A few seasons ago, sustainability was trending on every fashion capital’s runway. Brands made a show of upcycling deadstock into new garments, using organic or vegan materials, and designing clothes made to last, despite their questionable wearability. However, uncovering the paradox of fashion weeks’ carbon footprint minimalized sustainability showcases in subsequent seasons. Until organising bodies realise their pledge to become climate neutral events, brands seek recognition for their efforts through the Green Carpet Fashion Awards.
What is the Green Carpet Fashion Awards?
In an Oscar-like awards ceremony, held annually at the Milan fashion week, celebrities present a series of sustainability awards to fashion houses. In the first edition, in 2017, the seamstresses of Valentino’s haute couture team were awarded the ‘Art of Craftsmanship’ and in 2018 it was the cobblers of Ferragamo. Conceptualised by global non-profit Eco-Age in partnership with CNMI, Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, the Green Carpet Fashion Awards are a platform meant to acknowledge the handprint (human capital) and footprint (natural capital) of the fashion industry.
Livia Firth, founder of Eco-Age set the Green Carpet in motion at the Golden Globes in 2010, when she arrived in a repurposed wedding dress. It sparked conversations about the wasted resources and impact of custom-made, single-use, red carpet looks. The Green Carpet Challenge was issued and has since been upheld by celebrities like Emma Watson, and Zendaya among others. At the 2012 Oscars, Meryl Streep wore Lanvin but made of recycled plastic bottles, Viola Davis wore Valentino but made of recycled soda cans.
The Green Carpet Challenge evolved to become the Green Carpet Fashion Awards, held at Teatro alla Scala in Milan since 2017. Celebrities like Cate Blanchett, Juliane Moore, Cindy Crawford are amongst those presenting awards honouring emerging eco-designers, brands with low impact supply chain transformations, users of fibre and textile innovations, zero-waste creations etc.
Remembering GCFA’s ‘Best Emerging Designers’ and their creations
The Green Carpet Fashion Awards not only gives a voice to small-scale projects that may have been lost in the abundance of eco-start-ups, but also upholds the importance of continuous innovation season after season in the face of the climate emergency.
Naomi Campbell presented the ‘Best Emerging Designer’ to Tiziano Guardini for his cruelty free silk dress with sequin embroidery of CDs and recycled mussel shells. In 2018, Gilberto Calzolari, won the award for a dress made of used jute sacks from Brazil that were used to store coffee. The gown was embroidered in lead-free Swarovski crystals. Flavia La Rocca bagged the award in 2019 for a singular concept, an outfit that could be worn in 40 different ways. Not only did it conceptually eliminate overconsumption but also introduced a way to reduce quantities of production, conserving resources like water, raw materials, energy.
The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic saw the Green Carpet Fashion Awards go digital for the first time, with recorded performances stitched together in to a long film. Unfortunately, the awards were diluted and re-categorised into the following: Visionary presented to Zendaya, North Star presented to the UN for the SDGs, Art of Craftsmanship to Italian artisans as an entity and three others awarded in a similar fashion.
IMAGE: via Vogue Italy | IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Model posed in dress by emerging designer 2018, Gilberto Calzolari
Making responsible choices in the face of glamour
It is an unspoken requirement that attendees make an appearance in their planet-friendly glamorous best. To date, hand-made designs celebrating the craftsmaship of Italian fashion houses have been a majority on the star-studded green carpet. Established sustainable designers like Stella McCartney along with new names like Tiziano Guardini are regularly featured on looks. Celebrities have collaborated with brands to dig up iconic designs from the archives or create custom-pieces made using off-cuts, deadstock and eco-textiles.
The efforts made to communicate the extent of their environmental concerns ranges from re-wearing outfits to spot-lighting low-impact production processes and new materials. For example at the 2019 Green Carpet Fashion Awards, Julianne Moore wore a custom Ferragamo gown with Chopard Jewellery. The bespoke gown was constructed using plastic PET bottles transformed into jersey by a patented polymerization process by perPETual. She paired that with custom shoes and a bag created with GOTS certified silk and OKEO-tex 100 leather that was tanned with Smartech and Metal Free Hydroki technology; a process involving limited water wastage and carbon dioxide emissions. While activists and fashion sustainability experts stand against custom-made, single-use outfits, using them as a means to showcase innovative technology is a step in the right direction.
