As part of the CFDA’s ongoing commitment to sustainability through education and professional development, today, we launch the CFDA Sustainability Initiatives resource hub. Centralized on CFDA.com, the sustainability-centered resource hub is designed to provide open access resources and information specific to fashion design x business sustainable strategies. You can download the guide to Sustainable Strategies here.
These resources are intended for everyone: CFDA members, educators, students, professionals, designers, and anyone in our community interested in learning more about sustainability and sourcing relevant contacts.
As American fashion continues its journey to a more sustainable future, transformative innovation of materials, processes and systems is about more than mindfulness, it is a change imperative.
Last October, following General Assembly Week at the United Nations, a U.N. & Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report highlighted how global warming is accelerating and threatening the Planet Earth’s health faster than we thought.
This is directly linked to CO2 emissions, as well as the impact of single use plastics to our land and oceans. Without a radical rethinking, the ocean will contain more plastic than fish by 2050.
At a time when numbers and reports are so daunting, the CFDA is more optimistic than ever and sees 2019 as a year of progress, with every step counting towards substantial change. We are closer than ever to opportunities and solutions to create and consume with less impact, to employ circularity, and to ultimately end production of single use plastics.
We believe in the power of people unified by shared vision, and in the power of design. We see a call to action in action led by our 500+ member community by embracing conscious design, responsible sourcing, and committing to building safer, ethical, more efficient value chains.
Through the CFDA’s Educational Initiatives, we also see a generation of educators, students, and graduates applying collaboration, ingenuity and systems thinking to sustainable fashion prototyping and new models of social entrepreneurship and material innovation.
Within professional development programs such as the Elaine Gold Launch Pad, expert mentors work with early emerging talent to create new business models that are scalable and embedded with principles of sustainability, technology and innovation.
Through our longstanding partnership with Lexus business development program, the Fashion* Initiative inspires thought leadership, facilitates commitment to sustainable innovation, and advance positives change with the highest-impact potential.
ABOUT
From certification to assessment strategies, CFDA.com based Sustainability Initiatives centralizes resources, stakeholder contacts, useful tools, relevant information. In the coming weeks, case study spotlights and engagements will also be profiled.
SUSTAINABILITY A-Z RESOURCE DIRECTORY
The CFDA.com Sustainability Directory is a key resource hub connecting fashion designers, companies, and students with more than 200 leading organizations, tools, and relevant resources. These resources will be continuously expanded adding new contacts and information related to certification, leading NGOS, metrics, and must-read reports.
CFDA GUIDE TO SUSTAINABLE STRATEGIES
The CFDA Guide to Sustainable Strategies, authored by Domenica Peterson Leibowitz, seeks to provide a “how to” overview for sustainable fashion. With this open-access guide, we have a single intention: to empower through education. The PDF guide’s goal is to take the complex idea of sustainability and simplify it into clear, digestible resources and actions, available to all.
Within the16-topic guide, we consider impacts related to land, water, air, energy, human capital {people} and natural capital {all living things} using pillars of environmental, social, cultural, and financial/economic factors.
SUSTAINABLE STRATEGIES TOOLKIT
As annex to the Guide to Sustainability Strategies, the Sustainable Strategies Toolkit, aims to visualize the mapping and framing of sustainability priorities. The custom PDF toolkit created for the CFDA by consultant Lauren Croke, formerly of Eileen Fisher, is intended to facilitate in diagnostics, and provide users with step by step guidance in the creation of strategic blueprints. Our methodology aligns to the core principles of the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
CFDA A-Z MATERIALS INDEX
The CFDA Materials Index, designed as an informational tool, is an A-Z directory of more than 40 materials, focused on fiber knowledge with descriptions. This Index will be expanded upon and continuously updated.
Following launch of the Sustainability Initiatives Resource Hub, the CFDA will develop and host an ongoing series of pop up engagements, including workshops, roundtables, and experiential educational events.
Thank you for joining us as we strive to come closer to the goal of sustainable fashion as a new normal.
We hope you enjoy these CFDA Sustainability resources, with gratitude to the CFDA staff and teams, guide content author Domenica Leibowitz and consultant Lauren Croke.
