ethical fashion

Manuel Arnaut and Livia Firth at the screening of the Renaissance Awards movie at Expo 2020 Dubai
This January marks the beginning of my third year as sustainability editor-at-large. When Manuel Arnaut asked me to join him, I immediately said yes, full of excitement to start exploring new territories, meet new audiences, and learn new fashionscapes. I met Manuel by accident when I was in Dubai in 2019 for Chopard, the luxury jewelry and watch brand Eco-Age has worked with for many years (and proudly so, since together we achieved a 100% ethical gold supply chain in only five years) and we instantly clicked. Manuel is open and curious and adventurous – everything you want from your editor-in-chief. I was in the emirate again this past December to screen The Renaissance Awards movie at the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai and we started chatting about sustainabilty and fashion, so to open 2022, I wanted to know what, if anything, had changed in Manuel’s sustainability journey. This is how the conversation went.
The Italian pavilion
Livia Firth: What does sustainable fashion mean to you and how has your journey evolved?Manuel Arnaut: One of the things that I learned through our collaboration is that sustainable fashion is not only about the ecological side, it’s also related to the way the clothes are produced, and to the people in the supply chain. I’ve also discovered sustainable fashion is full of great solutions for things that we haven’t even thought about – for instance, the floor of the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai is made with discarded orange peel. The world of sustainability is full of beautiful opportunities. It can be glamorous and couture and high fashion, and this is what is exciting for me now.
LF: What’s your personal style, and if I open your wardrobe today, what would I find?MA: My personal style is quite basic, I usually dress in black, so you’ll find a lot of black staples. I prefer to buy less and to buy pieces that I can wear for longer. This is something that I know is now a trend, but I’ve always gone for staples, like a black blazer, pants, and shoes; items you can wear again and again and that you can also mix and match, as I travel a lot and it just makes my packing easier.
The Italian pavilion
LF: What is the biggest challenge in sustainable fashion, do you think?MA: I think the challenges are two: one side is to push trends, and to believe in the power of sustainable brands and fashion and to investing in production so people love their clothes for longer and respect supply chains. The second challenge is explaining to our leaders and consumers the importance of making more conscious decisions. There are a lot of people around the world who end up buying fast fashion because it’s what they can afford. This is also something we need to think about. How can everyone have access to sustainable fashion? Another thing I learned from you is that a lot of people also buy fast fashion because they love to turn around their looks fast, so they consume at a higher rate. This is something we, at Vogue Arabia, need to address too, as we are part of this machine.
LF: You travel a lot for work. What have you noticed in how different countries and fashion weeks perceive sustainability?MA: I think there’s a big change in the world in general in terms of ethical fashion. But at the same time, all those promises that were made during Covid – that the shows were going to be smaller and fashion weeks were going to be fewer days – unfortunately, I don’t see that happening. I see the fashion events and shows being as big as before, if not more… What was promised during Covid is not being delivered. It would be nice to see some of the promises being honored.
The Sustainability pavilion at Expo2020 Dubai
LF: We have nine years left to meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting global heating to 1.5C. What do you think the role of fashion is, or how can we use fashion to educate citizens?MA: Taking into consideration that fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the world, I think we have a big responsibility in getting to this target. So definitely, fashion needs to start by solving its overproduction problem, and continue to improve the supply chain and respecting the people in it. In terms of how we can use fashion to educate citizens, I think it’s also citizens that need to educate fashion, so I would ask everyone to be attentive to what they buy. Read the labels, get informed, and understand where the clothes are coming from, how they are produced, what they are produced with, and then make choices that will reflect in the success or not of the brand. Because unfortunately brands are driven mostly by numbers, so if we are able to give better numbers to the ones that are doing things properly, the industry will change.
LF: And with this mission in mind – to give better numbers to sustainable brands – we start 2022. Happy new year all!
Originally published in the January 2022 issue of Vogue Arabia
Read Next: Activists Livia Firth and Satish Kumar Discuss How the Pandemic is a Global Wake-Up Call

As technological advances in fashion threaten to leave behind vulnerable garment workers, could the answer lie in our imagination?
Fashion styling and shopping app Drest. Photo: Courtesy