Speaking of making the right moves, organised events from music concerts to summer festivals are finding ways to become eco-friendly. So it comes as no surprise that GCFA took responsibility to minimise their resource consumption and wastage too. In 2019, their biggest event till date, with a global reach of 5.5 billion, saw a green carpet created from 2000 square metres of regenerated nylon, ECONYL®. Covering the entire venue, it was made of recycled fishing nets and other nylon waste.
Still, this was no pledge towards climate neutrality, as in the case of New York Fashion Week organising body CFDA, Council of Fashion Designers of America; which set a net-zero goal for 2050. A probable outcome under the onslaught of continued protests by climate activist groups such as Extinction Rebellion. They have staged multiple coups at Paris, London and New York Fashion Weeks over the years. In February 2020, the group held an alternative fashion show outside NYFW venues celebrating second-hand and upcycled looks. French activist Marie Cohuet, member of Extinction Rebellion gate-crashed the Louis Vuitton SS’22 runway in Paris with a sign that read ‘Overconsumption = Extinction.’
IMAGE: via Refinery29 | IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Protest at the Louis Vuitton Runway during SS’22 where an activist holds a signage stating ‘overconsumption = extinction’
In 2022, Eco-Age and CNMI part ways
After the first and last pandemic-induced digital edition of the Green Carpet Fashion Awards in 2020, Firth made an executive decision to bring the awards to Los Angeles, where the Green Carpet Challenge was first launched. The revamped event was an intimate dinner honouring 4 initiatives: Fifteen Percent Pledge founder Aurora James, Native American designer Bethany Yellowtail, Color of Change president Rashad Robinson and Tom Ford for the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize.
Firth shared the purpose behind GCFA, “This is a not a celebration of an industry with the power to distract. Rather it’s the recognition of an industry that needs to leverage its power for people and planet. Fashion can and should be a lifeline.”
The new GCFA is aligned with the current mood of the fashion industry, bringing intersectional environmentalism into focus with diversity, inclusion and social justice becoming key players. Firth believes that there is finally a dramatic change in the fashion landscape due to war, conflict and the pandemic. All of which has sparked a widespread understanding that fashion is a full spectrum industry impacting billions of lives across the world. She shares: “We know that sustainability solutions are intersectional solutions, that environmental justice is totally interlinked with social justice. This is why this new concept for the GCFA marks for us a crucial point for the fashion industry, using also the power of Hollywood as movies and fashion have always been interlinked, flirting with each other in a symbiotic relationship.”
The debut of CNMI’s Sustainable Fashion Awards
Parting ways with Eco-Age and the Green Carpet Fashion Awards, the National Chambers of Italian Fashion, CNMI launched their own star-studded event which debuted on September 25th 2022 at Teatro alla Scala during Milan Fashion Week. Launched in collaboration with the UN’s Ethical Fashion Initiative and Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a series of 12 awards recognised the industry’s progress on ESG, from climate action to human rights.
However, for the first time, ESG criteria was used to sift through candidates. An advisory committee comprising of 28 international non-profits listed nominees using EFI’s ESG Due Diligence Framework. From craftsmanship and human rights to circular economy and environmental justice, the awards went out to Timberland, Prada, Armani, Sease, Bottega Veneta, Ermenegildo Zegna Group among others.
Has there been a marked sustainability deficit on the runways?
Greenwashing, fashion sustainability legislature and new standards of accountability have made brands cautious on and off the runway. However, there’s still a showcasing of alternative materials or upcycled pieces. In New York, a third of Gabriela Hearst’s collection was made of deadstock fabrics paired with biodegradable shoes. At Coach, old leather footballs and jackets were converted into garments and accessories. In Paris, Balmain used banana fibres (which in fact have been under scrutiny for their high environmental impact) and Botter showed garments of algae fibres.
Running parallel and currently unanimously embraced, is inclusivity and diversity on the runway. Case in point: the launch of South Asian Fashion Week and an adaptive fashion show by Open Style Lab in collaboration with Spinal Muscular Atrophy community during NYFW. In Milan, the WAMI collective, ‘We Are Made in Italy’ continued its showcase of BIPOC designers, with 5 new names this season, including Villain, Fatra, Phan Dang Hoang among others.
However, the concept of sustainability as a value system is still largely missing from the industry. While the Green Carpet Fashion Awards have kept the climate change conversation alive and kicking, they continue to enable the production and consumption cycle of fashion brands, whilst simultaneously rewarding circular economies and business models.
FEATURED IMAGE: via Ellen MacArthur Foundation | IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The CNMI’s Sustainable Fashion Awards venue