Copenhagen Fashion Week: A Look Back at Sustainability
The pastel streets of Copenhagen were dotted with mid-length floral dresses and bright pink puffer coats in January, marking the beginning of the Scandinavian-style wonderland known as Copenhagen Fashion Week. Recognized not only for its colorful print-mixing and decidedly comfortable footwear. Scandi fashion has been central in conversations regarding sustainability in the clothing industry.
In an announcement by the Sustainability Advisory Board of Copenhagen Fashion Week on January 28, 2020, it was declared that Copenhagen Fashion Week will be 100% sustainable by 2023. A document entitled ‘Sustainability Action Plan 2020-2022: Reinventing Copenhagen Fashion Week – Reducing negative impacts, innovating our business model and accelerating industry change’ was then cited, outlining the plan of action.
What does sustainability really mean? The word has become a buzzword in the industry, and its meaning has become a popular point of debate amongst designers and their customers. Companies like Zara, a historically unethical brand in fast fashion, producing as many as 840 million garments per year, have begun to recognize the importance of sustainability and has pledged to use only 100% sustainable fabrics by the year 2025.
Carcel, a Danish design company that employs Peruvian and Thai female inmates, went as far as to open the fashion week with no clothes at all. Audience members arrived at the traditional-looking venue with perfectly aligned seating facing an elevated runway. Instead of watching a show of meticulously styled models strutting down a runway to pulsing beats, the onlookers were shown a video on the over-consumption of the clothing industry that was projected where models would theoretically appear. Carcel ended the show by instructing the audience to get up and walk the runway (#thewalk).
Not producing any clothing at all is an extreme example of what being sustainable could mean, but its purpose to shock was fulfilled. “We need a new conversation in fashion; the conversation that's going on right now is not radical enough,” Carcel founder Verónica D’Souza, a member of the Copenhagen Fashion Week advisory board, told Vogue UK.
A statement on the Carcel websites encourages that “instead of talking about what is new in styles and colors, we need to pause for a second to ask questions about current focus on fast cycles and quick expiration dates”. If the industry wants to change, then it truly needs to embrace tying up of all the messy ends that have appeared over the past century of mass product production and consumption.
So how can sustainability really be claimed by companies if no one is completely sure of what it means? H&M may claim sustainability, but in their 2018 Sustainability Report, it was noted that “nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that the information regarding the above specified indicators [have] been prepared in accordance with the reporting criteria stated above.” Also, only 35% of companies have even addressed the issue of child labor, and an even smaller 12% of companies monitor the hazardous condition their wastewater produced. Larger and more environmentally impactful companies have a long ways to go even in terms of transparency, let alone sustainability.
Designers like the cult Scandi-style staple, Ganni, however, have not claimed sustainability, but ‘responsibility’. A statement on their website reads:
We don't identify as a sustainable brand. We recognise the inherent contradiction between the current fashion industry that thrives off newness and consumption, and the concept of sustainability. So instead, we're focused on becoming the most responsible version of ourselves. Committed to making better choices every day across the business to minimise our social and environmental impact. We see this as our moral obligation.
In an interview with Erin Fitzpatrick for WhoWhatWear, Ganni, founder and designer Nicolaj Reffstrup, simply noted that “from my perspective, sustainability is simply a prerequisite for being in business… [w]e're Ganni, and what we do in terms of sustainability is more of a moral responsibility more than anything else.” This emphasis on responsibility thus takes the confusion of defining sustainability out of the question.
So whether it’s tackling issues of fair wages, or the importance of recycling and reusing fabrics in design, the objective of true sustainability remains one that is difficult to define. However, the definition becomes unmistakably secondary to the ethical pursuits of a designer. Conscious consumerism is on the rise folks, proving that the efforts of sustainability are far more than just a passing trend.
