Beyond the Stage – Reflections from the Global Fashion Summit

Let's unpack what happens beyond the stage: the quiet dynamics, the overlooked voices, and why real change in fashion has to start with people, not just products.

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This edition is part of the bi-weekly newsletter series. Each edition explores how we make sense of leadership in an industry that often rewards visibility over sustainability; this newsletter is shaped by my lived-experiences and observations from within the fashion industry.

You can choose to read below or listen to the full article in the form of a podcast here.

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Earlier this June, I attended the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen. It was my first time at a sustainability-focused fashion event. I’ve walked through the city during Copenhagen Fashion Week, sat in on designer talks, attended shows that blended concept with culture. But this felt entirely different. It was less about what’s visible on the runway, more about what’s invisible in the system. Less about creativity as expression, more about creativity as infrastructure. It was my first time in a room where the future of fashion was discussed not as a trend, but as policy.

Let me begin here: access. Most people in fashion, especially those earlier in their careers or working behind the scenes, don’t get the chance to attend a summit like this. And that’s part of why I’m writing this piece. To give you a sense of what happens beyond the stage: the tone of the rooms, the weight of the words, and the quiet shifts in how power shows up.

There was a certain energy in the air. Polished, international, serious. From the moment I picked up my badge, I could sense that this space was built for decision-makers. The program was ambitious, the guest list expansive. There were speeches, leadership circles, networking breaks, and a sincere attempt to address fashion’s impact through its systems. The theme this year was Barriers and Bridges. CEO Federica Marchionni opened with a strong call to action: we need leadership that is tenacious, radical, and collaborative. Leadership that understands urgency but is willing to work toward long-term change. While that framing was aspirational, it also made me reflect deeply on what wasn’t being said. Or rather who wasn’t being spoken about.

Because for all the urgency in the language, for all the discussions about regulation, circularity, incentives, and innovation, I kept returning to one central question: where are the people?

Not just the keynote speakers or the Chief Sustainability Officers. But the consumers. The cultural workers. The retail teams. The garment workers. The community organizers. The students. The back-office staff. The facilitators. The ones who are often closest to the consequences of the system, but furthest from the table where decisions are made about changing it.

I heard powerful statements. I heard urgent ones. I also heard rehearsed ones. The industry knows the language of change. But we’re still figuring out how to act on it.

Systems Change Without People Isn’t Change

The Global Fashion Agenda introduced five pillars for this year’s summit: Capital, Collaboration, Courage, Innovation, and Regulation. These themes wove through every stage, echoed in almost every panel, forming the backbone of the program’s ambition. There was a clear message that leadership needed to be bold, that transformation required scale, that urgency was non-negotiable. And yet, as the talks unfolded, it became increasingly clear how heavily this transformation still relied on products, materials, and data rather than on the lived experiences of people navigating the fashion industry every day.

There was extensive conversation around fabrics of the future, regenerative solutions, technological advances in tracing and reporting, and scalable innovation. But too often, people felt like an afterthought. And I don’t just mean consumers. I mean the full spectrum of humans who carry this industry. The overlooked, the underpaid, the underestimated. Because if we talk about barriers and bridges in the abstract, but don’t connect them to the bodies, the communities, and the relationships that uphold the system, we risk designing change that is, at best, cosmetic and at worst, exclusionary.

We’ve Already Seen What’s Possible

I kept thinking back to 2020 (yes, a lot happend in that year). At the height of the pandemic, fashion was forced to pause. Shops closed, consumer demand slowed and supply chains were disrupted. For the first time in a long time, there was room to reflect. And what happened next was revealing: brands adapted. And they did that quickly.

Collections were reduced. Seasonal calendars restructured. Some companies shifted to local manufacturing or repurposed materials. Loyalty programs moved into the space of care. In a matter of weeks, entire systems shifted not because of a well-planned sustainability roadmap, but because people stopped consuming.

This wasn’t a branding decision. It wasn’t driven by innovation labs or policy pressure. It was a reaction to behavior. And it proved something: the fashion industry can change when people change. The question is: why have we forgotten that? That moment in 2020 taught me more about transformation than any report I’ve read. And it’s the reason I continue to advocate for a people-first approach to sustainability. Because if we don’t build with people in mind, from consumers to creators to contributors, then we’re just scaling systems that are still misaligned.

The Consumer Is the Barrier and the Bridge

This thought may sound provocative, but it’s one I’ve carried with me since the summit: the consumer is both the barrier and the bridge. We often talk about consumer responsibility in vague or simplistic terms. “Buy less.” “Shop consciously.” “Read the label.” But we rarely address the deeper layers of behavior, access, emotion, and trust that sit underneath consumption. During one of the sessions, Pascal Brun from Zalando shared that 72% of consumers believe they are responsible for sustainable change in fashion. That statistic is powerful. But what are we doing with it?

