Copenhagen Fashion Week publishes Annual Sustainability Report 2020

Status report on the first year of Copenhagen Fashion Week's 2020-2022 Sustainability Action Plan

The Annual Sustainability Report marks a status update on the first year of Copenhagen Fashion Week's 2020-2022 Sustainability Action Plan, that sets out to incur far-reaching and long-term change within the fashion industry.

"Despite a challenging year, we believe that the status of our Sustainability Action Plan shows the potential of our strategy and three-year targets to inspire and push fashion companies to embrace more sustainable business practices. Although unable to meet every one of the goals set for 2020, most goals were accomplished and we look forward to continuing the work," says Cecilie Thorsmark, CEO Copenhagen Fashion Week.

Significant milestones

Some of the most significant Year 1 milestones of the Sustainability Action Plan were:

• We made progress in the further development of the 2023 Sustainability Requirements. A year ago, Copenhagen Fashion Week announced that fashion brands will have to comply with minimum standards as well as obtain a minimum points score in a sustainability survey in order to show at our fashion week by 2023. Throughout 2020, in collaboration with Rambøll, In futurum and Dansk Fashion & Textile we developed a carefully weighted point system (considering both impact and challenge level), which enabled the technical implementation of the requirements in an online survey for brands to fill out. On 20 January 2021, we kicked off a pilot test of the Sustainability Requirements survey system with 12 brands. The results of the pilot test will allow us to establish a baseline score for determining the number of points brands must achieve by 2023 to participate in fashion weeks.

• Copenhagen Fashion Week initiated dialogues with the local trade fairs to strive towards a closer alignment of our sustainability goals. The trade fair CIFF has committed to initiate a process of adopting our 2023 Sustainability Requirements in a way that resonates with and creates value for their own platform as a fashion fair, their business model and their exhibitors and buyers. In concrete terms, it means that CIFF - as of 2023 - will require that brands comply with Copenhagen Fashion Week's minimum standards and obtain the minimum score needed in order to exhibit at CIFF. We are very optimistic that this process will lead to even more alignment and connected efforts across industry platforms.
  

Looking ahead

An important focus for 2021 will be to push for a wider industry adoption of our 2023 Sustainability Requirements. The ambitious aim is to roll it out more broadly in the fashion industry in Denmark and as part of other key global platforms. In other words, we will strive to gather more industry actors around the same sustainability vision and a similar framework and methodology for creating change.

This report is available to read here.