Milan women’s fashion week to be held from February 19 to 25, 2019, will focus on new design talent, featured both on catwalk show calendar and in a number of other dedicated events and initiatives. The calendar will feature a wealth of new names, both from Italy and abroad. Young designers will be strongly supported. CNMI, the leading Italian industry association, traditionally makes it possible for a selection of emerging labels to show during the fashion week. The most promising Italian design talents will be supported via a mentorship program.

One label to debut on the fashion week’s catwalks with CNMI’s support is Marios, founded in 2002 by Cyprus-born designer Mayo Loizou and his Polish counterpart Leszek Chmielewski. This women’s wear label is currently being relaunched after the arrival of a new partner.

There are also other initiatives reserved for emerging talents through the Fashion Hub, which will run from February 20 to 24. The hub will host several shows, a series of conferences and the eighth edition of the Fashion Hub Market, which allows rookie labels to showcase their collections. For February, the roster includes 12 names. There will also be a focus on creativity coming from China and Hungary.

The University of Manchester has developed a simple and cost-effective method to manufacture graphene-based wearable electronic textiles on an industrial scale. This could easily be scaled for many real-life applications, such as sportswear, military gear, and medical clothing.

Graphene is predicted to be one of the most prominent materials in wearable e-textiles. The new technique could allow graphene e-textiles to be manufactured at commercial production rates of 150 meters per minute. In the new method, the researchers have reversed the previous process of coating textiles with graphene-based materials. Conventionally, the textiles are first treated with graphene oxide, and then the graphene oxide is reduced to its functional form of reduced graphene oxide. Instead, the researchers first reduced the graphene oxide in solution and then coated the textiles with the reduced form.

By making coating the ultimate step, it becomes possible to use a coating technique termed padding, which is currently the most commonly used method of applying functional finishes to textiles in the textile industry. For instance, water-repellent and wrinkle-free clothing are often made by padding.

E-textiles made by a laboratory-scale pad-dry unit, exhibit excellent electrical and mechanical characteristics. The reduced graphene oxide forms a uniform coating around the individual cotton fibers, which results in good electric conductivity, tensile strength, breathability, flexibility, and overall comfort of the fabric.

The CanopyStyle initiative has reached 170 brand partners with the addition of companies Abercrombie & Fitch Co., Allbirds, ELK, Reformation and Selfridges. Now eight new companies will work with Canopy to bring their innovative technologies to market at scale, with next generation enterprises Nanollose and Tyton Biosciences joining the CanopyStyle initiative.

All these partner brands will eliminate their use of Ancient and Endangered Forests, as well as advancing conservation solutions in landscapes of hope such as Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, Vancouver Island’s rainforests and the Broadback Forest in the Canadian Boreal.

Over the last year, Canopy and its brand, retail and design partners have catalysed significant transformation of the viscose supply chain. Through work with producers and other industry stakeholders, companies representing 52 per cent of global viscose supply have completed the CanopyStyle Audit process, which assesses supply chain risk, recommends measures to reduce impact on forests and tracks corporate progress on innovative fibers.

To be hosted on the dedicated Ecopack stage, The Big Plastics Debate will welcome industry experts to discuss the future of plastics and reflect on the pledges made by brands over the last 12 months. Experts from some of the world’s biggest brands, including Marks & Spencer, Pepsi Lipton, together with British Plastics Federation, A Plastic Planet and WRAP, will come together at Packaging Innovations 2019 to discuss plastics in packaging.

The highly anticipated debate will be held from February 27-28, 2019 in Birminham. Day one of the debate will kick off with the Ecopack Challenge, welcoming six companies, who will present their innovative sustainable packaging solutions for the chance to work with Marks & Spencer, and the crown of Ecopack Challenge Winner for 2019. This will be followed by The Big Debate, where two teams will go head to head to debate whether plastic packaging will always play a fundamental part in our everyday lives.

Day two will see expert panels tackle two key areas of the circular economy, ‘Designing Packaging for a Circular Economy’ and the ‘Recruiting Consumers for a Circular Economy’.

Farfetch, an online fashion retailer based in the UK, has stopped the sale of fur. Farfetch has traditionally been a fur-heavy retailer. Other retailers who have banned fur are Net-a-Porter, Gucci, Michael Kors, Versace, Burberry, DKNY, Coach, Chanel, Jean Paul Gautier and Jimmy Choo.

Each new fur-free announcement continues the domino effect of designers and retailers seeing the importance of distancing their brands from the fur industry’s cruelty. However fashion houses like Fendi and Dolce and Gabbana are still selling fur.

The UK currently allows the import and sale of furs from a variety of species, including foxes, rabbits, minks, coyotes, raccoon dogs and chinchillas. Under existing EU regulations, import and sale of fur from dogs, cats and commercial seal hunts are banned, and campaigners want those bans extended to protect all species.

Brands like Calvin Klein, H&M, Marks & Spencer, Tommy Hilfiger, and Topshop have dropped angora wool from their clothing lines. Angora rabbit fur is being used for sweaters, hats, gloves, and more. Angora rabbits have long, soft fur. Most angora comes from rabbits on Chinese factory farms. The rabbits writhe in agony as workers tie them down and rip out their fur. So far more than 300 major retailers have banned angora.

