Fashionsustain to focus on water

01 Jan '19

3 min read

Courtesy: fashion sustain

Fashionsustain, the international conference which will take place during Berlin Fashion Week at Kraftwerk, will focus on the subject of water. Visitors can look forward to a high-profile programme and speaker line-up with Clare Press, sustainability editor-at-Large for Vogue Australia, book author and fair-fashion activist, delivering the keynote.

The Fashionsustain conference is held in cooperation with #Fashiontech by the Premium Group, which focuses on digital solutions for marketing and retail, as well as general digital market trends and is taking place at Kraftwerk on January 15, 2019.

“Our mission,” says Olaf Schmidt, vice president of Textiles and Textile Technologies at Messe Frankfurt, “is to establish the global hub for fashion, sustainability and innovation at Kraftwerk in Berlin. To achieve this, we have not only brought together the successful Greenshowroom and Ethical Fashion Show formats to form the new tradeshow brand Neonyt, but also choreographed a multifaceted, contemporary and pioneering overall concept that is all about interaction, interconnectivity and influence. The now confirmed partners and speakers from initiatives and companies like the Otto Group, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Tchibo and WWF show that we are heading in the right direction with Neonyt.”

Press will speak on “We Are Water. Inspiration and Respiration.” Following that, the first session of the day will begin with the topic “Water. Risks and Solutions.” First of all, the topic of “Water X Fashion” will be discussed by Philipp Wagnitz, director of International Freshwater Resources of WWF together with Marijke Schöttmer, senior manager of Environmental Protection at Tchibo, Ulf Jaeckel, head of the Sustainable Consumer Protection and Product-related Environmental Protection division at the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) – BMU and Amira Jehia, co-founder of the ‘no cotton brand’ Blue Ben. In the subsequent panel “Water Stewardship. Industry collaborations on the rise”, Lauren Zahringer, business development manager of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Alexis Morgan, Global Water Stewardship Lead at WWF, Micke Magnusson, CEO of We are Spin Dye, and other panelists will be casting a glance at collaborative industry initiatives.

Another session will explore the topic of “Denim, Cotton and the Water”. In the first panel of this block, Patrick Duffy, founder of Global Fashion Exchange, Patrick Hohmann, president of the Supervisory Board and founder of Remei AG, Dietrich Weigel, founder of Good Society, Gigi Caccia, president of PureDenim (formerly known as ItalDenim), and others will be looking for answers to the question: “Can denim go organic?”. In a case study, Karl Borgschulze, managing director of CSI, together with participating companies, will be showing the example of a local denim supply chain in Pakistan.

The concluding session “Circularity in Full Flow?” will be dedicated to the topic of the circular economy in two panels. In the discussion panel “Better fibres. Better waste?”, representatives from innovatively thinking companies like Linus Mueller, EU Marketing/research and development at Circular Systems, Sabine Feuerer, director Apparel at Sympatex and Linn Frisinger, founder and CEO of Swedish Stockings, will not only be questioning the contemporary paradigm of the linear value creation model, but also whether new fibres – as is often claimed – are automatically associated with a better environmental footprint.

In a panel afterwards, moderator Clare Press will pose the question: “We are water, oceans, rivers — and pollutants. Where do we go from now?” (SV)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India

More Messe Frankfurt GmbH News... More Textiles News - Germany...