Most consumers are not sustainability experts. They are navigating rising costs of living, emotional fatigue, and confusing messaging. If they are to play a role in the transition, we need to meet them with communication that is honest, clear, and empathetic. We need to stop outsourcing moral decisions to individuals without equipping them with context. And beyond that, we need to recognize how many people throughout the value chain are also “consumers” of culture, systems, and workplace decisions. A logistics coordinator, a store associate, a junior designer, all these roles hold insights that are rarely invited into sustainability strategy. We keep expecting transformation from the top down, when so much wisdom lives laterally, at the edges, and within communities. If we want to build a more responsible fashion system, we have to stop treating people as endpoints and start recognizing them as collaborators.

Rethinking Innovation and Leadership

A large part of the summit’s energy was focused on innovation: new fabrics, AI applications, carbon accounting tools. And while I deeply believe in the potential of tech to accelerate change, I also felt a quiet discomfort around the celebration of newness.

We already have so many tools. So much knowledge. So many materials sitting unused. We are not lacking innovation. We are lacking imagination. One conversation I had during a break circled this tension. Someone asked, “Why do we keep trying to reinvent what already exists? Why don’t we just use it better?” It made me think about how deeply fashion is tied to novelty. Not just in style, but in systems. We assume the future must be built from scratch, when often, the most effective work is about re-seeing what we’ve overlooked. Reimagination is not less creative than invention. It is more accountable. It demands perspective shifts, long-term thinking, and a willingness to work with complexity rather than escape through shiny solutions.

And this brings us to leadership. Because leadership, real leadership, is not about who presents the most exciting new model. It’s about who can hold space for what already exists and ask better questions of it. Leadership was a word I heard repeatedly during the summit. And rightly so. Leadership sets the tone for systems change. But what kind of leadership are we really talking about? The kind that speaks confidently on stage, or the kind that builds infrastructure quietly behind the scenes? The kind that seeks praise, or the kind that shares power?

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A quote from Omoyemi Akerele, founder and CEO of Lagos Fashion Week and Style House Files, stayed with me: “True change happens in rooms where not everyone is present, but they are represented.”

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That line should be etched into every agenda, every investor deck, every internal memo that claims to center equity. Because representation isn’t just about who’s visible. It’s about whose knowledge informs the decisions being made. And that’s where imagination meets leadership. We don’t just need more diverse voices, we need leaders who make it possible for those voices to shape outcomes. We need leaders who can listen deeply, who can question their own place in the hierarchy, who understand that stepping aside is sometimes the most radical thing you can do.

Fashion does not need more reinvention for the sake of disruption. It needs reimagination rooted in humility. Leadership that knows when to speak and when to amplify others.

A Wall Can Become a Bridge

The metaphor of the summit’s theme, Barriers and Bridges, lingered with me long after I left. It’s true that a wall can become a bridge. But only if we choose to build it that way.

Fashion is full of walls. Between departments. Between regions. Between the visionary and the operational. Between those who speak about change and those who implement it. But walls, too, are made by people. Which means they can also be reimagined by people. The Global Fashion Summit was, in many ways, a powerful reminder of what’s possible when ambition meets accountability. But it also reminded me that the most important work doesn’t happen on stage. It happens in how we carry the conversation forward. In the rooms we create next. In who we invite to shape the language, not just respond to it. We can’t build a sustainable future without the people who will live in it, work in it, buy from it, and lead it.

Summits often carry the allure of networking. The coffee breaks, the post-panel chats, the quiet hopes that one exchange might open a new door. But I’ve learned over time that connection only matters if it aligns with intention. This year, I’ve been working more intentionally. With my Strategic PR Manager, we’ve shifted the way I approach networking. Less about exposure, more about alignment. Less about being visible, more about building continuity with the right people. Because fleeting inspiration is not what sustains a practice. Relationships do.

And the most powerful relationships, I’ve learned, are often quiet. Built in shared values, not shared status. I walked away from the summit with a handful of those. And I’m grateful for them.

In the next edition, we’ll explore why mentorship has gone from a quiet career tool to a cultural talking point and whether that’s actually helping the people it claims to serve. I’ll unpack the difference between mentorship, sponsorship, and symbolism, and reflect on what I’ve learned while building FÉ as a platform rooted in access, not just advice. Until then, thank you for reading and for being part of this reimagining.

— Stephany Goncalves

Strategic Advisor, Academic Lecturer & Founder of FÉ Mentoring

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