable way. Yet quite often you get the impression that these conferences promise a lot and achieve very little in terms of plausible solutions that will become effective in a few months' time.
For example, Firth showed her support to Fashion Revolution Day (24th April) by wearing her blazer inside out. The campaign as you may remember consisted in wearing an item of clothing inside out, photographing it, sharing it with the hashtag #insideout and asking the company that produced it to tell us more about the people who manufactured that specific item. While the purpose was perfectly fine, the campaign didn't maybe contemplate the subtleties of the fashion industry: in some cases a piece may be made in a country assembling materials coming from another country (what if a garment or accessory is Made in Italy but with an imported material or yarn, or if it is Made in China, but then finished in Italy?).
Daveu stated that they hope Kering will be close to having sustainably sourced leather, wool, gold, diamonds and python used across their brands by 2016, yet we all know that the word "sustainable" in connection with "diamonds" and "python" is an oxymoron (the only sustainable python is the python you don't kill...).
Speaking about the Garment Collecting Initiative, Helmersson pointed out that H&M collected since its launch in Spring 2013, 5,000 tonnes of used clothes in the recycling bins in their stores, but High Street retailers and assorted fashion brands overproducing too many useless and low quality garments are among the main reasons behind such huge numbers of discarded clothes.
Vanessa Friedman made indeed a sensible remark when she pointed out how there are far too many collections a year out there both by prominent fashion houses and High Street retailers (not to mention - we may add - the useless luxury pieces such as Hermès' hand-stitched and finished baseball glove in gold swift calfskin retailing at $14,100...) and that the definition "sustainable fashion" doesn't make sense. The key according to Friedman stands in creating a "sustainable wardrobe" that works in a functional way for the person who has built it (in a nutshell buy fewer clothes that you're going to wear and love).
It was interesting to hear updates from Alan Roberts, executive director of international operations for the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, about this independent legally binding agreement designed to make garment factories in Bangladesh safer places to work and that includes the implementation of safety inspections and the reporting inspection findings (the accord has been signed by over 150 apparel companies from 20 countries in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia; two global trade unions, IndustriALL Global Union and UNI Global Union, and numerous Bangladeshi unions). In an official Copenhagen Fashion Summit press release Alan Roberts explained: "The Rana Plaza disaster has become a rallying cry to put action behind our words. And the work is in full progress. Behind the Accord on Fire and Building Safety stands a large group of major brands and retailers, which, in cooperation with international and Bangladeshi labour unions, has entered into a legally binding agreement to inspect factories in Bangladesh. These inspections are currently being carried out on the ground in Bangladesh. The efforts will support the transformation of the industry and hopefully spread to other markets beyond Bangladesh."
Yet it remains to be seen if starting from Bangladesh is a good strategy or if we should try to make an effort in Europe as well. You indeed wonder why at these summits they never invite officers from special branches of the Italian police who are involved in different operations and investigations that may be covering the exploitation of human labour in Italy or the sub-tendered production of parts/entire garments or accessories in illegal factories for high fashion brands (how do we regulate this if many companies simply deny it happens?).
Somehow you get the impression all these summits are more about representatives of the luxury market and of huge retailers proving they are committed and innocent and that "Everything Is Awesome" (as that obnoxious pop anthem produced by Lord Business in The Lego Movie to numb the minds of people into conformity...) on planet fashion. So these meetings and conferences are definitely not about finding proper solutions or tackling certain aspects also from a political point of view (what about starting by reinforcing specific laws at European Union level?).
The final confirmation such events may just be big PR exercises about reassuring consumers that fashion conglomerates and corporations are nice people was summarised by the slide behind the President and Chief Executive Officer of Bottega Veneta Marco Bizzarri. It read: "The survival of our companies in the future depend (well, next time they may choose to invest some of their money in a proofreader...) on the choices we take today" and it made you think. Right when you thought they were discussing the survival of the planet and of human beings, you suddenly realised they were actually talking about the survival of their companies...
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