Every year since 2016, professionals and defenders of a sustainable fashion gather for recycling sessions and Anti Fashion Meetings conferences, propelled by the huntress of new trends Lidewij Edelkoort and Stéphanie Calvino from Marseilles (France). Both of them have been promoting the ecological awakening within the textile industry for five years by denouncing an outdated system.
But this year, for the fifth edition, originally planned in New-York and Roubaix, unable to gather some public, they modified their plans. “Even with a delay I do not think there will be a cycle of conferences as usual but I am not sad at all about it. We did something else, we participate to other events”, Stéphanie Calvino confides.
Résilience project and “World Hope Forum”
The stylist has indeed helped for the launch of the Résilience project, a workshop of more than a thousand square feet located in Roubaix for the manufacturing of several thousand of masks “made in France” sold to the communities and private companies. “We delivered more than 130 sewing machines and almost 200 people in job integration are working there. There is all types of profiles: mothers, experimented women that were unemployed, young people without experience.” Once the workshop is working, the long-term goal for Stéphanie Calvino is to relocate the textile industry in the Hauts-de-France (French region), great regional challenge since the industrial globalization.
Photo from the Anti_Fashion Facebook page
In parallel, the Dutch Li Edelkoort published a new manifesto and launched a cycle of conferences in several countries about the world after Covid-19. She notably offers to create the World Hope Forum in parallel to the World Economic Forum to rethink the world in a positive way. “We can start up from scratch and build new systems where social and common aspects outweigh the ego”, she wrote in her manifesto.
An objective: raising awareness
“What happens with coronavirus, rethink, relocate, consume less, we have been talking about it for five years. It is a blessing in disguise, we will feel a bit less crazy. We will be there to help and see what touch we can bring to it”, Stéphanie Calvino explains.
“It is a blessing in disguise, we will feel a bit less crazy. We will be there to help and see what touch we can bring to it”
And in order to continue attracting attention, the stylist plans to make an “urban experience” in September in Roubaix, just like last year. “We had made an event about streetwear with young people and thrifted and upcycled clothes. The theme of this year is still uncertain but it will still revolve around streetwear.”Mixing vintage clothes reuse and street culture history, the “spontaneous casting” or the call for volunteers in the streets of Roubaix had attracted hundreds of people.
The goal stays the same, promote awareness amongst the fashion industries and the consumers too. According to the founder, the responsibility is collegial and change must come from different parts in order to create a healthier large-scale system.