Digital Pre-Convention Event to the 36th IAF World Fashion Convention

November 10 and 11, the International Apparel Federation (IAF) will digitally host a ‘Pre-convention Event’ to its 36th World Fashion Convention due to take place in Antwerp June 7 – 9, 2021. We cannot meet physically in Antwerp now in 2020, but at the same time we cannot wait to discuss the topics that shape our industry’s future. Therefore, we are starting the discussions around the theme of the IAF’s 36th World Fashion Convention, “Transition in the Global Fashion System” already now, in November 2020.

The digital pre-convention event will consist of two components. Firstly, on November 10 at 9 am CET, IAF will place online 5- minute movie clips by 7 prominent IAF members. Together these speakers will provide a unique global and cross-industry collection of visionary statements on the industry’s future. Second, on November 10 and on November 11, IAF will present a series of four different types online sessions, each tackling a major issue for the global apparel industry, bringing together relevant players in the fashion ecosystem.

The flagship session of these four will be an IAF-MOTIF webinar titled “Shared Risk and Reward in the Fashion Supply Chain”. Our three speakers will be: John Thorbeck, CEO of Chainge Capital and global expert in the field of fashion business transformation; Liz Simon, Chief Sustainable Transformation Officer at Fashion3, the fashion arm of AFM, the large family holding containing also Decathlon and Auchan and Anne Patricia Sutanto, Vice President at PT Pan Brothers, Indonesia’s largest apparel manufacturer. This webinar will answer the fundamental industry question whether the balancing of risk ánd reward is one of the keys to unlocking a better overall performance of the supply chain.

In the second session, IAF will connect its members and relations to the Fashion Technology Alliance project, a major global project bringing together educators, large and small brands and fashion technology providers. Some of the participants are London College of Fashion, Decathlon and PVH. The session will shed an interesting light on some of the new job descriptions and requirements required by the apparel industry because of the 3D digital design. The third session will discuss industry standards for digitization of product design and development, particularly the communication on digital fabric characteristics. A lot of work on standardization has been done by several brands and in this session the worlds of large brands and retailers and the rest of the industry are brought together. Finally, the fourth session tackles the long existing and prominent problem of audit and standard fatigue. IAF and ITMF have teamed up with the ITC (International Trade Centre) and will explain their progress in this project.

Industry business model transformation, the role of education and standardization are all topics driving our industry’s transition. IAF invites the industry to the conversations that really matter.

Registrations for all sessions can be done through www.iafconventionantwerp.com. Attendance is free and on a first come first serve basis.