KEYNOTE BY SAFIA MINNEY

Safia Minney, MBE, is an award-winning social entrepreneur, consultant and advisor. Safia is a leading influencer and international speaker on sustainable fashion, sustainable supply chains, ethical business and climate action.

Safia has authored 9 books including ‘Slave to Fashion’, campaigning to eradicate modern day slavery in the fashion industry, ‘Slow Fashion - Aesthetics meets Ethics’ and in 2022 ‘Regenerative Fashion’. Safia launched Fashion Declares – a bottom-up, industry wide movement to promote rapid action to redesign the fashion industry to operate within planetary boundaries. 

PANEL DISCUSSION

Alice V Robinson is a co-founder of British Pasture Leather and the author of Field, Fork, Fashion, a book that chronicles the making of her 2019 design collection “Bullock 374” which was created entirely from a single animal. Her work explores the relationship between food and fashion by connecting farming to product design. For the last three years, she has been developing British Pasture Leather with collaborator Sara Grady, to create the first supply of leather that is traceable to regenerative farms in the UK. Their work is inspired by a belief that regenerative agricultural practices are a crucial solution in renewing soils, stewarding land and reforming food and fashion systems. In 2023, Grady + Robinson were named Sustainability Thought Leaders for the Vogue Business 100 Innovators List, and won the Climate+ Award from the Textile Exchange, a global organisation promoting sustainability in material supply chains.

Jo Salter is driven by a passion for social justice and environmental causes. In 2013, she founded Where Does It Come From?, an award-winning social enterprise renowned for its transparent approach to clothing production, allowing customers to trace their garments back to the farm. Jo is also a director of Khadi London CIC a regenerative textiles knowledge hub, a regular speaker/writer and host of the Where Does It Come From? podcast. She was selected as a DEFRA Year of Global Change ambassador, a Pioneers Post/NatWest WISE 100, and a top 50 Sustainable Fashion Influencer in 2022. She has recently been shortlisted as finalist in the Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2023.

Zoe Gilbertson is a designer and educator working systemically at the intersections of fashion, fibre & farming. She’s held leadership roles in design and education and has extensive project management experience involving enterprise and innovation. Her nature-centred, collaborative practice explores the economics and process required to make local, distributive, non-extractive clothing systems. Zoe teaches on multiple sustainable fashion courses and runs Liflad, a design lab developing strategy and practice to enable low energy, local livelihoods rooted in nature, community and care. She’s also co-founder of the Bioregional Bast Fibre Network.

Isabella Goggin Initially worked in costume for film and as a seamstress/designer in bespoke womenswear. The search for solutions to the intrinsic issues in the textile industry then led Isabella to natural dye, social enterprise and most recently, to regenerative farming. Isabella works across disparate parts of the industry to break the illusion that we in fashion and textiles exist in an isolated sector; recognising that we are interdependent and that we therefore need integrated, holistic thinking to find equitable and balanced systems. Isabella works freelance in the regenerative farming and textiles sector, including work for South East England Fibreshed.

REGENERATING fASHION? WORKSHOP

In this structured workshop, participants worked in groups at tables for fashion design, fashion image and communication, and fashion business models to discuss and map the principles of regeneration and how these might be applied to different fashion disciplines. Each table had a host to guide them through a series of exercises that support your discussions.