Paris Fashion Week aims for greater eco-responsibility

By

Olivier Guyot

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Sep 19, 2019

While the Milan Fashion Week recognises eco-responsible labels with the Green Carpet Awards, and the British Fashion Council has announced the setting up of the Institute of Positive Fashion in 2020, the French Haute Couture and Fashion Federation (FFHCM), the body which organises the Paris Fashion Week and runs its calendar, is also working in the same direction.

Pascal Morand, the general manager of FFHCM, has presented a series of initiatives to that end, such as the creation of a commission for sustainable development within the federation, to monitor and promote any innovation applicable to the industry, and the compilation of a fashion and sustainable development lexicon to be published in November, in order to ensure that the same terminology is used throughout the industry.

At the end of 2019, FFHCM will also convene a meeting of all the stakeholders involved in the fashion weeks, in order to share their expertise on eco-responsible design. Efforts are being made by major groups, also via the Paris Good Fashion initiative, aimed at improving the organisation of events during the Paris Fashion Week, so as to make them more environmentally friendly.

For the forthcoming September fashion week, FFHCM has selected the partners of the event’s welcome centre according to sustainable development criteria. It also announced that, in 2020, it will eliminate single-use plastics, promote selective waste collection and recycling, and use hybrid vehicles only. Above all, FFHCM said it wants to track its ecological performance, and that it will introduce a methodology to promote eco-responsible design, as well as creating tools to support industry players in this respect.

“An ISO regulation that applies to event organisation does exist, but there is no methodology for mapping data and assessing the industry in its entirety. We looked at a series of events and festivals, and the best practices we spotted are those by a rock festival in Brittany,” said Morand.

“There has been a profound change in society’s attitudes towards environmental issues. We are going to work on these issues using an open-source approach with the whole industry,” he added.

In other words, a collaborative approach, at each label’s discretion. No question of blocking access to the fashion week's calendar to designers who will not adopt this approach.