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Attendees at Milan Fashion Week later this month can visit the third installment of the Ethical and Sustainable Showroom, hosted by the World Sustainability Organization.
As demand for sustainable fashion continues to rise, the World Sustainability Organization (WSO) will host its third showroom dedicated to sustainable garments beginning February 21 and concluding on the 27th during Milan Fashion Week. The event also makes for the first flagship store for the WSO, dubbed ‘Sustainable Friends.’
Ethical and Sustainable Showroom
Seven brands are slated to showcase their garments and accessories at the showroom, including Italian brand Camilla, Swiss brands Chiquet Corporate Fashion and Zoë Klose, along with four Brazilian brands including Natural Cotton Color, Trópicca, Celeste, and Demodê Ateliê.
The event comes as calls for the fashion industry to reduce its carbon footprint increase. The industry is a leading producer of greenhouse gas emissions and wastewater as well as ongoing accusations of human rights violations. United Nations Environment Program says the global fashion industry is responsible for eight percent of total global emissions while textile production uses 215,000 billion liters of water per year.
The fashion industry is also a leading producer of plastic, responsible for 20 percent of the 300 million tons of plastic produced each year.
WSO says its Ethical and Sustainable Showroom aims to tackle these issues and provide buyers with “a trusted reference point for sustainably sourced, verified garments worn by models who are respected in their rights and whose work is supported and protected.”
Making sustainability fashionable
The event comes as Copenhagen Fashion Week has increased its sustainability requirements in recent years; it requires designers to meet 18 requirements in order to show at the event. But fashion weeks in New York, Paris, London, and Milan have been slow to emphasize sustainability requirements even as designers and labels are increasing sustainability efforts in their collections.
Even Vogue, the leading fashion magazine, kicked off fashion month with a campaign encouraging its readers to re-wear items and shop their own closets. It partnered with supermodel and environmentalist and British Vogue columnist Amber Valletta as well as a handful of other Vogue editors.
WSO is hopeful it can help move the needle forward too. This year, it’s inviting bloggers and influencers in the sustainability space to the Showroom in order to share their advice and tips on sustainable fashion.
It’s also hosting a webinar on sustainable cotton. Last year, a New York Times investigation found widespread fraud in the organic cotton industry in India, the world’s largest producer of organic cotton. Rreze Masha, from the science department of Friend of the Earth, and designer Naomi Enetomhe, part of the Sustainable Fashion program, will discuss the cotton market during the event.
Proceeds from the Showroom will support WSO’s conservation projects and campaigns, the organization says.
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