Beyond Fashion Summit was a two-day conference, business talks and workshop program. The Summit provided a platform for genuine, sustainable innovation. Beyond dogmas, beyond business as usual and beyond fashion weeks. Alongside the keynote speeches and conference talks, a choice of interactive workshops was on offer – as well as business lounges and speed networking.

The Beyond Fashion Summit 2012 concluded it’s two days conference programme. On the 15th and 16th of November 2012, more than 150 professionals from the fashion and textile industry came together to discuss and reflect the topic of „Hypernature“. Speakers and participants explored solutions in the textile chain through new processes and digital technologies. Among the professional visitors were many high profile representatives from industry, commerce, science and politics, who explored innovative concepts and new ways in a common dialogue.  Eleven international lecturers and a discussion panel envisioned philosophical concepts and future business models, showed best practices and possibilities for new, ethical and innovative product generations.

A central point of discussion was the question, by which values future fashion will be lead. Philosopher Warwick Fox gave a contextual framework and called the public to think multidimensional: „Think holistic!“, said Fox. Only then can one be ethically and morally uncontentious.

Hendrik-Jan Grievink of the think tank Next Nature dared to define a provocative definition of the Summit title. His conclusion: in the future, we will be confronted by a „more raffinated, more secure, aesthetically optimized, enlarged, highly patented, better version of our environment.“

The founder of People Tree, Safia Minney, reported about the success story of her fashion brand, a story that goes back over more then ten years. Started on a small scale in Japan, People Tree is now present in over 600 points of sale all over the world, without loosing it’s core values of fair trade, organic and handcraft.

At the end of the first conference day, Mark Starmanns, (Netzwerk Fair Mode), Safia Minney (People Tree), Norbert Henzel (University of Oldenburg), Caroline Ducker (Etsy) and moderator Frans Prins (Beyond Berlin) where on stage to discuss transparency in the fashion industry, future consumer trends and the question: how important is the implementation of modern technologies for future minded fashion?

On Friday, the themes of the first conference day where deepened out and explored in several workshops, and the outputs where discussed with the audience. Parallel, Beyond Berlin organized a round table in collaboration with the International Association of the Natural Textile Industry (IVN). It had the goal to bring together NGOs and initiatives and formulate a common agenda that could be used by all participating organizations, politically as well as in communications.

As co-organizer I was responsible for the program and have led through the summit as moderator.