NEW YORK – The Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana held a press event on Wednesday, previewing the finalists for its upcoming Sustainable Fashion Awards.
The luncheon was held at Casa Cipriani in the Seaport neighborhood of lower Manhattan and brought together executives from CFDA, Launchmetrics and more. Like last year, the Italian fashion chamber has partnered with the UN Ethical Fashion Initiative for the sustainability awards, with previous partners including Eco-Age. Support this year comes from the Italian Trade Agency, among other government groups.
This year, actress Rossy de Palma will present the awards at the La Scala theater on September 25, closing Milan Fashion Week.
This year’s Sustainable Fashion Awards will present 12 awards, including the Visionary Award, the Human Rights Award and the Emerging Designers award. The last ceremony was held digitally in 2020 due to the pandemic, but this year promises to be spectacular.
At lunch, Desiree Bollier, President of The Bicester Village Luxury Shopping Center and Value Retail Management, announced the three finalists for The Bicester Collection Award for Emerging Designers, including: Torlowei, a Lagos-based comprehensive fashion house , Niger; sustainable Nigerian brand Nkwo; and Themoiré, a Milan-based fashion project that seeks to have as little environmental impact as possible. Winners will have the opportunity for mentorship, production and distribution opportunities.
The judging and advisory committee includes the likes of Ethical Fashion Initiative founder Simone Cipriani, Dame Ellen MacArthur (who is honorary chair of the jury), as well as non-profit organizations like Textile Exchange and Redress. The pool of designer candidates was narrowed from 200 to a shortlist with help in part from data partner Quantis.
Carlo Capasa is the current president of the country’s fashion association, which has an impressive board of executives, including Prada’s Patrizio Bertelli (co-CEO with his wife Miuccia Prada), Gucci’s Marco Bizzarri and Ermenegildo Zegna’s Gildo Zegna. .
As Capasa highlighted in the opening remarks, the CNMI Sustainable Fashion Awards will be instrumental in measuring the state of the industry in terms of sustainability, but also inclusion and diversity. Since its inception, the CNMI has developed comprehensive guidelines in areas such as chemical management, which is used by 92 percent of the Italian supply chain in fashion.
Capasa summed up how far the group mentality has come for the collective.
“In Italy we are very individualistic. This idea of cooperation was not so easy at first,” he said. “They found that with sustainability, you either do it all together or you don’t. No one can say ‘I am sustainable’, unless the entire chain is sustainable, the entire process is sustainable, the entire distribution is sustainable. It doesn’t work alone. That’s why I say we have to cooperate. Ourselves, the CFDA — because we all represent a community. We have to work together.”
Source: wwd.com