Why do fashion weeks need to change their face?

54 fashion shows, 32,000 miles of car mileage, 20,000 cups of espresso, 5,000 cups of Prosecco sparkling wine. These are one of the statistics released by the British Fashion Council in London Fashion Week last September to highlight the vitality of Fashion Week. However, these figures also illustrate another problem: As regulators and consumers increasingly value environmental protection, the four major fashion weeks are full of extravagance.

“The fashion month (which consists of four major fashion weeks) is a party,” said Orsola de Castro, co-founder and creative director of Fashion Revolution, a non-profit organization. The organization aims to promote the development of a more ethical and sustainable fashion industry. “The party is very happy, but it has lost its charm now.”

Participants in Fashion Week will have an impact on the environment by taking international flights and renting a car. In addition, the temporary booth installations are usually only used for a few hours and then sent directly to the landfill; the gift bags are filled with disposable free samples; of course, don't forget the fashion itself, they Plastic packaging is used in transit.

Nick Marks, founder and managing director of sustainable production company Ecobooth, said: "The event is just a moment, but the garbage you left is not."

It is difficult to accurately estimate how serious the impact of Fashion Week on the environment. The organizers of the London, New York, Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks, namely the British Fashion Association, the American Fashion Designers Association, the Italian National Chamber of Commerce and the French Haute Couture and Fashion Association, do not collect data on junk from fashion shows. Fashion Week analyzes the climate impact.

All four institutions have stated that sustainability is their key agenda and they are taking steps to drive change. The British Fashion Council says it has reviewed all suppliers to ensure that the association uses the most sustainable products and has been renting and reusing as many materials as possible. In September 2019, the association will introduce designers focused on fashion positive fashion at the London Fashion Week Designer Exhibition, and has incorporated sustainability into the designer support program.

Pascal Morand, CEO of the French Haute Couture and Fashion Association, said that its Sustainability Committee is working with members to create a common mechanism to help brands organize fashion shows. In Italy, the National Fashion Chamber of Commerce issued a Declaration of Sustainability in 2012, focusing on major social and environmental issues in the fashion industry. During the Milan Fashion Week, the Chamber of Commerce adopted recycled materials while avoiding the use of plastics in its events and locations. The American Fashion Designers Association has developed a comprehensive sustainability guide and toolkit with a section on the topic of Instant Weekly. Several organizations also pointed out that it is the fashion brand that is actually releasing the product and making the big show, not the event organizer.

For many years, the fashion industry has rarely considered the impact of Fashion Week on the environment. However, given that some major brands and their parent companies have publicly published sustainable development plans, and the extravagant big show is not uncommon, more and more people are beginning to launch boycotts. In June of this year, Saint Laurent held a men's collection show on a hidden beach in Malibu, Calif., which angered the local residents and officials because of the destruction of the local environment. It also attracted media that the organizers did not want to see. s concern. The big names such as Louis Vuitton, Dior and Chanel are famous for their gorgeous fashion shows.

Louis Vuitton and Dior's affiliated LVMH Group have developed guidelines a few years ago to help their luxury brands organize events in a more sustainable manner. Chanel said the company is regenerating, recycling, reusing and/or reinventing the materials used in the fashion show as much as possible, and said that they will not repeat the practice of airlifting icebergs from Sweden to the Grand Palais in Sweden during the 2010 show. A spokesperson for the brand said: "In view of the changes in the times, we are unlikely to do so today."

At the same time, at London Fashion Week, Burberry is one of the few brands that will host large fashion shows. The environmental organization "Extinction Rebellion" called on the British Fashion Council to "Cancel London Fashion Week" and plans to organize a series of The protests disrupted the fashion week held in September this year.

Sara Arnold, an activist for the “Resistance to Extinction” organization, is also the founder of the fashion rental website Higher Studio. She said: "We regard the major fashion weeks as the goal, because they are cultural highlands, and culture should shoulder the responsibility. We must understand that if everyone is extravagant, it means that we have not taken this issue seriously."

Burberry said the company has been evaluating the impact of the upcoming fashion show on the environment. The company is still improving a number of measures, including making up for the carbon emissions impact of models and guests coming to London.

What is certain is that the environmental impact of Fashion Week actually only accounts for a small part of the overall impact of the industry. To date, the main reason for the destruction of the environment in the fashion industry is in the production chain, where carbon and toxic chemicals are rarely disposed of properly.

However, Fashion Week is the most eye-catching (especially the four major fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris) because they are the most important fashion event of the year. With the rise of social media, they are increasingly becoming a way for brands to talk directly to consumers. But so far, the sustainability and climate issues that brands are increasingly keen on when discussing long-term goals are rarely seen in fashion week.

However, from a sustainability perspective, fashion week shows and events are relatively easy targets for opponents to attack. Although its impact on the environment is less than the harm caused by production, even the amount of waste generated by a small fashion show is quite amazing.

