Sustainability Week at IFM

During the first week of January, IFM organized a comprehensive and exclusive week about sustainability, open to students of all IFM programs.

Lectures, expert views, testimonials, best practice sharing, student-led workshops, movies (True cost) and meetings with keynote speakers (Marcel Deiss Vineyard) triggered stimulating reflections, a one-of-a-kind event in French higher education to face fast-fashion and the ecological emergencies of the textile industry. The objective was to showcase the diversity of practices: overview, nature of initiatives, recycling, changes in behaviors, etc.

With over 30 speakers besides IFM faculty, coming from diverse and complementary backgrounds, this program shed a light on the issues and specificities of sustainability in the fashion industry, with major brands (H&M, Kering), other alternatives (Loom, Miséricordia, les Douces angevines, Charlotte Sometime, Véja, Tongoro), non profits (Emmaüs), or certification bodies (Eco TLC).

In order to better target the specific needs of fashion and identify its challenges, students were provided with an overview of best practices: for cosmetics with the Slow cosmétique organization, urban cities with a presentation by Thierry Paquot, design with Catherine Geel or food with Pascale Brevet.

Always on the look-out for innovative learning models, IFM gave groups of students, as future professionals of fashion, the opportunity to organize a number of courses or meetings. Among these student-led activities were a roundtable on business models, another on the role of garment or fabric recycling organizations, or, with Laura Brown (Ethipop), on alternative ethical brands.