Awareness is growing among the top brands for a sustainable and increasingly green haute couture revolution
The current global situation
Let’s take stock of fashion and sustainability. Can fashion combat waste, pollution and implement useful actions to defend the planet Earth from the negative effects of climate change? The answer is, fortunately, affirmative and many of the most important brands and houses on a global level have put in place a series of strategic plans to do their part, although unfortunately there is still a lot of work to do. The sustainable commitment to date gives us this global overview: only 7% of brands regularly use recycled materials compared to the remaining 39% who do not use them and 54% who use them only for ad hoc products; even communication and education for sustainability through suggestions on product care and other responsible advice remains partial with 46% of brands trying to include these details in their products compared to 44% who still do not. These data come from the results of a research by the strategic consulting firm Kerney based on the Circular Fashion Index 2022 in which the efforts of brands to extend the life cycle of their creations were measured. The evaluation criteria for this index are many: use of recycled materials, product care and specific instructions on washing, repair services but also rental and collection of used items. This year’s ranking covered 150 global brands representing 20 countries and 6 specific sectors: sports and outdoor, underwear and lingerie, luxury, mass market and fast fashion. The best performing brands are Europeans: 35% are made in Italy, Germany, France. Italy is positioned at the top of the ranking among the Top 10 with Gucci and OVS. In fact, OVS used recycled fabrics for 65% of the previous collection, with the aim of reaching 90% by 2025. Gucci instead proposed the Off the Grid collection in recycled materials as well as engaging on the one hand through the portal Gucci Equilibrium to provide updates on its social and environmental commitments and on the other through the recovery and creative reuse projects with Gucci-Up. Italy is therefore the second sustainable country among the main producers with Ovs in fourth position in the overall ranking and the Maison Gucci in fifth but on the podium of that of luxury brands (followed by Coach and Burberry). At the top of the first three places in the overall ranking are the US with major brands engaged in sustainability actions: Patagonia, The North Face and Levi’s.
CNMI Sustainable Fashion Awards
An important event on fashion and sustainability will be on 25 September 2022 at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, at the end of Milan Fashion Week, the 2022 edition, the fifth, of the award-event dedicated to sustainable fashion will start: CNMI Sustainable Fashion Awards 2022 through which the National Chamber of Moda Italiana rewards and enhances sustainable fashion and its protagonists. This edition will be “that of maturity (declared Riccardo Vannetti, director of special projects of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion) because we have two important pillars: on the one hand the Ethical Fashion Initiative and on the other Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which support us in this path . The award of 25 September, the result of a work of great depth, saw a system with the protagonists of Italian fashion who had already worked to found the table on sustainability in CNMI years ago, namely Giorgio Armani, Gucci, Prada and Valentino: with they have chiseled the components of the project but now we want all the members of CNMI to become active participants in the project, the award ceremony for us is the lighting of a beacon but also a step in a wider path “. The artist and performer Rossy de Palma will be the presenter of this long-awaited evening. Carlo Capasa, president of CNMI, stated that: “The National Chamber of Italian Fashion feels the responsibility of continuing to be a permanent laboratory with a strategic function. The award, which will be awarded every year, will take stock of a work of monitoring, information , a confrontation that in our intentions will never stop. These are ambitious awards because it is time to be ambitious. CNMI wants to be a point of reference and stimulus not only for the fashion system but for all those that must become good daily practices … The vision of the Foundation of a circular economy for fashion is the basis of the CNMI strategy and highlights the environmental and economic opportunities that prioritize the rights and equality of everyone involved in our industry ”.