In April last year, a couple of months into total lockdown and as we were all getting accustomed to our Zoom meetings, online classes, and remote dance parties, I had the privilege of interviewing one of my heroes, Naomi Klein. Among other things, we spent quite a long time sharing our feelings about technology. Naomi said she heard Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, talking about this as a grand experiment: “So I think we should say: You’re right. It is. We’ve been living in Eric Schmidt’s grand experiment. And guess what? We hate it! You know, we’re not happy… Do you know anybody who’s enjoying spending this much time on screens, having this little contact with other humans? I think we should be grateful that we got this fast-forward vision of this Silicon Valley utopia. And we now know in our bones that we don’t want to go there.”
So here I am – one year on, still in lockdown, still working on Zoom, doing online classes, and at the beginning of another month of fashion weeks, where we will consume fashion digitally, virtually, and in ways we have never thought before (look at what The Fabricant has done in the realms of 3D fashion design and animation in the past few months…) – asking myself: do I like this future?
Drest. Photo: Courtesy

Before trying to give an answer, let’s unpack our technological fashionscape so far. Three or four years ago, everyone started to talk about how technology was the best friend of sustainability and how this epoch promised plenty of disruption. But I remember at the time thinking that whether or not this was welcome, it depended on how we steered a course through change.
Take increased automation, for example. Fashion is a human industry that relies on and needs people. Are we saying that we don’t want human involvement anymore? Or that we are happy to throw on the scrap heap approximately 70 million people currently in the supply chain, because we think we can produce more efficiently, even cheaper and even faster using technology? I hear too great an emphasis on disruptive technology targeted at the usual suspects. For example, how can the consumer consume products even faster, or how can we sell more; what technology will get this from runway into their hands before they have time to change their minds? How might brands deliver results and boost productivity?
What I am not hearing, though, is how all of this will impact the less visible people in the supply chain – the garment workers.
Rob Hopkins’ From What If to What Is. Photo: Courtesy

But then imagine the technology (and we don’t have to imagine too much because it’s starting to become a reality) if some of the spoils of the digital age were transferred to garment workers. Women with smartphones, able to monitor and report on their own safety conditions, to be in charge of their time and their piece rates. Imagine the enhanced transparency! Imagine if we use technology not just to monitor the sale of apparel, but also the story of its recapture, its disassembly, and reuse. This is where technology starts to become a force for progress. Imagine all the stories we could tell! As Rob Hopkins says in his beautiful book From What If to What Is, “In these times of deep division and deeper despair, if there is a consensus about anything in the world, it is that the future is going to be awful. There is an epidemic of loneliness, an epidemic of anxiety, a mental health crisis of vast proportions, a rise in extremist movements and governments, catastrophic climate change, biodiversity loss, food insecurity.” But there is plenty of evidence that things can change, and cultures can change, rapidly, dramatically, and unexpectedly – for the better. We do have the capability to effect dramatic change, Hopkins argues, but we’re failing because we’ve largely allowed our most critical tool to languish: human imagination. Imagination is central to empathy, to creating better lives, to envisioning and then enacting a positive future. Yet imagination is also demonstrably in decline at precisely the moment when we need it most.
Livia Firth with the founder of Drest, Lucy Yeomans. Photo: Getty

This is where the use of technology gets me excited – when it is used as a means to enhance imagination. With this in mind, for example, last year at Eco-Age we used technology to create a new narrative inside The Green Carpet Fashion Awards. We created the first event in the world to ever be produced and broadcast using four different kind of technologies – augmented reality, digital, holograms, and film. We used it to send out a strong message about using this period as a portal into a new era, where environmental and social justice underpins everything we do. And it was a huge success: we could involve talent all over the world without having them leave their locations, created films, and turned the iconic La Scala in Milan into the perfect magical world. Technology can also create much needed new business models for the fashion industry when it helps brands, for example, to move from selling clothes (unsustainable) to gaming – something that Lucy Yeomans, founder of fashion gaming platform Drest, understood a year ago. Let’s see what this year unfolds but technology as a tool to progress is something that makes me excited – otherwise it will be the emperor’s new clothes all over again.
Zendaya at the virtual 2020 Green Carpet Awards in a vintage Versace dress. Photo: Courtesy

Read Next: Livia Firth Highlights the Independent Designers Taking Matters of Sustainable Fashion in Their Own Hands
Originally published in the February 2021 issue of Vogue Arabia