The new storylines

In the fashion world, where the main activity has become the verbose and somewhat gossipy analysis of its ills and the speculation surrounding creative directors (we’ve written about this at least ten times over the past year; there is only one real problem, and that is the prices, especially given the quality on offer; the ugliness of certain collections and the inadequacy of some designers are a relative matter, and the proof – at least in Milan – is that last Sunday the two pop-up markets for designer vintage sold thousands of garments and accessories), this morning sees the opening in Venice of the fifth edition of the Sustainable Fashion Forum organised by Confindustria Moda. It does so with an agenda that includes all the key issues defining sustainability today – issues that are not the same as they were five years ago – namely the safeguarding of the fashion supply chain, which has been devastated by the squeeze on prices and the decline in orders (“the latest collections are rich in fine leathers, which also convey a visual sense of luxury. However, volumes have fallen”, Fulvia Bacchi, CEO of Lineapelle, noted during a recent dinner), the impact of artificial intelligence on industrial processes (which is now a given; McKinsey estimates that generative AI could increase operating profits in the fashion, clothing and luxury sectors by up to 275 billion dollars by 2028), the legality and transparency of supply chains – including traceability and the proper enforcement of contracts – and, finally, circularity and new bio-based materials. We shall discuss the latter in a few lines’ time, as I wish to emphasise another aspect of this ongoing evolution: namely, that the Confindustria Moda forum, like so many other events nowadays, is held in Venice, which – despite the much-publicised increase in the number of rats, once drowned by the periodic high tides and now saved by the Mose (without an accent), as our dear Alberto Mattioli wrote about yesterday in Il Foglio – is becoming increasingly central to a certain world of culture and entrepreneurship centred on the textile and clothing industry. Absolute stars such as Diane von Furstenberg, Rick Owens and Dries Van Noten live in the Lagoon, some quite permanently; Dries Van Noten’s cultural management of Palazzo Pisani Moretta – which he purchased, restored and reopened last spring with an exhibition on craftsmanship and art that was perhaps a little too aestheticised but, well, better to have it than not – has already become a landmark amongst the city’s cultural activities. In Venice, the Prada Foundation organises its most experimental exhibitions and has forged links with the main local associations, such as the Nono Foundation, whilst on Calle della Regina itself the new Cardin Museum has just opened; although it is in need of professional curation and, quite simply, a lighting system up to standard, it has already attracted a great deal of interest. A few weeks ago, in the very same halls of the Cini Foundation where the gathering of textile manufacturers and fashion brands is taking place from today, the fourth edition of Homo Faber – undoubtedly the best yet – drew to a close with 65,000 visitors, representing a 30 per cent increase, whilst ‘on the mainland’, as the Venetians say, the OVS group (interview on page 5) and Golden Goose are making their mark, both bucking the general market trend. In short, perhaps partly due to the cultural activism of the new mayor, Simone Venturini, not a week goes by without an invitation or a good excuse to hop on a train bound for Santa Lucia Station. This includes the major closed-door meeting organised by Deloitte at the Procuratie a week ago on art, finance and public and private spaces, where I had the chance to chat with the CEO of Arte Generali, Jean Besançon, a leading expert on antique textiles, and which led to his article on conservation techniques on page 6. This is invaluable advice, given the surge in fashion exhibitions over the last five years and the fact that even the art historians who run most museums are ill-equipped to manage textile artefacts other than tapestries and, above all, to care for them. On this point, there is also a broader, systemic aspect that must be taken into account. The gradual repositioning of an industry that has realised it can no longer rely solely on the brand to drive sales involves, in fact, a long series of activities aimed at promoting manual and artisanal work – whether genuine or perceived as such – and which include, in addition to the transport of precious garments by couriers along the Asia–US–Europe triangle and their display as works of art, a wide range of promotional activities, including the two most interesting Christmas campaigns of the moment – those by Prada and Dior – for which the brands have enlisted not so much famous ambassadors (at least not on the face of it) as world-renowned cartoonists and film directors: John Pomeroy, animator