Among the guests of Dressing the Future stands out Paolo Foglia, one of the most authoritative voices in the field of environmental certification and systems corporate social responsibility. His presence offers a fundamental broadening of perspective: shifting the focus from the finished product to the entire supply chain, highlighting how sustainability is not an additional attribute, but a complex cultural and organisational process. Through her contribution, Foglia invites us to rethink the fashion system as an interconnected ecosystem, in which industry, institutions, research and citizens share responsibilities, tools and visions to build a truly circular and transparent future.
How can environmental certifications contribute to making the fashion system more ethical and responsible?
Environmental issues, starting with climate change and biodiversity loss, together with the protection of workers' rights and local communities, are an essential and structural part of the framework within which the increasingly global supply chains of the manufacturing industry are defined and operate. This fact, whose scope is obviously not limited to the textile sector, is particularly important for fashion, where the value of production combines the material and formal quality of products with their ability to be a means of social expression and representation of personal identity. Hence the need for companies to implement organisational tools and models that enable them to identify, assess and address actual or potential adverse impacts on human rights and the environment attributable to their own activities, the activities of their subsidiaries and the activities carried out by business partners in their supply chains. Once actual and potential adverse impacts have been identified, the adoption of appropriate measures to end such impacts and, where this is not possible, to minimise their scope.
In this context, international certification schemes based on multi-stakeholder initiatives, which intervene throughout the entire supply chain by connecting all the actors involved, including primary producers of raw materials and all actors in the manufacturing chain, through verification and validation models, enable fashion companies to improve their ability to maintain effective control over their supply chain. This allows, through the role of third-party independent bodies (Certification Bodies), to reduce the risks associated with behaviours and actions that can compromise the reputation and value of brands. Certification, increasingly shifting towards models aimed at verifying and measuring the actual impact of activities expressed through appropriate and relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), enables companies to implement more effective measures to report transparently to the market and multiple stakeholders not only on their environmental and social commitments, but also on the measures actually implemented and the results achieved.
What is the role of collaboration between businesses, certification bodies and institutions in promoting a circular economy model?
The circular economy, understood as a way of conceiving and managing production and consumption aimed at minimising the extraction and use of virgin raw materials, is a radically alternative approach to the still prevailing linear economy model. Pursuing it is an extremely complex process that affects the very way in which society as a whole is organised and functions. Its scope is so broad that it first and foremost requires forward-thinking and courageous institutions to define a comprehensive and organic framework for action, ensure effective and consistent policies, and provide adequate tools and support measures. Within this framework, the production system is consciously required to rethink and redesign products with the aim of ensuring their durability, reparability and recyclability even before increasing their recycled content. At the same time, businesses and the research community must work together to ensure that the technologies needed to manage the entire life cycle of products in a circular manner are developed and made available. However, all this risks being insufficient without the conscious attention of citizens/consumers and their behaviour when choosing what to buy, how to use and maintain products and, finally, how to manage them correctly when they want to dispose of them.
At the same time, the circular economy is also becoming a significant and attractive market for many who, by boasting and declaring the “circular” characteristics and qualities of their products and processes, seek to win over consumers and gain market share. With regard to the functioning of the market and the correct behaviour of economic actors in relation to customers and consumers, the role of regulatory bodies and certification bodies is defined. Through technical standards and verification protocols, these bodies introduce objective criteria to define what is “circular” and verify their correct implementation to ensure fair competition and non-misleading communications to consumers.
To what extent can the culture of sustainability become a competitive factor and a defining feature of Italian-made products?
For a country like Italy, which is poor in raw materials and energy, sustainability and the circular economy are not only important, but also strategically valid. Obviously, these factors, like others such as the digital transition, which are crucial for development, cannot be taken for granted, nor are they “free”. They require vision, the ability to consider them an integral part of development (not a hindrance) and, above all, coordinated and consistent strategies and policies. Made in Italy will certainly continue to be based on cultural tradition, creativity and manufacturing skills, as it should be, but at the same time, it is essential to focus on research and innovation in technologies and materials that also aim to reduce the production system's dependence on imported raw materials and energy.
In the case of fashion, sustainability can become the paradigm, interconnected with the fundamental elements typical of Made in Italy, around which a culture and a renewed sense of identity can grow in consumers, moving away from a style of consumption linked to models of mass production and sale at rock-bottom prices, with which the Italian textile and fashion sector has no chance of competing.
What skills do you think young designers should develop — or what “toolbox” should they build — to approach your area of expertise, as a representative of one of the possible sectors and fields of application of their future professions?
In my opinion, the knowledge and skills of today's designers, who are deeply aware of the enormous challenges that are part of the socio-economic and environmental context, should revolve around the concept of eco-design, in which the ability to express creativity and define style is complemented by the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively integrate structural, technological, material and social elements into the design, which determine the actual and potential impacts of the product and the processes required for its creation. material and social elements that determine the actual and potential impacts of the product and the processes necessary for its creation. This approach brings us back to two aspects that I consider essential:
laware of the complexity involved in considering, from the very beginning of the process of conceiving, creating and designing a product, the essential factors and elements that contribute to its success.rensure its effective implementation;
awareness of the critical points and physical, biological and social limitations inherent in the dimensions of the world on which we act through the creation of products and processes. Awareness of limitations does not mean stifling creativity, but developing the ability to exercise creativity in an even broader way in order to find solutions that combine novelty and beauty with the mitigation of negative impacts. A corollary of this approach is having the ability to recognise and share a multidisciplinary approach and being able to interact and contribute to enhancing working models in which different specific skills are compared.
A project for the future...
Contribute to the implementation of eco-design initiatives.
