Estonian Fashion Festival is a major event promoting sustainable fashion culture in Estonia, representing only designers practicing sustainable practices. Our mission is to increase the competitiveness of designers and contribute to their sustainable development, and to popularize Estonian sustainable fashion both locally and internationally, involving interest groups in fulfilling our mission.

Being aware of the significant environmental and social impact of the fashion industry, it is important for us to raise the level of awareness of the local fashion scene, bring important issues to the agenda, offer solutions and at the same time organize the festival events in an environmentally friendly way.

We develop consistently in an increasingly sustainable direction, setting new goals for ourselves as well as motivating our partners and designers to find and adopt new sustainable practices. Our vision is to be a leader of sustainable fashion culture in Estonia and a contributor to the sustainable development of the fashion scene in neighboring countries.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUSTAINABILITY


sustainability strategy

Our activities in 2024-2026 are guided by a comprehensive sustainability strategy, which is based on four pillars of sustainability: environmental, social, economic and cultural, and five focus areas, based on which we have set ourselves goals, planned activities and metrics, which we regularly evaluate and whose results we communicate externally. GET TO KNOW THE 2024-2026 STRATEGY HERE


SUSTAINABLE DESIGNERS

We select all designers appearing at the festival based on sustainability criteria*. For this purpose, we have prepared an online questionnaire, which contains 38 questions with different point scores, and it is mandatory to meet at least 4 in order to enter the fashion show. The questions cover the 6 sub-topics: strategy, design and production, packaging, social responsibility, transparency and customer relations, and cultural sustainability. Every year we supplement the sustainability criteria and raise the minimum threshold. For our part, we contribute to the development of designers' sustainability with trainings and seminars. From 2024, we will recognize the most sustainable designer in Estonia with an award at the festival, which will help speed up the designer's development in a more sustainable direction.

*The sustainability criteria of Copenhagen Fashion Week 2022 and the self-assessment tool developed within the Fashion for Change (EU) project have been used in the development of the sustainability criteria of the Estonian Fashion Festival. The claims take into account the Sustainable Development Goals as well as the EU Textile Strategy and the Sustainable Product Ecodesign Regulation.


ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE ORGANIZATION

We organize all the events of the festival program in an environmentally friendly way, and for this purpose we have prepared a comprehensive guide that applies both to us and to all our cooperation partners, designers, models and participants. We follow an environmentally friendly organization in terms of event production, construction, design, waste, publications, catering, transport, souvenirs and communication. Our goal is to acquire an internationally accredited sustainable event certificate in the coming years. READ THE GUIDE HERE


RAISING CONSUMER AWARENESS

Based on the goal of making fashion culture more and more sustainable, we offer an educational additional program to the audience, we organize "Greenery" seminar on sustainable fashion, and in cooperation with Estonian Fashion Revolution we have developed the ABC of the Conscious Consumer, which offers a solution and encourages more sustainable choices. GET TO KNOW THE CONSCIOUS CONSUMER ABC



The support of Tartu 2024 the European Capital of Culture has allowed Estonian Fashion Festival to expand our sustainability program and has helped us to implement our goals and vision.