At the end of every show at the recent Lakmē Fashion Week (LFW), in partnership with the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) in New Delhi, there was an announcement: in an effort to be carbon-neutral, they encouraged attendees to drop off their show tickets for recycling in a special bin nearby.
There might be great conversations around sustainability, but have things changed on the ground? Independent journalist Shweta Shiware isn't fully convinced. “At Lakmé Fashion Week x FDCI, disposable plastic water bottles are still everywhere, despite the emphasis on making the event carbon neutral. Journalists who already have accreditation are still issued paper passes for individual shows. There are collection points for used passes, but how many are actually returned and reused?”
In 2020, the Carbon Trust estimated that fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris collectively emit 241,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually. A 2024 NSS Magazine article likened this to lighting up Times Square for 58 years, urging the need for reform.
Meanwhile, Copenhagen Fashion Week has emerged as a benchmark, introducing sustainability requirements for participating designers and two action plans for the same. LFW, similarly, is also working to reduce its footprint. An FDCI representative confirms that the event has partnered with a third-party carbon-accounting team for at least four years, auditing emissions from infrastructure, printed materials and travel to identify opportunities for reduction and offsetting.
But given the scale, spectacle and logistics involved in staging a fashion week, can such an event ever truly be sustainable?
“Anything is possible,” says designer Anamika Khanna, after a luncheon event with Supima. “But there are two parts to it. One is sustainable design, and the other is to make the week itself sustainable.”
Like Copenhagen, LFW has introduced a sustainability self-assessment for participating designers. It covers materials, certifications, waste management, supply chains, circular design, artisans’ working conditions and compensation, as well as sustainable practices in show production.
Based on a baseline assessment, designers meeting the criteria receive a heart icon on the schedule, marking their collections as conscious. The approach focuses on specific collections rather than brand-wide claims, allowing organisers to gradually raise expectations. Last year, they also released a sustainable fashion dictionary as a must-have handbook for designers.
FDCI previously dedicated a day to sustainable fashion, typically day two of fashion week, featuring designers with fully conscious collections. However, the initiative risked becoming an echo chamber, with sustainable designers tyecasted and others reluctant to embrace the label. “It became an undesirable tag,” says a representative from FDCI, who asked to remain anonymous.
“Also, on sustainable fashion day we could only do three or four shows. But now I have more brands who are sustainable,” adds FDCI chairman and president Sunil Sethi, during a brunch event hosted by his team. Wearing shoes made from ocean waste and a denim tie crafted from leftover fabric, he says he doesn’t feel the need to shout about his sustainability practices from the rooftops. But sustainability does inform his selection of designers.
Aneeth Arora of péro, for one, who had the opening slot at LFW this year, focuses on creating timeless pieces not bound by the fashion seasons to avoid deadstock. She says, “It's not just a fashion show, it is business, so, we have to strike a balance between how to make samples and tighter collections, so that we don't end up doing a lot of minimums (minimum order quantity).”
“We learn bit by bit,” Arora continues, suggesting that the brand can perhaps consider just one fashion week a year instead of two.
Other designers are also experimenting with sustainable materials. Anurag Gupta explored water hyacinth as a craft material, while TIL, by Ankur Verma, worked with discarded textiles.
Yet polyester and plastic sequins remain common, raising concerns about environmental impact and recyclability. “Sustainability can't just be about a few collections or initiatives. It has to extend to how the entire event is run,” says Shiware, calling for greater transparency about the results of these efforts.
In fact, sustainability took centre stage because of the the R|Elan™ Circular Design Challenge, launched in partnership with Reliance Brands Limited, with the United Nations in India as exclusive nomination partner, which kicked off LFW this season. The initiative connects emerging Indian designers with Kering’s international sustainability programme.
At the event, Marie-Claire Daveu, Kering’s chief sustainability and institutional affairs officer, stressed that sustainability is no longer optional. “The most important thing is where raw materials come from,” she said. “If you want to continue to develop your business, you have to pay attention to climate change, resource scarcity, and loss of biodiversity, because you need to produce.”
She also warned against greenwashing, urging brands to back their claims with measurable data, clear targets and timelines, and to scale successful pilot projects. AI, she added, could help brands forecast demand and avoid overproduction.
