The “Vogue YOOX Challenge – The Future of Responsible Fashion” aims to provide support and mentorship to designers, creatives and start-ups that are boldly investing towards a more responsible and sustainable approach.
For YOOX and Vogue Italia, supporting a new conscientious generation of talents and creatives is a challenge that must be faced to conceive a better future and increase awareness within the fashion system.
The future is already here, and that’s exciting. Through the Vogue YOOX Challenge, young designers with visionary ideas and new start-ups capable of using technology to create sustainable solutions will revolutionize fashion. They are the protagonists of tomorrow, the ones that will invent a way of working that respects both the world and nature. And we will be ready to help and guide them to succeed in this challenge.
Federico Marchetti, Chairman and CEO of YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP.
The enormous challenge of sustainability in fashion demands not theoretical ideas but concrete action by all according to their possibilities. Vogue Italia made its voice heard in January with an issue published without photoshoots, the money saved donated to a Venetian organization to combat the damage caused by flooding in the city. And it continues in this vein today, in partnership with YOOX and with an ambitious project: to identify and then provide ongoing support for talented people who can bring about real disruption in our industry, in terms of both creativity and business.
Emanuele Farneti, Editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia
Support for new generations of creatives has always been one of the mainstays of Vogue Italia: discovering, supporting and valorizing innovators in fashion – and elsewhere – has always been part of our DNA. In recent years, our responsibility towards new talent has been added with a need to look to a more conscientious approach as the only possible route to the future. We want to support innovators who are shaping fashion while seeking a responsible future.
Sara Sozzani Maino, Deputy editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia and Head of Vogue Talents
Since 2011, YOOX and Vogue Italia have joined forces to promote and support a new generation of emerging talents. J.W.Anderson, Aquazzura, Bethany Williams, Giannico, Sara Battaglia and many others were among the protagonists of the showcase organized every year in February during the Milan Fashion Week. In the past two years, the initiative has focused upon those designers who place sustainability at the centre of their creative and production process.
This joint commitment takes a step further with the Vogue YOOX Challenge, an initiative addressed to designers and start-ups that are invited to present new ideas, focused on sustainability, aimed at changing and improving the fashion system: from retail to production, from creation to manufacturing. The challenge will be presented during Milan Fashion Week in February 2020 and will continue in September with the choice of the ten finalists, selected by a scientific committee of sustainability experts. The international jury will then evaluate the projects presented by the finalists during Milan Fashion Week in September 2020, identifying the winner of the Challenge, who will be awarded and celebrated in February 2021. In addition to the ongoing support from YOOX and Vogue Italia in terms of distribution, communication and mentoring, the winner will also receive an award of 50,000 Euros to carry out the project.
The new international jury includes: Federico Marchetti – Chairman and CEO of YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP, Emanuele Farneti – Editor-in-Chief of Vogue Italia and L’Uomo, Sara Sozzani Maino – Deputy Editor-in-chief Vogue Italia and Head of Vogue Talents, Liya Kebede model, actress and women’s rights activist, Amber Valletta, model, actress, activist, Lisa Armstrong – Head of Fashion at The Telegraph, Alice Ben Arous – Chief of Staff of Fashion & Accessories division and member of CSR Committee, Richemont, Carlo Capasa – President of the Italian Chamber of Fashion, Rosario Dawson – actress, activist, and co-founder of Studio 189, Orsola De Castro – founder of Fashion Revolution, Tonne Goodman – Sustainability editor of American Vogue, Eva Herzigova – model and Editor-at-Large of Vogue Czechoslovakia, Suzy Menkes – Editor of Vogue International, Clare Press – Presenter of the Wardrobe Crisis podcast, Dilys Williams – Director of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion of the London College of Fashion.
The scientific committee is composed by: Alex McIntosh, Founder and Creative Director of Create Sustain, Giorgia Roversi – Director of Sustainability and Inclusion of YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP, Francesco Perrini – Ordinary Professor of the Department of Management and Technology of Bocconi University, Francesca Romana Rinaldi – Director of the Master in Brand & Business Management and the course of New Sustainable Fashion of the Milan Fashion Institute (an inter-university consortium composed by Bocconi University, Università Cattolica di Milano and Politecnico di Milano), Elisa Pervinca Bellini – Sustainability and Talents Editor of Vogue Italia and member of CN Global Employee Council on Sustainability.
In parallel, the Vogue YOOX Challenge marks the debut of another important challenge, a tangible sign of YOOX and Vogue Italia’s direct involvement towards responsible and sustainable fashion: every month YOOX will launch a sustainable capsule collection on the site while Vogue Italia will organize portfolio review activities and meetings to promote and sensitise the younger generation around the topics of responsible fashion.
The launch of the Vogue YOOX Challenge will be celebrated on Saturday, February 22nd, with an exclusive dinner at San Paolo Converso, in Milan.
