Announced today, the new partnership between the Foundation and Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (CNMI) brings circular design for fashion to the very top of the Italian fashion industry’s creative agenda - starting with the Sustainable Fashion Awards.
The awards provide a unique platform to further highlight how fashion can be redefined through circular design and encourage creatives everywhere to rethink how they can design for a regenerative, circular economycircular economyA systems solution framework that tackles global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution. It is based on three principles, driven by design: eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials (at their highest value), and regenerate nature..
Taking place at Teatro Escala, Milan, on the 25th September, the awards, divided into twelve categories, will acknowledge those setting ambitious targets and taking concrete action towards change, with a strong focus on sustainable and circular innovation.
As chair of the jury, Dame Ellen will bring a circular economy lens across all award categories and present the dedicated Circular Economy Award that celebrates leading examples of circular design. It is hoped that the winners will bring the Foundation's vision of a redefined future for fashion to the world stage.
“We are thrilled to be working with CNMI at The Sustainable Fashion Awards. This exciting, global event will highlight the outstanding contributions and formidable efforts of creatives from across the industry. The dedicated ‘Circular Economy Award’ celebrates leading examples of innovation and circular design that can help to redefine the future of fashion, by building an industry that eliminates waste and pollution, circulates products and materials, and regenerates nature.
With CNMI’s network based at the centre of luxury Italian fashion and their work aiming at the highest standards of industrial, environmental, and social sustainability, we have forged a partnership from which the Foundation can bring its vision of a circular fashion industry into the mainstream.
Together, CNMI and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation will salute and award those who are taking circular design directly to the heart of an industry that can help tackle the root causes of global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.”
Dame Ellen MacArthur - Founder and Chair of Trustees, Ellen MacArthur Foundation
“The collaboration with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation is an important step for the CNMI and its Roadmap on Sustainability, which has marked the past ten years of the Association’s mission.
We are delighted to collaborate with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which is the world leader in the transition to that circular economy which we all hope for. The CNMI fully embraces the Foundation’s vision of a circular economy for fashion, putting it at the base of its strategy and involving all the players in the creative productive and distributive system of the fashion industry. An innovative vision for a better future for the planet and for people can only have fashion engaged in full for its achievement.”
Carlo Capasa, Chairman of Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana
The partnership, which also extends to CNMI joining the Foundation’s Network as a Partner, closely follows the publication of the Foundation’s book, Circular Design for Fashion. The book has been written in recognition of fashion’s huge potential to shift towards a circular economy and in homage to its creatives, who are embracing their role in reimagining products, services, and systems.
If we use circular design to create products that are used more, made to be made again, and made from safe and recycled or renewable inputs, we can drive an industry that becomes part of the solutions to global challenges such as waste and pollution, rather than part of the problem.