Designer Rahul Mishra, who served on the jury, noted that sustainability must be understood in its local context. A fibre that works in one region may be unsuitable in another, depending on water availability and other resources. “Anything that follows the rhythm of the local climate and the people will always be sustainable,” he says, highlighting the value of handmade processes and traditional crafts.
But sustainability, Mishra believes, will always be a moving target. “I don’t think anything can ever be fully sustainable. We have to just find ways to mitigate our impact on the environment,” he says, a thought echoed by designer Mini Sondhi who showcased her collection “A Letter to My Dad” at LFW this year.
She repurposes textile waste into bustier linings, embroidery threads, and cutwork appliqué. However, the labour involved can make reproducing garments costly, highlighting the practical challenges of sustainable production.
“I feel sustainability is not sustainable,” Sondhi adds. “It's easier said than done.”
The issue extends beyond clothing to fashion week’s promotional culture as well. Physical invitations and PR hampers remain commonplace, often accompanied by very elaborate packaging. While Sondhi says a thoughtfully designed invitation can never be replaced by a digital invite, Shiware questions its relevance.
“The amount of packaging and the pressure to make every gift feel like an experience can seem excessive,” argues Shiware. “At some point, it's worth asking whether all of it is necessary, especially when sustainability is part of the conversation.”
From a production point of view, things have changed. Vinyl and Thermocol have been banned, waste is handled responsibly, and the discarded invites are turned into notebooks and distributed in NGOs.
“I think we should get rid of the plastic and shift to more sustainable materials in the whole production of things,” adds actor Diana Penty, who turned showstopper for Richa Khemka.
The FDCI representative adds, “We have guidelines that we share with show directors, who then work with the designers and the production teams to have the lowest possible impact on the environment.” Though they admit it’s an exercise that is easier to execute in Mumbai. The Venue, Jio World Convention Centre, is LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). They have on-site recycling and composting facilities.
They additionally launched project SU.RE (Sustainable Resolution) a few years ago. “For that, we created an online directory of all kinds of suppliers in the value chain. That was from a retail point of view, but you have the entire listing including a packaging person, a recycler, and a social impact [company]. The database exists,” they say.
Sethi also notes that over the years, they have toned down their sets and try to reuse them. “I can't tell people I'm using reused wood because they will think I’m being cheap. But I’m being sustainable.”
Designer Tarun Tahiliani, whose menswear label Tasva showcased its collection at LFW, argues that fashion weeks are inherently sustainable because they bring the entire fashion industry together in one place, making the process efficient.
“If every designer has his own show and flies 500 people back and forth, that’s very bad for the environment and the only reason they do this is because they don’t see value in fashion weeks,” he says. “Fashion weeks, when done well, fuel a huge economy. It’s an economy that our country needs. We are 1.4 billion people and they need jobs.”
The representative from FDCI also explains that culturally, India is more sustainable than the rest. “But when it comes to business, we just keep those values aside, and profit maximisation is the goal." The aim is to do what Copenhagen fashion week is doing, the representative adds. "But there is a lot of unlearning for us to do.”
New York-based make-up artist Aditya Madiraju, who has attended fashion weeks across the world, recalls an example from Paris Fashion Week, where audiences watched a New York show remotely. Such hybrid formats could also reduce travel while allowing buyers and stylists to see garments both on display and in motion.
After all, sustainability at a large scale cannot take a one size fits all approach across countries. Instead, what the LFW and FDCI team are trying to do is make everyone a part of the conversation by embracing the gray areas.
But while sustainability is a responsibility that is shared, Shiware adds that organisers need to take the lead by setting clear standards for everyone involved. They should set measurable targets for waste reduction, reuse, and recycling, and publish the results after each edition.
The LFW website states that its open-access green power procurement system helps reduce over 80 per cent of emissions associated with electricity consumption at the event. They have in-depth reports on their carbon emissions, but it is not made available to the public yet.
“Designers need to be more thoughtful about material choices and production, while sponsors and brands should consider the environmental impact of their installations, packaging and giveaways,” she adds. “It shouldn’t be enough to promote sustainability as a theme. Everyone involved should be able to show what they’re doing to make a difference.”
LFW’s efforts show that change is possible; the next step is making it measurable and scalable.