It’s been almost a month since I went to Copenhagen Fashion Summit, the worlds biggest sustainability conference about fashion, but I didn’t blog about it. Later I’ve found out that that might’ve been a mistake, but luckily, straight after the summit, Johanne from Bedre Mode asked me about my thoughts on the summit, so I did write everything down.
And now, that I’m in the midsts on studying for my exams, I wanted to repost her interview with me since I haven’t got the time to to lengthy blog posts these days.
There were a lot of exciting talks with people I’d been excited to hear speak, like Vanessa Friedmans talk om how to make sustainability sexy and Hannah Jones from Nike, who spoke about her efforts to make Nike’s produktion sustainable. She seemed super passionate about the subject and that was inspiring.
Where was the talk about what he did to produce sustainable denim? Diesel is such a big player on the mainstream market that they’d really be able to pop the bubble on how to make regular consumers shop sustainably. Unfortunately this wasn’t addressed to much, and when it was addressed, Rosso’s answers seemed a bit dodgy. So though that talk, all I did was wait for lunch.
Vanessa Friedman, Fashion director and chief fashion critic, New York Times from Copenhagen Fashion Summit
Johanne: My favorite talk was Vanessa Friedman, who thought that we need to make the talk about sustainability and fashion more sexy. You’re quite good at making thrift clothes sexy and exciting, how do you think we should do it with sustainability?
I don’t think people will forget the itchy, beige colored linen-idea of sustainable clothes unless this happens. Look at Agurk, for example. They promote their clothes on their aesthetics, 80’s sportswear and wild prints are their staples, and the sustainable and responsible production of the clothes is just a bonus. Now that’s sexy.
Johanne: Fashion Summit is supposed to prep us for the future and make the industry ready to put on their gloves and get to work. Do you think that there were some exciting solutions for this at the Summit?
Marie: Honestly, no, I don’t think a lot of solutions were presented at the Summit. There was a lot of talk for the sake of talking and the people who were there, were people who were already interested in sustainable fashion. The Summit was a great way for a lot of people to promote their own initiatives. I think Vanessa Friedmans talk was a usable solution on the communication of the subject.
But I missed the talk about reality – the talk about how we, who already have chosen this business and this field of interest can spred it to all those, who don’t care or never thought of sustainable fashion. I missed the talk about the regular consumers, who buy clothes because it’s pretty or cheap or great to wear for the party tonight – how do we make them shop sustainably? And how do we do it without preaching it and trying to convert them into little green activists, but just let them be how they’ve always been, but shopping sustainably because it’s good design, pretty, easy and – when that time comes – cheap? And last but not least – there was no talk of minimizing consumption and thereby production and wasting of the earth’s resources, which is chocking. I mean, come on!