Key fashion players unite at the Copenhagen Fashion Summit

Copenhagen – Brands including adidas and Kering have signed a commitment to define and move towards a circular business strategy.

Some 800 industry decision-makers gathered at the summit, which opened with a screening of the Sundance award-winning film Machines by Rahul Jain, which depicts the rhythm of life in a large textiles factory in Gujarat, India.

The world’s first United Nations resolution on fashion was presented by a group of fashion graduates, who asked those in attendance to sign a Call to Action for a Circular Fashion System, which asks leading brands, governments and consumers to commit to ‘defining a circular strategy, setting targets for 2020 and reporting on the progress of implementing the commitment’.

The need for collaboration and closed-loop systems in fashion were key themes of the day. ‘We should be designing for next use rather than end of life,’ says architect and author of Cradle to Cradle William McDonough. In line with this, there was a general consensus that innovations in sustainability should be developed through collaboration rather than competition. ‘The circular economy will be a game-changer and it’s very important that the luxury industry jumps,’ says Géraldine Vallejo, sustainability programme director at Kering.