Fashion is changing, it is searching for a new dimension, one defined by different rhythms and approaches. Slower ones. The pace at which the industry has produced until now has become unsustainable, both environmentally and socially. The Covid-19 pandemic has forced us to acknowledge this, imposing a change of mindset on brands, institutions and consumers alike. There are several areas in which brands must act. First and foremost, the supply chain, which consumers are demanding be transparent and traceable. But also the approach to production, which is moving ever more towards circularity.

And then there is digital: a great opportunity to improve stages of the production process, but above all to enhance communication with customers. We spoke with Giorgio Ravasio, country manager of Vivienne Westwood Italia — the brand of the British designer who fights for sustainability of the same name — about what approach fashion houses will need to take towards an ever more sustainability-oriented future.

What do you think of the need for a slowdown in production, as advocated by many figures in the fashion world, as a way of embarking on a path towards sustainability? And what does this mean for Vivienne Westwood?
In our sector it is widespread practice to distract the public with proclamations that do not reflect the reality of things. To put this in context: our company has long been engaged in a gradual but determined process of reducing shows, points of sale, collections and the number of styles included in the seasonal commercial offer. We are even considering doing away with seasonality in favour of product uniqueness, but these are transformations that require a great deal of time for their correct practical implementation and for their application to be economically viable for the company.

On the subject of sustainability, I believe that, in its true sense, it is incompatible with the widespread compulsive-buying approach, which is nothing other than the melancholy result of a clear social pseudo-pathology linked to personal dissatisfactions amplified by the society of desire — built through decades of mass advertising. It is on these collective dynamics that fast-fashion chains have grown and continue to thrive today, and it is on them that the revenues of companies owning brands that have engaged, and continue to engage, in cheap greenwashing have increased, exploiting their communicative power to the full.

Setting aside these bad examples, if by slowdown we mean the conscious use of raw materials through their transformation into unique products made in artisanal or industrial districts that respect the dignity of work and of the people employed there, then yes, I believe that this is a way of embarking on a virtuous process towards a sustainable business model. Our company has as its principal shareholder a fierce activist who fights determinedly and personally for the safeguarding of the planet, and yet we find it very hard to apply detailed traceability protocols that allow us to verify the legitimacy and real impact of what we do in relation to the planet and to people. The complex articulation of supply chains certainly does not make it easy to put these virtuous mechanisms into operation.

And if we find it hard — driven as we are by our ownership to pursue exemplary processes, placing them above personal profit — I wonder how companies that do not have such tenacious influencers at their helm can truly do so, when they may instead have demanding shareholders awaiting generous dividends, in what is a real battle for the conquest of the future. On our part, among the most significant actions we are putting in place this year together with an institutional study group is the development of an applied management model for analysing the traceability of garments, which we hope can become a methodological standard to be made available to companies wishing to build traced and transparent supply chains, through the involvement of all actors upstream and downstream of the chain.

What are the priorities and how should they be addressed?
The priorities to be tackled — and here I am thinking above all of our country — are linked to the protection of made in Italy, a byword worldwide for quality and value. Protecting Italian production means safeguarding the skills and abilities of our artisanal and industrial districts, which we risk allowing to disappear. Moreover, producing in Italy also means guaranteeing fair pay and rights to the people employed, something that is not straightforward to verify in other countries. The slow approach to the future is a direct consequence of the pandemic and of a specific market demand that is becoming a conditioning factor for the entire supply chain. Rethinking oneself from a slow perspective is complex and can also prove costly for many companies, because if consumption is reduced it goes without saying that sales will fall, and that may not be the objective of those businesses that must answer to shareholders demanding in terms of dividends.

Everyone will seek to proclaim themselves green but, in reality, it will be the customer's job to verify the credibility of those who use the word sustainability as a mere marketing tool to do even more than before while pretending to care about the planet. The ball is in the consumers' court: they will have the task of consciously choosing the products they intend to buy, and it will not be a simple task because there are no certification tools that guarantee product quality in a clear and unambiguous way. The watchword is culture. Knowledge and curiosity are the weapons for making selections in the market. It will be hard work, but those who are lazy will not be able to defend themselves. Those who lack culture will be passive victims of a mechanism of induced choices that will merely lead them to believe they possess a personality which, in reality, will be nothing more than a passive supermarket trolley to be filled with substitutes for happiness.

