In February 2023, Copenhagen Fashion Week and I shared a big first experience when the city was covered in snow. I made my debut as an editor for another media outlet, covering the runways of Copenhagen, the capital of Danish style. More importantly, Copenhagen Fashion Week unveiled its first calendar in which organizers required all brands to meet minimum sustainability requirements in order to participate.
Collections from Saks Potts to Stein Goya showcase all the charm of Scandinavian fashion, which has won fans around the world, including statement winter coats, playful hair accessories, and functionally fun shoes. But this time around, they’ve scrutinized fur- and invasive-species-free design and environmentally friendly production practices (among other benchmarks). Cecilie Thorsmark, CEO of Copenhagen Fashion Week, stressed that minimum standards are just that: minimum standards, but their presence is not without concern for their fast-moving and sometimes wasteful nature. It felt like a revolution for an expensive industry. From my flight home to writing my runway report, I had one question in mind. “Will it spread to other countries around the world?”
Two years later I got my answer. The British Fashion Council, the organizer of London Fashion Week, announced on January 13 that it will roll out Copenhagen’s minimum requirements into its semi-annual calendar. Following a pilot program in 2025 in collaboration with BFC NEWGEN, an incubator for emerging talent, the full suite of sustainability requirements is expected to be in place by January 2026.
London Fashion Week will fully implement minimum sustainable standards for participating designers in 2026.
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By next year, London Fashion Week will follow Copenhagen’s mandate, with the overall aim of reducing brands’ environmental footprint without restricting their creativity. The 19 minimum standards include a complete ban on exotic products (fur, feathers, reptile skins), investments in emissions reductions, and workplace codes of conduct. Stars on the London Fashion Week calendar will not be exempt from the rewiring of their design programming. Upstart brands (such as Ahluwalia and Tor Cokar), cult favorites (Simone Rocha, JW Anderson, Chopova Rowena) and established brands (Burberry) all have to meet the minimum requirements set out in the framework. If you do, you risk losing your place on the calendar.
“This partnership is an important step in ensuring sustainability is integral to the future of fashion,” said Caroline Rush, recently appointed CEO of the British Fashion Council, in a statement. Ta. “Together, we are building a framework in which emerging designer fashion businesses can lead the way and make a tangible contribution to a more sustainable and responsible industry.”
The initiative will impact calendar regulars from Tove (pictured here) and JW Anderson to Burberry.
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At the designer-by-designer level, minimum standards ensure more than just runway bookings each season. They encourage participating labels to explore greener innovations that extend the lifespan of their clothes and, hopefully, the planet. (Textile waste from the fashion industry is considered an “environmental crisis,” as are nightmarishly large greenhouse gas emissions.)
It also puts necessary peer pressure on an industry that is notoriously slow to change. Danish fashion is thriving, but the market is much smaller than London. Copenhagen’s minimum sustainability standards, which one of the four major fashion weeks participates in, has some much-needed support, and there’s a good chance that the likes of New York and Paris will join. The more designers commit, the more impact the minimum standards will have. “As an influential player in the global fashion world, we see a lot of potential for working with the British Fashion Council to further extend the impact of our collective commitment to sustainability.”Tolles Mark said in a press release.
Copenhagen Fashion Week’s current minimum sustainability standards include a ban on destroying unsold merchandise.
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Over the past decade, I have watched labels at London Fashion Week and designers around the world make significant improvements in sustainability. In 2015, designers were regularly burning unsold merchandise to “save” their brands. By 2025, such a move, if exposed, would provoke a global backlash. Experimenting with deadstock and vintage fabrics isn’t just for frugal beginners. It’s for thriving luxury homes. Recycled materials, zero-waste fashion shows, and emissions offsets are also becoming increasingly common, albeit imperfectly.
Now that London Fashion Week is following Copenhagen’s lead, peer pressure on other large markets to change their ways has increased significantly. And when the next domino falls, an even bigger cascade begins. As I know from years of style reporting, it takes at least three things to set a trend.
