Eco-Optimism discussion
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 I do have three panelists that are
00:08 optimistic about the future of fashion and sustainability.
00:13 Hassan, you were talking about sustainability and fashion
00:19 long before it became cool.
00:21 You started a company.
00:22 You started a fashion line.
00:24 And then you started Maison du Monde.
00:28 What prompted you?
00:30 What was the aha moment, the light that went off,
00:34 that made you think, OK, this is a very important conversation
00:38 that we need to have?
00:39 And what were the conversations around that sustainability?
00:44 At the time, it was very segmented.
00:46 You had Bergdorf Goodman with one brand,
00:49 Fred Siegel with another, Barneys with another.
00:51 And it wasn't really a shared floor space for these brands.
00:55 So the real aha moment came when we realized that there's
01:01 about 10 brands at the time that were all
01:04 in this sustainable fashion movement, who were all
01:07 being pretty well recognized from a retail and media
01:11 perspective.
01:12 But if we could put them all under one umbrella,
01:14 we could actually move this entire conversation forward.
01:17 And the goal has always been to prove that sustainable fashion
01:20 is actually luxury.
01:22 So Natasha, that's very interesting.
01:24 You have a solution called EON.
01:27 And I want you to tell everyone in the room about this
01:30 who may not know exactly what this solution is
01:34 and what digital ID--
01:35 because this is the technology that you use for this--
01:38 for finding out the provenance of a specific product.
01:42 And since we're talking about optimism, what was that--
01:47 where does optimism lie in reporting
01:50 on provenance of a specific product or collections?
01:53 By way of introduction, I'm Natasha.
01:55 And I founded a company called EON.
01:57 And we power product digitization
01:59 for brands and retailers.
02:00 So in some ways, our goal is to almost make
02:04 sustainable fashion not a reality.
02:07 Every single product becomes sustainable,
02:10 rather than it being this segment of the market.
02:14 And so how we do that is we move to give
02:17 every single physical product a digital twin.
02:20 And we connect that physical product with an identity.
02:24 And so what that does is that bridges the gap
02:26 between the digital and physical.
02:28 And if you think about today, there
02:31 are hundreds of billions of products
02:33 produced every single year.
02:34 Where do those products go?
02:36 Where are they made?
02:37 What are the materials?
02:38 How are they managed?
02:39 Who purchased it?
02:41 How do you manage that item through resale?
02:43 How do you manage that item through recycle?
02:45 That requires all those end-to-end business
02:47 processes, require data and intelligence.
02:52 And we don't even have so much as a bar
02:53 code for the circular economy.
02:55 Yet we say we're going to scale resale.
02:58 I think the idea of understanding supply chain
03:00 has really become at the forefront.
03:03 When my mother can tell me about supply chain,
03:05 and she's 77 years old, it really
03:07 has become part of the conversation,
03:09 and especially when you can figure out
03:12 the provenance of that.
03:14 Abrema, when we talk about sustainability,
03:17 there are multi-layers to that.
03:18 We're not just talking about the environment.
03:20 We're talking about economic and social impact.
03:24 How is Studio 189 really layered in this conversation?
03:29 And how have you pushed the conversation
03:32 forward for these specific areas of sustainability?
03:36 I think it's connected to how we began.
03:40 So I was actually at Caring.
03:42 I was at Bottega Veneta for nine years.
03:45 And I was very interested in the connection
03:50 of what luxury stands for.
03:53 But there's so many incredible artisans all over the world
03:56 that I felt like we're not in the conversation.
03:58 So I'm West African.
03:59 I'm also Ghanaian and Ivorian.
04:01 And so I had this opportunity through the Caring Foundation
04:05 of Women's and Ghanaian Rights to go to Uganda
04:07 with an organization that was making washable sanitary
04:10 napkins for girls at slip school when they have their period.
04:13 And what I found so incredible about that
04:15 was that it was a really sustainable solution.
04:19 So it was made locally, created locally.
04:21 It created jobs.
04:23 And also, girls got to make their decision.
04:25 Some women make a choice and some don't.
04:28 But the choice is theirs.
04:30 There's something very special about making your own decision
04:32 and not being told what decision to make.
