Mark your calendars! The Fashinnovation Summer Edition is being held on September 4th in New York City. It’s a great opportunity for New Yorkers and anyone interested in connecting with top-level sustainability experts and fashion innovators from around the world. The conference’s lineup of speakers will cover topics including tech, ethics, empowerment, sustainable fabrics, accelerator program initiatives, and more.
My eco-dar is drawn first to the sustainability experts who will be speaking at Fashinnovation, some of whom have also spoken at Beyond the Label events in New York and Los Angeles. They include Marci Zaroff, the founder of MetaWear, and Dana Davis VP of Sustainability and Business Strategy for Mara Hoffman. And I give top praise to the incredible Carrie Somers, founder of Fashion Revolution, and Stephanie Benedetto, co-founder of Queen of Raw, who buys and resells overstock fabrics with low minimum options. Yes, I said low minimums! Stephanie puts herself out there and has won major accolades for her power, persuasiveness, and persistence in catering to large and small brands.
To my delight, sustainable fashion is growing exponentially, and there are many exciting speakers with whom I’m just now becoming familiar – for instance Gigi Cobos, operations manager for SynZenBe. She will have an amazing opportunity to share her sustainable sourcing knowledge. SynZenBe is an online fabric trade show and the producer of my new fave newsletter. Having recently acquired LeSouk, SynZenBe has sustainable fabric options and lists all of its suppliers to make it easy for brands to find out if they are GOTS Certified (or have any other certification). Some suppliers list their sustainability and ethical initiatives in their bios.
In the previous UN Forestry for Fashion article about wood-based fabrics, in which I mention Leonie Meier of the Forestry and Timber Section of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), she alerted me to Fashinnovation. She also told me about wood-based fabric enthusiast Camille Jaillant, who founded Olistic the Label, represents the UNECE’s Forests for Fashion initiative, and will have an opportunity to share her own luxury fashion fabric sourcing trials and tribulations from a successful sustainable startup perspective at the conference.
Bonus event for New Yorkers: If you have not gone to Texworld, it starts today (Monday July 22nd). You can connect with Lenzing (wood-based fabric options) and FabScraps (recycled fabric options), and check out the Transparency and Traceability: Challenges Facing Major Brands panel, featuring panelists from Sourcemap, PVH Corp., Athleta, and Glasgow Caledonian New York College.
