“Some 75 million people are employed in fashion globally,” Ardillo writes. “Textile processes have a remarkable environmental impact, although the situation is slowly improving thanks to the fact many companies have signed up for Greenpeace’s Detox Campaign, launched in 2011 to reduce chemical substances that are harmful for the environment. However, this remains one of the most highly polluting industries in the world.

”Efforts and initiatives to make the fashion industry more sustainable and socially inclusive abound. For example, Evangelina Arivilica began knitting at only seven years old. She didn’t have knitting needles, so she used dried canes.

Today, Arivilica manages an artisanal knitting workshop that brings together a community of women in Nueva Aboarada, Peru.

She also holds training courses, distributes materials, and coordinates knits production for INDIGENOUS, a fashion company which for about twenty years has committed to become known as the most ethical, transparent and sustainable in the world. Other examples of how fashion can become more sustainable, also from a social point of view, can be found in the work of Swati Soharia – a young designer who reuses fabric remnants recovered from textile factories to create new stoles for traditional Indian outfits – and of Vanessa Barragão, a textile designer originally from Portugal, who creates tapestries with waste materials.

The movement for more ethical fashion is growing also in Italy, where we find initiatives such as Rifò by Niccolò Cipriani, “Un rifugio dell’ambiente” (literally, “A refuge for the environment”), and the Vera Pelle Italiana (Real Italian Leather) Consortium. These and many more examples are showcased in Marilù Ardillo’s article, which you can read on our Foundation’s website (in Italian): https://www.fondazionecasillo.it/reportage/1250-moda-circolare.html