04:35 So every time they would sell something,
04:36 they would buy farmland, feed their kids to school,
04:39 and save their money.
04:40 And it was really beautiful to see what real sustainability
04:42 looks like.
04:43 And what it did for me is it took me
04:45 from this idea of thinking I have great ideas
04:47 and going kind of top down, but really realizing
04:50 that it has to go bottom up.
04:51 And this is happening all over the world in communities
04:54 everywhere, also in our backyard here,
04:56 and we have to lift up other voices.
04:58 I moved to Uganda and then to Ghana
05:00 and started something in 2013 called Fashion Rising, which
05:04 was Studio 19, which is this idea of adding more voices
05:08 to the room.
05:09 Every time a consumer votes, they
05:10 vote for the type of world they want to live in.
05:12 So what happens if we change the way we talk about Africa?
05:15 What happens if we tell a multidimensional view of what
05:19 happens inside the supply chain?
05:21 And so to me, a lot of it is connected
05:23 to the actual people.
05:26 You come and you go.
05:27 You have to be there, because the information
05:30 changes every second of every moment of every day.
05:33 How can you know what's going on if you're not on the ground?
05:36 Empowering the consumer is one of the most important things,
05:39 but also empowering the status quo.
05:43 So in Naomi Klein's book, This Changes Everything,
05:47 she said part of the optimism around the environment
05:50 and the conversation around it is the horror
05:53 that there's a status quo around activism.
05:56 Natasha, do you think that that is something
05:58 to be optimistic about, the fact that there's a status quo
06:02 and now people are motivated to change?
06:05 And maybe that conversation would
06:07 be easier to have with companies or with the consumer.
06:12 Can we be optimistic about a status quo
06:15 and that potentially changing?
06:17 I think everybody's doing their part within change.
06:21 And I think there are some really exciting initiatives,
06:24 whether it's customers and social media awareness,
06:27 or supply chain systems.
06:28 And I think everybody's kind of biting off pieces of the wheel.
06:31 I do think what's quite powerful is legislation.
06:34 So across the EU, you will actually
06:36 be required to have a digital ID or a digital product passport
06:39 for every single item.
06:40 So you will not be allowed to make an item
06:42 unless you can tell exactly where it came from,
06:44 exactly where it made it.
06:45 And also, because the digital ID records
06:47 the lifecycle of the product, you will be-- basically,
06:50 we'll have the data to say, hey, you
06:52 can be taxed on this product and material
06:55 because it's not recyclable or it wasn't resold.
06:57 So that full continuity, and I think
06:59 that elevates the whole ship.
07:01 Abrima, how do we sustain empowerment through fashion?
07:05 That is a big question.
07:07 I think it's about people.
07:13 How can you sustain anything if people can't sustain themselves?
07:16 It doesn't really mean anything, right?
07:18 For most of the people that work in the system are women,
07:22 and most of them are in informal industries,
07:24 and you will never know their names.
07:26 They're in their homes.
07:27 They're with their kids.
07:28 They're everywhere.
07:30 And so we're wearing clothes that they've touched,
07:34 that they've-- it has to be in the fabric of what
07:38 you're wearing.
07:39 It's always been there, and it needs to be there.
07:41 And so to me, for it to be sustainable,
07:44 we need to sustain people.
07:45 So what does that mean?
07:46 It's topics we talked about.
07:47 It's policy.
07:48 It's health care.
07:49 It's infrastructure.
07:50 If I can't get to work, it doesn't matter
07:52 that I have a job if I can't show up.
07:54 If I can't afford to feed my kids, it doesn't matter.
07:57 It doesn't do anything.
07:59 Right now, the currency is devalued a lot.
08:03 So a lot of people, we may be calling them fair wages
08:06 or living wages, but if the currency has fallen 70%,
08:09 they can't even buy milk.
08:11 So it's a question of--
08:13 it's beautiful in that there's something we can do about it.
08:16 So to me, that's the part where I see optimism.
08:19 - Clearly a lot of layers to this conversation,
08:22 especially when it comes to the consumer, the people,
08:26 the media, and of course, technology.
08:28 I want to thank all three of you for being on this panel today.
08:31 - Thank you.
08:32 [MUSIC PLAYING]
08:35 (upbeat music)