The Global Fashion Summit: Copenhagen Edition 2024, held from May 21-23, brought together over 1,000 esteemed representatives from various sectors, including brands, retailers, NGOs, policymakers, manufacturers, and innovators, both from the fashion industry and related fields.

The event aimed to advance sustainability efforts within the fashion industry, fostering collaboration and innovation to address pressing environmental and social challenges.

Presented by Global Fashion Agenda (GFA), the non-profit organisation that is accelerating the transition to a net positive fashion industry, the Summit marked its 15-year anniversary at the iconic Copenhagen Concert Hall, said a press release issued on Friday.

Through a series of discussions, workshops, and presentations, participants explored new strategies and solutions to drive the industry towards more sustainable practices.

The event’s theme, ‘Unlocking the Next Level’, impelled participants to urgently act on the learnings from the forum to support the implementation of solutions to reach both near and long-term goals.

Under this premise, the Summit presented content centred on evidence-based impact, with much of the programme dedicated to educational and action-oriented business case studies.

Each session in the programme targeted a next level barrier to progress and integrated a solution unlock to overcome the barrier.

The 33 content sessions across the Summit’s three stages included: ‘Future Fibers: Enabling the Circular Model’. ‘Lead or Be Led’, ‘Fragmented Futures: Fashion’s Policy Agenda’, ‘Pathways to Indigenous Partnership’, ‘Reverse Logistics for Circular Fashion Systems’, ‘Towards Binding Agreements on Wages’, and many more.

Attendees heard from over 110 speakers including the Queen of Denmark; Marie-Claire Daveu, Chief Sustainability and Institutional Affairs Officer, Kering; Mehdi Benabadji, CEO, Brioni; Ryan Gellert, CEO, Patagonia Works & Patagonia; Adam Karlsson, CFO, H&M Group; Halide Alagöz, Chief Product Officer, Ralph Lauren Corporation; and many more.

The Summit also facilitated 18 strategic roundtable meetings that brought together curated groups of executives, policy makers, leading industry voices, and sustainability experts from across the value chain and different markets for fruitful dialogues on how to address pressing sustainability issues and act accordingly, including: Building Circular Systems for India, co-hosted by SU.RE – Sustainable Resolution and supported by British Council India; Pay Equity Interventions in European Value Chains, co-hosted by PwC; Indigenous Partnership for the Fashion, Apparel and Textile Industry, co-hosted by Ralph Lauren and Conservation International; Impactful Influence, co-hosted by UN Environment Programme; Accelerating Collective Action for Circular Materials, co-hosted by Mango; and many more. View the Roundtable programme.

Prominent brands and organisations unveiled new actions and initiatives at the event, highlights include: GFA launched the Fashion CEO Agenda 2024 – a strategic resource designed to steer fashion organisations towards achieving a net positive industry by 2050.

In line with the 2024 theme of Global Fashion Summit, this year’s Fashion CEO Agenda presents five pivotal opportunities for fashion executives and the industry at large to unlock transformative impact.

The eight members of GFA’s Next Gen Assembly programme participated in a closed-door Roundtable ‘How Can Fashion Value Economies of Wellbeing?’, co-hosted by Centre for Sustainable Fashion and Target.

For 15 years GFA has used the Summit to activate impact and forge new initiatives while educating and mobilising the fashion industry, Global Fashion Agenda CEO Federica Marchionni said.

She said that sustainability has moved from a peripheral concern to a central focus becoming an agenda-setter even in boardrooms. However, the pace of sustainability progress has not accelerated enough to respond to our changing world and this year’s Summit was focused on identifying the barriers to Unlock the Next Level and accelerate further implementation.

‘We have reached a polarisation point where the geopolitical environment around us is threatening to stunt our progress and I must emphasise that we need to unite to meet the 2030 and 2050 agenda. Whether we differ in geographies, cultures or political mindsets, sustainability must be a unifying bond among all of us,’ Marchionni said.