FR x CSF - Defining Fashion's Roadmap to Sustainable Prosperity

Sustainable prosperity is a state of personal, cultural, societal, and environmental thriving within planetary boundaries.

Since 2018, Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF) has been working with designers to reveal what sustainability looks like in action, elevating and promoting best practice in the sector. This collaborative research has been translated into an interactive guide, ‘Fashion as Sustainability in Action’.

The guide shows that a new kind of fashion already exists. However, those who practice fashion in this way need greater recognition and a greater visibility to encourage others to learn from and with them. Many of these MSEs provide pioneering visions of sustainable prosperity in fashion business, but they are not recognised for this work. In addition, they struggle to survive in the face of targets that are limited to economic measures. The purpose of the guide is to facilitate better understanding of their distinctions and their new, holistic markers of success. The post-pandemic recovery is not about returning to the old trodden paths. Instead, we first need to rethink where we want to get to, and then build new and much more diverse pathways, likely also in different places.

In this facilitated discussion we will hear from Prof. Dilys Williams, Prof. Sandy Black and Dr Mila Burcikova from CSF, business support organisations and fashion MSEs.

We will discuss:

What is sustainable prosperity, with case study examples of its cultural, social, environmental and economic dimensions in fashion MSEs.

How do we extend policy beyond net-zero targets, to integrate holistic measures of success for the wellbeing economy?

How can policy makers support sustainable prosperity as a key success indicator within support organisations and MSEs?