Emerging Fashion Week is more aware in this regard. The practice in Stockholm is more extreme and directly cancels the Fashion Week event. And Copenhagen is working hard to meet this challenge. The organizers have introduced a number of initiatives, including prohibiting the use of disposable plastic bottles during the Fashion Week event, making up for the carbon emissions generated by foreign guests’ travel, and compensating for the carbon generated by its directly organized activities in the areas of catering, logistics, promotion and manufacturing. emission. Later this year, the organizers will launch a three-year plan to set minimum sustainability standards for brands that want to host fashion shows in Denmark. This is a delicate trade-off.

Cecilie Thorsmark, CEO of Copenhagen Fashion Week, admitted: “These goals are very ambitious.” But “If we set the target too high, the industry may not be able to participate. Once the industry is unable to participate, we will have no impact.”

Shanghai Fashion Week, which has emerged in recent years, has become the largest ordering season in Asia, but it has been advancing the practice of sustainable development. "We have always been concerned about the future development of this industry, and we do not want to use the concept of environmental protection as a concept and a expectation," Lu Xiaolei, deputy secretary general of the Shanghai Fashion Week Organizing Committee, told BoF.

In the past three years, each season of Shanghai Fashion Week will hold sustainable forums and exhibitions on the topic of “sustainable development” and “green environmental protection” in the fashion industry to arouse the public's attention and discussion on the sustainable development of fashion. Fashion Week has reached a long-term cooperation with the Yehyehyeh organization founded by Kaiyun Group and senior media person Ye Xiaowei. It has carried out case analysis on the front-end fabrics, mid-end manufacturing and end consumption of the fashion industry, and also promoted the transformation of the old clothes of the re-making bank brand. The display of fashion and environmentally friendly products will be widely explained and shared.

As people's awareness of environmental protection continues to increase, brands of all sizes are taking steps to hold fashion shows in a more responsible manner. A small but crucial change is that few brands are still sending paper invitations today, which is an expensive and wasteful habit left over from the Internet.

LVMH's guidelines include recommending that companies avoid air cargo and equipment and require them to use energy-efficient LED lighting. Companies should prioritize the use of recycled materials as decorative items and stipulate that product life should be considered during the design phase to ensure they can be reused or recycled. The guide appendix also lists a range of seasonal fruits and vegetables for entertaining.

This guide is not mandatory, but there are many outstanding examples that some brands are putting into practice. For example, Louis Vuitton recently exhibited the latest men's collection at Place Dauphine in Paris, and imitated the scene of the cafe. The company stated that the entire event was “almost zero waste”. All the show elements will be re-used, including a bright orange LV inflatable castle that has also been resold to the next home. And many items were originally found on the spot.

Some victories are easy, but they are also unexpected. When assessing its impact on the environment, Copenhagen Fashion Week found that in addition to the international flights required by participants, the second largest carbon emissions were 100 T-shirts distributed to staff on a quarterly basis. The organizer plans to produce T-shirts with no time stamps in the future so that they can be recycled after the end of the fashion week. Thorsmark said: “This is very inspiring, which shows how much the fashion industry has an impact on the environment.”

The Norwegian brand Holzweiler, who hosted the big show at Copenhagen Fashion Week, re-used the big tent used last summer and turned it into a shopping bag. In August of this year, the brand did not set up a show, but used energy-saving lamps to create space and atmosphere. It also provides steel water bottles and bamboo coffee cups for all backstage workers and models. Creative director Susanne Holzweiler said that the entire campaign produced only one meter of tape.

Lv Xiaolei said that behind the external voice, Shanghai Fashion Week itself is also practicing the concept of sustainability and environmental protection. “The 'Feng Box' business launched by SF Express, one of the official designated partners of our Fashion Week, uses reusable packaging made of sustainable and environmentally friendly materials. Go pack the materials you need for the carton and tape you need," she said.

What's more worth mentioning is that as the organizer, every season's new world landlord show, in terms of structural design and material use, will make the production materials can be used as many times as possible from the perspective of “sustainable” thinking. Thereby avoiding the waste of the materials produced. Homemade publications such as the Shanghai Fashion Week official journal handbook will also use environmentally friendly paper with a recyclable mark and a green bag with the main visual image.

The Spring/Summer 2020 show to be held in October this year, Shanghai Fashion Week will also be an important agenda for “garbage classification”. It will still guide the industry to explore issues of “green” and “sustainable development”. Lu Xiaolei revealed that this season, Kaiyun Group will hold a forum on the theme of “Innovative Change and Sustainable Fashion” in Shanghai, and Ye Xiaowei will also hold a “good discussion” forum.

But the changes have been slow and progress has been uneven. Some brands and production companies still like to use brand new items because it's cheaper and simpler. In an era of increasing environmental awareness, whether this business attitude can continue is a challenge for the fashion industry.

De Castro of the “Fashion Innovation” organization said: “I will not see Fashion Week as a means of extravagance. We have to question everything because the system we are in is harmful.”

Lv Xiaolei also said: "We believe that with the expansion of the influence of Shanghai Fashion Week, we have the ability and responsibility to bring these valuable and meaningful ideas to the fashion week platform to gather and advocate, leading more Consumers have made ideas possible."

Interests: LVMH is one of the investors in the BoF Fashion Business Review and holds a minority stake in BoF. All investors have signed shareholder documents to ensure that BoF has complete independent editing rights.