Première Vision will be hosting a conference focused on the new challenges raised by eco responsibility within the fashion industry. This conference/debate will take as its starting point the questions and issues raised in the book “THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE GOOD. A view from Italy on sustainable fashion”, which was co-authored by Marco Ricchetti, an economist and professor of design at the University of Milan Polytechnic - and Maria Luisa Frisa, fashion critic and director of the fashion design program at the IUAV University in Venice.
Joining Marco Ricchetti and Alberto Scaccioni (general secretary and manager of the Center for Italian Fashion in Florence, author of the book’s introduction), will be a group of experts and industry professionals. The speakers participating in the talk include: Peter Ackroyd (International Wool Secretariat), Andrea Cavicchi (Furpile Idea President), Fabrizio Conconi (Eurojersey General Manager), Hirofumi Kurino (United Arrows Managing Creative Director), and Philippe Pasquet (Première Vision CEO). The debate will be moderated by Sophie Bramel.
The book - a publication for professionals and students of fashion design schools, published by Centro di Firenze per la Moda Italiana and Marsilio Editori - looks at the latest developments in terms of sustainability and fashion through the lens of the Italian textile industry. It will serve as a starting point for a discussion of whether fashion can be sustainable and the means for developing new eco-friendly materials. Can fashion be sustainable? It’s a challenge that not even fashion – ephemeral by nature and by definition – can ignore.
International luxury conglomerates are investing in sustainable brands, giants of mass retail offer apparel made of eco-friendly fibers, small brands incorporate recycled and discarded materials into their clothing to create a sophisticated fashion aesthetic, social responsibility becomes cool in marketing, and artisanal work and durable quality are rediscovered.
Scholars of fashion, economics, sociology, marketing, industrial organization, textile technology, and climatology explain – with the help of case-histories – how the terrain of sustainable fashion is rugged and full of contradictions. These experts also explain that we are living a profound, enduring, and necessary shift in the paradigm of consumerism.
Sustainable fashion reevaluates the components present in the materials and manufacturing, without giving up on the symbolic and aesthetic ones. Sustainable fashion is the current elected terrain of fashion business and is a promising prospective to overcome the quicksand on which Italian fashion is presently debated.