of ‘Fievel’ and ‘Bianca and Bernie’, who has populated the Milanese brand’s world with anthropomorphic animals, and Sylvain Chimet, who conceived and directed the sumptuous animated mini-film in which Camille Cottin lends her voice to Marlene Dietrich, the cult diva of creative director Jonathan Anderson, and Louis Garrel as Christian Dior, for a little Christmas tale of dresses, precious fabrics, industrious bees and, in short, all those elements of care, magic and enchantment that audiences – not just in the West – expect to find at this time of year, despite any global tensions. This aspect – artificial intelligence as an industrial commodity, and craftsmanship as the visible expression of luxury – brings us back to today’s fabrics and the reasons why they have become the real selling point, far beyond the somewhat frivolous entertainment surrounding ‘who’s going where’ and the all-too-obvious power struggle between CEOs and creative directors, which people care about just enough – that is, almost not at all – and only until it affects style and, once again, the price. It seems that the emphasis in recent years on transparent labels, traceability and garment care has finally yielded some results, because the general public has stopped focusing solely on the brand (apart from the petty Milanese vandals, who, like true connoisseurs, even took their anger out on Dries Van Noten’s shop windows, in the Parisian footage of the destruction over the past few weeks, girls could clearly be seen selecting garments by feeling them with expertise), and is instead examining labels and fabrics, talking about ‘value for money’ just as they learnt to do with food products forty years ago. For this reason, fabric compositions, blends and any innovations have become part of the information provided to the press and the end customer in a way that was unheard of until the last decade (I remember when the model’s name wasn’t mentioned in fashion spreads, nor were the outfits described in the captions: in the early 2000s, you’d just pop the brand name at the bottom of the image – preferably an ‘artistic’ one, i.e. blurred – and off you’d go, towards new successes and lavish marketing campaigns). Shop assistants – or, to use the more flattering term ‘sales managers’ – are trained to recognise fabrics and leathers, to put on gloves when handling a handbag and to gently stroke cashmere and silks, but also to extol the virtues of technical fabrics, memorising their formulas and compositions. At La Perla, which is currently operating online while awaiting the opening of its boutique—and, it seems, with excellent results—the company is particularly proud of a stretch silk chiffon with a silver armuré weave, composed of 92 per cent silk and 8 per cent stretch lamé yarn, interwoven during weaving and piece-dyed; while on the menswear front, Filippo Ricci, creative director and managing director of Stefano Ricci, having just returned from one of the ‘Explorer’ expeditions to the Himalayan range, is placing great emphasis on Alpha Yarn – 13.5 microns in diameter, the finest and most precious cashmere in the world, sourced from the undercoat of Hircus goats in the Alashan region of Mongolia and harvested by hand-combing (this point is crucial to the narrative, particularly to silence animal rights groups: until a few years ago, they were convinced that herders systematically killed their goats to obtain the fleece, thereby demonstrating crass ignorance of nomadic practices – that is, of ethnology – and of economics) and on Giza 45 cotton, which is extremely light, wonderfully cool and has extra-long fibres. “It takes twenty-five kilometres of it to make a shirt,” he explains, “and demand outstrips supply.” The issue of cotton – a fibre with such a high environmental impact that alternative cultivation methods are currently being studied, as OVS CEO Stefano Beraldo also explains on page 5 – intersects with that of technical textiles and man-made, bio-based fibres, which will indeed be one of the topics covered over these two days. “No one fibre is better than another; nowadays, the choice is based on intended use,” observes Andrea Crespi, CEO of Eurojersey and vice-president of Confindustria Moda: “However, we must reduce the environmental impact of production. Three problems currently weigh on our textile system: high production costs due to rising energy prices – and our sector consumes a great deal of energy – a heavy reliance on foreign sources for raw materials, and the highest tax wedge in Europe. And yet, despite all this,” he adds, “I believe that the issue we must address today is the fair and sustainable redistribution of value throughout the entire textile and clothing supply chain. The ecological transition we are called upon to undertake must be based, first and foremost, on economic sustainability and on a systemic approach that overcomes the logic of corporate isolation or, worse still, competition between specialists.”