In London, The Mills Fabrica convened industry peers including Cascale for the “Performance Without Toxicity” launch event, celebrating fiber innovation and innovators.
Hosted at MYO King’s Cross, the two-day event saw over 100 attendees from across the value chain. The programming also featured a networking drinks reception at the gallery and concept store “Fabrica X” where innovations are on display.
On day one, The Mills Fabrica’s head of Europe Amy Tsang gave opening remarks. Sessions followed on purpose-driven leadership, athleisure, footwear design, performance materials, and greener financing. Allbirds, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, HSBC, and more, were among the represented speakers.
Cascale also played a part in the event. On day two, Ellie Hackwood – senior manager of brand and retail membership – moderated a session titled “Building the Systems Behind Next-Generation Performance” covering reflections on innovation in responsible textile manufacturing and scalable change. Speakers included Mark Edridge, product manager at Bluesign Technologies, and Bethan Taylor, global sustainability manager at Checkpoint ALS, both Cascale members, as well as Joyce Tsoi, senior director of the decarbonization program at Cascale.
Hackwood gave a brief introduction on the opportunity at hand to confront fossil fuel-based inputs and further supply chain decarbonization advancements at a systems level. The strongest theme from the discussion was that holistic supply chain collaboration is a pre-requisite to systems change. Panelists stressed the critical importance of collaboration across complex supply chains, in particular citing the need for strengthened buyer supplier partnerships. Scalable innovation cannot be achieved in silos.
