For the past 16 years — pandemic notwithstanding — sustainability experts have gathered in Copenhagen each June for the Global Fashion Summit (GFS), a two-day symposium organised by the Global Fashion Agenda (GFA), spanning panel discussions, closed-door roundtables, an innovation expo and sprawling side events. While the official programme reflects shifting priorities at a higher level, it’s the mood among attendees that offers the most useful pulse check of the broader state of sustainable fashion.
Having cycled through rebellion, voluntary action, technological optimism and — more recently — realism (pinning their hopes on regulation), the audience seems to have landed somewhere between dejected and defiant. It’s understandable, given the broader climate: the environmental challenges GFS was founded to fix are bounding past irreversible tipping points, and the past year has proven that regulators are an unreliable saviour. In fact, their efforts are dwindling, as global politics swing to the right and geopolitical instability takes hold. At the summit, big brands kept a lower profile, perhaps keen to avoid the wrath of greenwashing watchdogs and the anti-ESG Trump administration.
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The tempered mood was reflected in this year’s theme — ‘barriers and bridges’ — which was less optimistic than previous years, such as ‘acting on the opportunities of a changing world’ (2024), ‘ambition to action’ (2023) and ‘alliances for a new era’ (2022). At the opening press conference, GFA CEO Federica Marchionni told attendees: “Barriers and bridges speaks to the duality of this moment: light and dark, right and wrong, courage and cowardice. It encapsulates the challenges of our industry in moving forward.”
In response to the broader climate and shifting industry sentiment, GFS placed further emphasis on an expanded programme of closed-door roundtables — over 20 of which took place under Chatham House rules, with no press present. The idea was to encourage more candid conversation and decisive action, says Marchionni. Many of these events had a set agenda and aimed to rally stakeholders around collective action, although the fruits of this won’t be made public for another year or so.
Attendees generally welcomed the change, and said the format was more productive than onstage conversations with limited opportunities for audience engagement. Marchionni says both are needed. “Advocating for change comes with risks. Given the circumstances, silence can feel like the safest option for some, but this can be a dangerous mindset,” she tells Vogue Business. “We need to champion the changemakers now more than ever.”
Marchionni notes that big luxury brands had a lighter onstage presence than in previous years, although she hopes this apparent greenhushing will be temporary. “I think everyone is observing what’s going on [in the broader geopolitical landscape] before taking a stance,” she says.
In the meantime, GFS made an effort to spotlight suppliers and garment workers, whose absences have been one of the main criticisms of GFS in previous years. The headline slot, for example, went to labour activist and former child garment worker Kalpona Akter, founder and executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Workers Solidarity. GFA says the H&M Foundation provided a grant to facilitate travel and accommodation for more diverse voices from countries including Nigeria, Ghana, Bangladesh, India, Brazil and South Africa.
At a time when sustainability teams are shrinking and it seems like change is being deprioritised in the face of political pressure, what does the summit tell us about the state of sustainable fashion? Without seeing the results of closed-door roundtables, it’s difficult to know, which may prove to be a running theme in the next few years. This doesn’t mean change isn’t happening, though; hopefully it signals a new phase, where candour and action are prioritised over topline public statements about loose intentions or unrealised plans.
Calls to action across the board
If the mood offstage was subdued, the mood onstage was defiant — and speakers took the opportunity to rally attendees behind a wide range of causes.
During the opening fireside chat, Akter shed light on the current situation for garment workers in Bangladesh, a perspective that has been missing in previous years. She explained why jobs with dignity — the basis of which is living wages — are so foundational to progress, and called EU regulations “toothless” after the Omnibus Simplification Package stripped the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) of many hard-won protections for workers, including a commitment to living wages, climate adaptation funds and collective bargaining. “We need a good agreement or no agreement,” she told attendees. Akter also shared that cuts to USAID forced her to lay off 20 per cent of her staff and close four offices, appealing to audience members to help the Bangladesh Centre for Workers Solidarity find new partners and alternative revenue streams.
The European Union commissioner for environment, water resilience and a competitive circular economy, Jessika Roswall, delivered a keynote on shifting EU policy. Later, a member of her cabinet, Pernille Weiss-Ehler, appeared on a panel about global freshwater use to announce the EU’s water resilience strategy, which aims to improve the quality and quantity of water worldwide, spurred by the fact that global water demand is due to exceed availability by 40 per cent before 2030. “It’s not about creating new regulations, but helping to implement and enforce the regulations we already have,” Weiss-Ehler explained. “If we do not have enough water in future, we will never reach our climate goals. We need the EU to become a water-smart economy, which means becoming at least 10 per cent more water efficient and helping each other conquer water stress.”
Weiss-Ehler appeared alongside Rachel Kolbe Semhoun, head of sustainable sourcing and nature initiatives at luxury conglomerate Kering, which published the industry’s first “water positive” strategy back in April. “Watch the news. Somewhere in the world, somebody is flooded right now, and someone else is experiencing drought,” Semhoun told attendees. “Water is not just a compliance issue or a financial issue, it’s a question of resilience.”
For the third year running, GFA and London’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF) brought together young changemakers from around the world under the Next Gen Assembly programme. As well as hosting a roundable, they presented their manifesto, putting forward a vision for the future of fashion that was eloquent and dignified beyond their years and experience level. Professor Dilys Williams, founder and director of CSF, summarised their approach to Vogue Business: “Awareness raising is over. Sustainable fashion is messy stuff. We need the capability to see patterns, interdependencies, to see beyond the myth of the individual and the static fix.”
New York-based designer Eileen Fisher — whose company has been operational for over 40 years and pursuing circularity for 15 — also pushed for different ways of convening, and highlighted the need for more candid collaboration (echoing GFS’s motivation for staging more closed-door roundtables). She announced a new digital platform for knowledge-sharing between brands. Her approach neatly summed up the juncture GFS — and the broader industry — finds itself at. Change takes time and it’s rarely linear, but there is always value in getting together to find a way forward. “Keep learning,” she said. “That’s the trick.”
This is advice that GFS itself will continue to heed, says Marchionni. “This is a moment for everyone to reflect, myself included. Maybe brands need some time to figure things out, but the important thing is that we work with them through this process. We continue the conversation, and at the same time, we spotlight the innovators who are making change, giving different supply chain companies a chance to take the stage. We might not be where we want to be just yet, but we have come a long way.”
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