MILAN — After a year’s hiatus due to the pandemic and a digital-only event in 2020, the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana Sustainable Fashion Awards are returning IRL on Sept. 25 at the tail end of Milan Fashion Week with their fifth edition, to be held at La Scala theater.
Italy’s fashion organizing body’s president Carlo Capasa underscored that the revamped edition — boasting partnerships with the U.N.’s Ethical Fashion Initiative and the Ellen McArthur Foundation and a new ESG-oriented approach to naming winners — reflects the country’s fashion industry’s path toward sustainability and its ambition to tackle pressing issues.
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“A sustainable future cannot leave fashion out of consideration. Fashion has always anticipated trends, means and procedures, and sustainability makes no exception,” Capasa said. “These awards are very ambitious, this is the time to aim higher…they set the foundation for Camera della Moda to be a permanent incubator leveraging the awards to advance the conversation and progress when it comes to sustainability.”
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Camera della Moda has furthered its link with the Ethical Fashion Initiative, with which it kicked off a partnership last year to introduce the first “ESG Due Diligence and Reporting Framework” for the fashion industry, giving stakeholders access to a sustainability system to spot, eliminate and mitigate ESG-related risks.
An entity that is part of the U.N. Alliance for Sustainable Fashion pressuring the eco-minded transformation of the sector, as well as promoting advancement in underdeveloped countries by implementing local supply chains, the EFI is now providing, in tandem with Quantis, the framework and criteria to assess award recipients, too.
A jury presided over by Dame Ellen McArthur but whose members have yet to be revealed will bestow 12 awards, including for craft and Italian artisanship; equity and inclusivity; climate action; biodiversity; human rights, and the circular economy, among others, to candidates submitted by an advisory committee of nonprofit associations including Textile Exchange, The Woolmark Company, Confindustria Moda, Fashion Minority Alliance and more.
Two special awards will be offered by event partners The Woolmark Company and Bicester Collection, the latter dedicated to emerging designers.
“This initiative is geared at promoting the important scientific work that has been done already and at acting as a loudspeaker for the concrete actions implemented across the sector,” Capasa noted.
He touted Prada, Giorgio Armani, Valentino and Gucci, the four brands awarded in the first edition of the ceremony — which was previously named the Green Carpet Fashion Awards and organized since 2017 in partnership with Eco-Age — for their contribution to the sustainable commitment of the fashion association, revealing that they were part of the awards’ organizing body.
“Our sustainable transformation stemmed from the participation of associated brands to the roundtables we promoted and their willingness to share their journeys. We’re eventually acting cohesively with a strong ambition, to promote ethical fashion,” Capasa said.
Laura Balmond, project manager for Make Fashion Circular at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, touted the partnership with Camera della Moda, underscoring the organization’s ambition to divulge a “regenerative by design” approach in the fashion industry and bring “circularity to the forefront of Italian fashion.”
“Leveraging the work done in the past 10 years by Camera della Moda and the Ellen McArthur Foundation’s knowledge, we feel that we can offer more understanding on what it is like to be circular,” Balmond said.
In written remarks, Ellen McArthur, founder and chair of trustees, said that the ceremony “will celebrate and award those who are putting circular design at the center of an industry that can help eradicate the causes of global challenges such as climate change, loss of biodiversity and pollution.”
Along the same lines, Simone Cipriani, founder of the EFI, observed how the industry has at least nine boundaries to consider, four of which including climate change, biodiversity and soil exploitation were already overcome. For the number of guidelines and frameworks available, the industry needs to tackle them according to an ESG perspective so that actions can be universally measured and understood.