Who’s Next to stage responsible fashion event Impact in Paris

By

Anaïs Lerévérend

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Jun 18, 2019

Who's Next wants to create a benchmark event for responsible fashion in Paris. The well-established Parisian trade show’s next session, scheduled on September 6-9 at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre, will coincide with the launch of the new event, called Impact. The new show is dedicated to responsible, ethical, community-inspired and sustainable fashion, and seeks to leverage its proximity with Who's Next to focus on making fashion a more responsible industry.

Impact will have its own exhibition area, the exhibition centre’s Hall 2.2, while Who's Next will temporarily be held in Hall 1 next door, due to technical reasons. Impact’s goal is to mobilise the efforts of operators across the entire industry, from manufacturers to labels, distributors and consumers. “It will be a hybrid event. It will have a B2B dimension of course, with stands for business, but also a B2C dimension,” said Frédéric Maus, general manager of the organiser of Who’s Next, WSN Développement.

On the B2B side, both emerging and established brands will be exhibiting, sometimes grouped together collectively, and supply-chain operators will present their solutions for a more sustainable fashion. “The new event aspires above all to be the Parisian sounding board of this emerging movement, and also, more practically and within the remit of our mission as show organisers, to be a solution provider,” added Maus.

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As the logical outcome of the work undertaken by Who's Next, which developed specific theme areas dedicated to sustainability in recent years, Impact will have a comprehensive, independent programme, including convivial and associative occasions, as well as its own conference schedule. The notion of cooperation will take centre stage: “We want to promote genre-blending, networking, and see major players take smaller ones under their wings,” said Maus. “Each season, we have the opportunity of gathering together visitors and professionals at our shows, we need to take advantage of this to shine a spotlight on the issue of responsible fashion, in all its facets,” added Maus.

To do so, the event is relying on existing partners like Galeries Lafayette with its ‘Go For Good’ initiative, sustainable luxury event 1.618 Paris, the Fashion Green Days, the ‘We Love Green’ festival, the French Federation of women’s ready-to-wear and Turkish textile manufacturer Isko.

Impact's programme and full list of exhibitors will be defined in the course of the summer, and the event is set to start on September 6.