Leather Fashion Show was held in Chennai on January 31, 2019. A showcase of what’s trending in the world of leather, it had vegan leather, leatherite along with trendy biker jackets, handbraided bags, rivets and rhinestones.

From casual wear to boho chic, stylish models sashayed down the ramp in some interesting styles--hot pants, skirts, biker jackets, athleisure and even chic formals. But the real stars were the handcrafted bags, footwear and accessories, from home-grown industries and a few international players.

The Indian leather industry accounts for 12.9 per cent of the world’s production of hide, with a massive three billion sq ft of leather produced annually. The leather fashion industry, though, is still taking baby steps. Big players are slowly moving from the export space into the domestic retail market.

The leather garment industry is still trying to make its foray into fashion, while leather bags and shoes fly quicker off the shelves. The industry offers better options than China and is now focusing on soft skills and increasing value so that it can market products under our own brand identity.

Indian consumers look at leather as a practical buy not luxury. So, natural leather jackets with a vintage, distressed look are not an easy sell.

Bangladesh’s apparel exporters are hoping US retailers and brands pay a fair price for their products. For one, exporters say, they have spent huge amounts on beefing up workplace safety and that has increased the cost of production 25 to 30 per cent. Their complaint is buyers always demand higher compliance at the factory level but do not want to increase the price of products. The US is the single largest export destination for Bangladesh.

Factories in shared or non-purpose built premises need to relocate. Firms in such premises which were not able to meet the new standards had to move and often ended up in more remote regions. Such factories have to bear the relocation costs and do not receive financial support from buyers, the government or their industry associations.

Another reason Bangladesh’s exporters do not get fair and reasonable prices for their products is lack of negotiation skills. Exporters get lower prices for readymade garment products than what Cambodian and Vietnamese exporters get from global buyers. Buyers do not want to pay higher prices, although the cost of production will go up further with wage hike, port congestion and higher transportation cost.

As per report by Ethiopian Ministry of Trade & Industry (MTI) and the Industrial Parks Corporation (IPC), Ethiopia continues to miss export targets for textiles due to a shortage of raw materials – including cotton – hampering output. Ethiopia’s export performance was $135 million less than the previous year for the same period. The export target for the past six months was U$1.21bn – well below the US$1.96 billion target set.

The IPC presented a performance audit report for the period 2015-18. According to the evaluation in 2015-16, exports of products originating at the Bole Lemi industrial park – a significant garment hub on which the government had pinned high hopes – was about $16.9 million. The original plan was to export products worth $130 million from the park, which offers an indication of the extent to which targets are being missed.

Similarly, for the fiscal year of 2016-17 export from the Bole Lemi Park was expected to be $40 million while actual export was $23.8 million. For 2016-17 exports from Hawassa Industrial Park – another major textile hub was $1.4 million against a planned performance of $50 million.

Ethiopia has pinned huge hopes on its textile and apparel export sectors and created a number of major industrial parks to attract inward investors. However, the rate of progress so far is far slower than had been anticipated.

Management of the Liberty Fashion Wears a forcibly shut Bangladeshi apparel maker has asked the Accord on Fire and Building Safety to withdraw unsafe tag as the factory building is termed safe by BUET engineers. The factory is in operation but due to Accords’ embargo, buyers cannot buy products from the factory neither can it produce apparel goods for the European brand. In last couple of years, the factory has incurred production losses worth Tk490 crore due to the unethical shut by the Accord

After Rana Plaza incident that killed over 1,135 workers in 2013, Tesco, one of Liberty Fashion Wears buyers hired Medway Consultancy Services (MCS) to assess the structural design of the building. In May 2013, the MCS conducted a visual and observational inspection and made a report identifying the building with “Red” mark stating that the building would collapse within 60 hours. Aftermath of the report, the factory was declared unsafe for workers by the Accord.

Later, based on MCS’ report, Accord, a platform of European Union apparel buyers to improve safety standard in the apparel sector, served letter to its signatory brands not to buy products from the factory terming it unsafe to workers safety.

Cambodia could be the biggest sufferer among developing economies as a result of Brexit. Cambodia’s garment industry is a major supplier to the UK fashion industry and it has favorable entry terms. But with the UK being one of the top three economies in the EU and a huge consumer market for fashion, tariff-free access to its roughly 60 million people will be cut off at least temporarily in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Cambodia has the biggest trade with the UK of all the 49 least-developed countries that can export to the EU without any tariffs and 7.7 per cent of its exports go to Britain. So the UK has to reach some kind of agreement with the 49 countries as not doing so could seriously disrupt its own economy.

However, it’s unlikely any agreement will be reached fast enough to completely remove the chance of damaging disruption either to the UK or to the millions of workers in Cambodia’s garment sector. The European Union accounts for 40 per cent of all Cambodian exports. These exports have risen sharply in recent years, increasing by 227 per cent between 2011 and 2016.

The EU is Cambodia’s main export destination. Of Cambodia’s garment exports, 46 per cent goes to Europe, 24 per cent to the United States, 16 per cent to Japan and nine per cent to Canada.