Green the new fashion
Industry must be more sustainable: Kruse
MASS sales events such as Black Friday are ultimately unsustainable, according to a high-profile fashion industry expert.
Eva Kruse, the chief executive of the Copenhagen-based Global Fashion Agenda, says Black Friday is like “something the devil created”.
Ms Kruse will discuss the group’s concerns when she delivers the keynote address for the Melbourne Fashion Festival’s Australian Fashion Summit today at Federation Square.
The Danish firebrand argues that, while consumer favourites such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday are economic drivers, they are unaffordable for a planet being pushed to its limits by rampant mass consumption and overproduction while in the throes of a climate crisis.
A graduate of Danish business school Kaospilot, Ms Kruse edited her country’s biggest-selling fashion magazine, Eurowoman, for five years before founding the Global Fashion Agenda in 2005.
In 2009, she launched the biennial Copenhagen Fashion Summit, whose patron is Denmark’s
Tasmanian-born Crown Princess Mary.
Dubbed “the fashion industry’s Davos”, the summit attracts more than 1000 stakeholders from chief executives to politicians and manufacturers.
All are focused on finding sustainable solutions for an industry that accounts for an estimated 6 per cent of the
Eva Kruse, the chief executive of the Copenhagenbased Global Fashion Agenda, on the fashion industry world’s greenhouse gas emissions and 17 per cent to 20 per cent of all industrial pollution.
“This will be my first visit to Australia and I’ll be focusing on the need to change the fashion industry’s business model,” says Ms Kruse.
“It’s a huge challenge, but with vital resources including water under increasing strain, it’s the right, sensible thing to do and should be integral to every brand. In the near future consumers will be demanding sustainable products, but we need to accelerate the pace of that movement because it’s not going fast enough.
“Unfortunately, we humans tend not to change unless we feel the urgency breathing down our necks. In the short term, we can make a difference by consuming less and recycling, reducing, reselling and reusing more.”