Global Fashion Summit: Copenhagen Edition 2024, the leading international forum for sustainability in fashion, assembled over 1000 esteemed representatives from brands, retailers, NGOs, policy, manufacturers, and innovators from both the fashion and adjacent industries to unlock the next level of sustainability and presented by Global Fashion Agenda (GFA), which is a non-profit organization that is accelerating the transition to a net-positive fashion industry.
GFA accelerates impact by mobilizing, inspiring, influencing, and educating all stakeholders. The Summit marked its 15th anniversary at the iconic Copenhagen Concert Hall.
The event’s theme, ‘Unlocking the Next Level’, impelled participants to urgently act on the learnings from the forum to support the implementation of solutions to reach both near and long-term goals. Under this premise, the Summit presented content centered around evidence-based impact, with much of the program dedicated to educational and action-oriented business case studies.
Each session in the program targeted a next-level barrier to progress and integrated a solution unlock to overcome the barrier. The 33 content sessions across the Summit’s three stages included: ‘Future Fibers: Enabling the Circular Model’. ‘Lead or Be Led’, ‘Fragmented Futures: Fashion’s Policy Agenda’, ‘Pathways to Indigenous Partnership’, ‘Reverse Logistics for Circular Fashion Systems’, ‘Towards Binding Agreements on Wages’, and many more.
Her Majesty the Queen of Denmark attended the Summit on 22 May and provided Opening Remarks. The Queen first attended the inaugural Summit in 2009 and has since spoken at every edition of the Summit, demonstrating her unwavering dedication to a more sustainable future.
Attendees heard from over 110 speakers including Marie-Claire Daveu, Chief Sustainability and Institutional Affairs Officer, Kering; Mehdi Benabadji, CEO, Brioni; Ryan Gellert, CEO, Patagonia Works & Patagonia; Adam Karlsson, CFO, H&M Group; Halide Alagöz, Chief Product Officer, Ralph Lauren Corporation; Paul Polman, Business Leader, Campaigner, Co-Author of Net Positive; Kaisa Tikk, Head of Commercial Sustainability, Maersk; Nicolaj Reffstrup, Founder, GANNI, Bárbara Peñafiel Durruty, Circular Economy Policy Implementation Coordinator, Ministry of Environment of Chile; Fatih Konukoglu, Chairman, Re&Up; Edwin Keh, CEO, The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel; Francisco Souza, Senior VP Global Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Center, Conservation International; Harish Ahuja, Managing Director and Chairperson, Shahi Exports Pvt. Ltd.; Nemanthie Kooragamage, Director – Group Sustainable Business, MAS Holdings; and many more.
The Summit also facilitated 18 strategic roundtable meetings that brought together curated groups of executives, policymakers, leading industry voices, and sustainability experts from across the value chain and different markets for fruitful dialogues on how to address pressing sustainability issues and act accordingly, including Building Circular Systems for India, co-hosted by SU.RE – Sustainable Resolution and supported by British Council India; Pay Equity Interventions in European Value Chains, co-hosted by PwC; Indigenous Partnership for the Fashion, Apparel, and Textile Industry, co-hosted by Ralph Lauren and Conservation International; Impactful Influence, co-hosted by UN Environment Program; Accelerating Collective Action for Circular Materials, co-hosted by Mango; and many more. View the Roundtable program.
Global Fashion Agenda launched the Fashion CEO Agenda 2024 – a strategic resource designed to steer fashion organizations towards achieving a net positive industry by 2050. In line with the 2024 theme of the Global Fashion Summit, this year’s Fashion CEO Agenda presents five pivotal opportunities for fashion executives and the industry at large to unlock transformative impact.
The 2024 edition of the Fashion CEO Agenda aims to empower fashion leaders and the wider industry to embrace five key opportunities:
- Operationalising Sustainability
- Redefining Growth
- Activating Consumers
- Prioritising People
- Mobilising Based on Materiality
Drawing from the five priorities of the Fashion CEO Agenda — Respectful and Secure Work Environments, Better Wage Systems, Resource Stewardship, Smart Material Choices, and Circular Systems — this special edition highlights five cross-cutting opportunities that will help achieve the next level of progress on these priorities. The Fashion CEO Agenda 2024 is an openly accessible resource and available to download, click here:
This year’s Summit also presented an Innovation Forum, enabling small and large companies to meet with 31 sustainable solution providers – equipping them with the concrete tools to quickly turn words into meaningful actions. More than 400 facilitated introductions and business meetings between fashion companies and sustainable solution providers took place during the Summit.
- 110+ speakers representing 20+ countries, with 60% of speakers identifying as She/Her and 40% as He/Him
- 1000+ attendees
- 31 solution exhibitors
- 400+ introductions and meetings between brands and solution providers
- 33 content sessions across 3 stages
- 18 leadership roundtable meetings
Federica Marchionni, CEO, of Global Fashion Agenda, pointed out: “For 15 years GFA has used the Summit to activate impact and forge new initiatives while educating and mobilizing the fashion industry. Sustainability has moved from a peripheral concern to a central focus becoming an agenda-setter even in boardrooms. However, the pace of sustainability progress has not accelerated enough to respond to our changing world, and this year’s Summit was focused on identifying the barriers to Unlock the Next Level and accelerating further implementation. We have reached a polarization point where the geopolitical environment around us is threatening to stunt our progress and I must emphasize that we need to unite to meet the 2030 and 2050 agenda. Whether we differ in geographies, cultures, or political mindsets, sustainability must be a unifying bond among all of us. The Summit championed evidence-based strategies poised to reshape the business ethos, placing net positivity as the overarching goal. Now, every company must depart from business as usual and as intentions meet determination, I eagerly await the next level of fashion’s systemic transformation.”
Global Fashion Summit: Copenhagen Edition 2024 was supported by Principal Sponsor, RE&UP, a circulartech company reshaping the traditional textile-to-textile paradigm. Together with affiliated company ISKO, one of the world’s leading global textile companies with over a century of textile innovation experience, they are committed to a more responsible and technologically evolved future for textiles and fashion.
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With love,
FWO
