Brighton Fashion Week puts Sustainability in the spotlight

“I think we are really onto something because everyone is loving it,” said Liz Bishop, Founder and Event Director for Brighton Fashion Week (BFW) on the event’s new focus point and theme: Sustainability. This year’s edition, which takes place in the city of green and blue from October 15 to 17, aims to explore all areas of ethical and sustainable fashion through a series of catwalk shows, workshops, debates, creative and networking events.

Sustainability first became part of the annual fashion showcase two years ago, when BFW hosted its first sustainable show. Last year edition’s included a debate discussing sustainable fashion as well as a catwalk show, which created such a big buzz and was so popular with BFW audience that Bishop decided to take a leap and create the next edition entirely around sustainability. “I felt that there needed to be an event for people who are starting up or just beginning to embrace sustainability into their work,” explained Bishop to FashionUnited.

Brighton Fashion Week shows how ‘cool’ sustainable fashion can be

With this year’s event partnering with the likes of Orsola de Castro from Fashion Revolution, WRAP, which leads the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan (SCAP), Ethical Fashion Forum, Veolia and Novel Beings, Bishop hopes to address every aspect of the fashion industry. “I am trying to show that sustainable fashion can be as cool as normal fashion. Ideally, what we want is people to look at sustainable fashion and not think of eco straight away because I think when people do think, they associate it with hippy, hemp fashion.”

One main event at BFW will be the SCAP Presents: Love Your Clothes, taking place alongside BFW at Brighton’s Open Market, which will see a tonne of second-hand clothes being remade and used by designers, artists and fashion businesses. In order to ensure the message is passed onto younger generations, BFW has invited 130 fashion students from 3 universities to visit the event for free and attend all conferences and shows.

“We are trying to educate people on how to consume fashion in a sustainable way, open people's minds to other ways the can manage their wardrobe and be creative with what they have,” said Siobhan Wilson, Sustainability Consultant to BFW and owner of the FAIR shop, a ethical fashion store in Brighton, who is overseeing the educational side of BFW and its fringe events. “We are doing that by bringing in what we think are the key experts in those areas of sustainability.”

Brighton Fashion Weeks aims to educate the public on sustainable fashion

Other main events include a series of fashion shows showcasing the designs of both national and international designers. As the main theme of the event is sustainability, designers presenting their collections this year did have to adhere to a certain standard. “The main criteria for designers showing at the Sustain Catwalk Show is that they have to be fully sustainable,” stressed Bishop. “The whole collection they show needs to be sustainable.”

“But I didn’t want to exclude other designers who are working to be more sustainable. So for our Zeitgeist Fashion show, which is our emerging show, we accept designers or companies who are 25 percent sustainable or trying to get there.” she added. “I think that someone who is trying to be sustainable, is better than not doing anything at all. We ask the designers to take a pledge for sustainability as well. That could mean using upcycled materials, fair trade or organic materials, or designing for longevity. Of course, all the designers showing must have ethical design practices in their production process - that is mandatory.”

“If we can start encouraging these designers from the outset of their careers to start adopting ethical practices into their work, then these designers of tomorrow will go forward with this knowledge.,” added Bishop, who encourage a number of designers to create sustainable collections to show at BFW this year. “And we have had designers who first showed at Brighton Fashion Week and are really big now, so I think we are doing important work here.”

Brighton Fashion Week fully embraces sustainability

In addition to promoting sustainability through its events and fashion shows, BFW will be using fully recyclable cups throughout the event, recycled paper, water containers which are recyclable as well as working with local and independent business owners whenever possible, as Bishop aims to ensure the theme is enforced in all aspects of BFW. “But we are not 100 percent sustainable. No one is at this moment. I am sure even the head of the Fashion Revolution has a smartphone in her pocket that is made with parts that are not fully sustainable. But we are at least 85 percent there and I think that’s great.”

“I’ll admit that it has been a challenge to try and get that all across in our branding, as people are not aware of everything, but WGSN predicted that sustainability in fashion will be trending within the next three years,” said Bishop. “And at the end of the day we can all do our part in life to make the world a better place as consumers.” Although making the switch to sustainability did cause BFW to lose a few partnerships as not everyone was fully on board with the theme, Bishop is positive it was the right decision.

“Everyone has been really supportive since we made the change and I feel like BFW makes even more sense now. It’s going to remain a big theme on our edition from now on.”