What role will digital play in the fashion sector and how can it help a company to be more sustainable?
Digital is an extraordinary tool for facilitating one of the most important transformations we are going to face. Print communication has been rapidly replaced by social media, which is increasingly becoming the magazines and television channels owned and managed directly by brands. Although it may appear to be a low-cost choice, managing these new tools carries very significant costs and requires new skills and abilities that would have been unthinkable until just a few years ago.

An important "boost" to this change has been given by the ever lower quality of many publications, which has devalued the role of the journalist, turning them into a kind of "copy-and-paster" easily replaceable by an in-house press office that, as soon as a tool became available, dismantled the need for the glossy magazine. Digital can also be a useful tool for designing collections virtually, avoiding waste during the development stages, particularly to prevent the production of garments that are not commercially viable. There is a great deal to be done in this area. Our sector is, after all, culturally manufacturing-based, physical, material. But it will certainly happen. It is a great challenge and also a great opportunity.

From a social standpoint, what will the impact of digitalisation be?
From a social standpoint, digitalisation is extremely dangerous because it dismantles the categories and roles that, in the past, guaranteed authority and respect. Today, everyone arrogates to themselves the right to have an opinion and to place their own empty point of view on a par with that of an expert who can boast proven professional experience. The risk of a flattening of values and competences generated by social media is enormous, and the agendas of future governments will need to include a very strong investment in schools — which do not need tablets to understand academic subjects, but need academic subjects in order to understand tablets and their content.

Without a strong cultural investment, the processes currently under way risk taking far more from us than they will give. From a corporate perspective, in our case, social networks are an extremely important broadcaster of messages and content that we can transmit quickly and in real time, and they represent a channel unfiltered by third-party interpretations that could pollute or alter the meaning of the actions, words or collections through which our communication with the world unfolds.

How can a transparent, secure supply chain be built, and how can it be communicated to consumers?
It is very complex — it would take an encyclopaedia. Fashion is a fragmented and fluid supply chain. Companies create at least two collections a year, in addition to special collections and early-delivery collections for those who make them, spanning a great many product categories. Creating a collection therefore means coordinating very different competences, materials, skills and activities. Changing the sector's entrenched habits means shaking up methodologies that have been applied for years and years, in an attempt to share a new approach — one committed to continuous improvement and to a reduction in the number of products but an increase in their intrinsic quality.

Fewer products of higher quality, made to last over time and to justify a higher price. Ethics and aesthetics must walk side by side along this path. There are no shortcuts. In the wake of this paradigmatic revolution, the need for a production culture grounded in efficiency and ethics will prompt a shift towards more rational management of the sector's timelines, with the consequent saving of resources previously dissipated in the alternation between idle periods and periods of full artisanal and industrial activity — calling into question, in a process that was already gradually under way, seasonality, yet another formerly untouchable dogma of our supply chain.

Then there is the shortening of that chain represented by the canonical steps client–shop–agent–brand–licensee–manufacturer–façonniste which, through online sales and the centralist, acquisitive approach of the most important brands, will become — immediately or gradually — a direct relationship between client and brand. It is, in all likelihood, an irreversible process.

This mechanism will bring, or should bring, the value chain to benefit the client — through an increase in the intrinsic value of the product and its perceptible quality — and the brand, distributed more or less equitably depending on the decision-makers, between shareholders and their staff, generating, for those who are truly virtuous, a visible improvement in the working conditions of the workers involved in the production process, who are generally the most vulnerable, as well as in the management and distribution processes. The economy of the future will be one in which the client is placed at the centre of the brand's attention; the brand, by governing the full depth of its business area, will need to learn to regard the client as its most important and strategic variable asset. For this reason, it will need to ensure that it builds an ever more loyal and trusting relationship with them.

What will the new rhythms of fashion be?
No one has a crystal ball. But, as an optimist, I picture a future in which the planning of collection development becomes less rigid and more fluid, spread throughout the entire calendar year rather than concentrated in exhausting peaks of work and production voids that inevitably create operational and economic inefficiencies for the companies that manufacture. I think of a sector that values skills and creates training institutions capable of perpetuating their transmission from generation to generation, maintaining within Italy's industrial districts a pool of expertise to keep the flag of "made in Italy" quality flying high.

I hope for the production of objects that distinguish themselves through beauty and quality, made at a more humane pace, in respect of all the people involved in the supply chain. I wish fashion would rediscover that self-confidence which is the prerequisite for promoting a distinctive creativity, rather than atrophying itself into pandering to an ever less creative and ever more homogenised market — perpetually racing to be the first to produce the item that, shortly afterwards, everyone else will produce too.