As pressures grow for the fashion industry to respond more urgently to the climate and environmental emergency, activists question whether fashion shows can ever be sustainable. They argue that fashion shows feed into a broader unsustainable system of constant trends and overproduction.
There are signs that many in the fashion industry are listening. Global brands and fashion councils are working to rethink the format of the traditional fashion show and minimise its environmental impact. Their efforts span factors large (energy consumption) and small (backstage catering). The challenge is pulling these threads together into an industry-wide standard — few want to impose compulsory criteria or to be seen as limiting creativity.
How to future-proof fashion shows — or any form of showing fashion — is up for debate. “Fashion weeks are a moment of high communication for the industry, creating jobs and income for cities,” notes Carlo Capasa, chairman of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (CNMI), which hosts Milan Fashion Week. Fashion Revolution’s de Castro points out the harsh reality for many designers is financial pressure and overstimulated guests struggling to distinguish one show from the next.
Each year, Fashion Revolution hosts hundreds of events across the world that could offer alternatives to traditional catwalk shows. They include Disco Make – an evening of mending, swapping and upcycling with local designers – and Fashion Open Studios, which invites the public into designers’ processes and workspaces
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