Fashion for Good celebrates first year with Innovation Day

Global initiative Fashion for Good celebrated its first year by hosting Innovation Fest at their hub in Amsterdam. In a press release sent on Friday, the organisation summed up its progress.

True to its goal of bringing industry players together to "reimagine how fashion is designed, made, used and reused", about 180 innovators, brands, producers, retailers, suppliers, non-profit organisations and investors came together at the Fashion for Good premises to discover breakthrough ideas and network with others in a shared ambition to make fashion a force for good.

A highlight of the Innovation Fest was Demo Day: pitches by the third batch of start-ups from the Fashion for Good-Plug and Play Accelerator, celebrating their graduation from the 12-week programme. With 15 start-ups, this was the biggest batch so far, with young companies from four continents and ten nationalities. The next batch of start-ups will be selected next month.

Fashion for Good brings industry players together

The afternoon also featured presentations from the three new innovators that have recently joined the Scaling Programme: moral fiber – formerly known as Ambercycle, Tyton Biosciences and Bext360. These companies were hand-selected from an extensive list of innovators, with new technologies enabling a more sustainable and circular textiles sector. For the next 18 months, they will receive bespoke support and access to expertise, potential customers and investors with the help of a dedicated team.

Innovation Fest ended with an outlook on the future of Fashion for Good. Managing director Katrin Ley provided a sneak peek into the new visitor-facing experience. The current exhibition has attracted over 15.000 visitors from 30 different countries, aiming to inspire them to become conscious consumers and join the movement to make fashion a force for good. The next phase is a full redesign that will turn the current space into the world’s first technology-forward museum for sustainable fashion innovation, which will be unveiled in the first week of October.

Fashion for Good was founded by the C&A Foundation and was launched in March 2017. It now has 7 corporate partners - Adidas, C&A & the C&A Foundation, Galeries Lafayette, Kering, Target, Zalando - who have since organised over 360 one-on-one introductory sessions between innovators and corporate brands, unlocked significant investments for start-ups, and have seen multiple production pilots come to life. In total, the Fashion for Good programmes have supported more than 40 start-ups to date.

Photos: Fashion for Good & FashionUnited