Sofia Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2024 has started in Sofia, BGNES reported. The fashion week is organized annually by Hotel Marinela - the host of the event and Code Fashion TV - the only Bulgarian fashion TV. One of the hottest topics of this years' major fashion event in Sofia is sustainable fashion and its ever-growing importance in the fashion industry.
Cantaralli is one of the companies - proponents of sustainable fashion, whose presence at the event marks this year with a different perspective on sustainable fashion in Bulgaria. We talked with the main organizer and producer of Sofia Fashion Week and CODE Fashion TV channel owner Maria Boneva about the foothold of sustainable fashion in front of Cantarelli's booth at Sofia Fashion Week 2024.
It is with great pleasure that I say hello to Maria Boneva, who is the main organizer of Sofia Fashion Week 2024 and owner of Code Fashion. What is ethical fashion for you?
Well it's something that I believe in a lot and maybe our view on life with Martin Cantarelli over the years, has always been almost identical in many different aspects, the moment he told me about the things he was doing, even today we have done something unique, we're going to show how sustainable ethical fashion even burns in a very different way and doesn't pollute the environment the way that polyester man-made fabrics do!
Everyone who is with us on the 29th is going to witness that! Today we filmed live that this is a fact because it's good when we talk about something to support it with facts! As the saying goes: When facts speak, the gods remain silent!
Absolutely, and how much will the world benefit from ethical fashion do you think?
I think a lot of people do it a bit hypocritically, and they say yes I do it, but because it's fashionable!
They haven't even realised it, even a lot of people do not exactly know what it means! But I think that in today's era of
social media, where there are proper opinion leaders like you, for example, and a lot of people like us who need to give a voice, it will gradually grow! Like now, if you look intently, young people are smoking less and less, or if they do, they're not smoking the harmful cigarettes they associate with their parents.
So I think, they will at some point start wearing a lot more sustainable clothes, they will use fabrics that really have circularity in them!
The so-called "circular fashion" is a great thing, Two years ago, we personally supported a special cause: there are enough animals being killed. There's enough mink to have coats for, why should that go on when there are enough shops
with circular fashion and you can buy it?!
As do our partners at Brandville, who sell collector's edition bags, which at some point have investment value!
I believe people will be ripe to embrace such a shift gradually.
Apropos of your words - it is well-known to all, and you as someone who's been involved in fashion for years, the cyclicality of fashion has become extremely rabid like our whole lives, I mean... Collections are released every three months or almost every month, how much would that help, I mean, how much would circular fashion be able to shift this extreme circularity that instead of staying on fall, winter, spring, and summer, right, started to happen on a monthly basis now, every three months?
Thank you very much for the question, I've also taken it as a personal mission of Code Fashion, because the fact that I'm doing fashion and I'm of the slightly older generation, this year I'm even turning 50 - I think it's the right way to go, because sometimes fast fashion, besides the fact that it's not sustainable - you know very well that sometimes you have to wear a jacket, literally twice after dry-cleaning it is good for nothing, you can never replace a nice natural wool, natural fabrics, you know like that!
What polyester is doing in all the other clothes? It's really the fast way to make fast money, to make fast fashion, to have things in three days! But at the end of the day, I think neither Dior, nor Chanel do it, I mean - if you want to be a good designer you have to make a sustainable product!
I kind of threw down the gauntlet a little bit the other day in an interview and said, we're very often chastised for not giving and supporting designers at our fashion awards! And those are literally designers for a month! Because they buy clothes from websites, they just put their labels on!
You have to study to make the clothes behind me (on Cantarelli's booth at Sofia Fashion Week 2024 - ed.), it's design, fashion, cutting, colours, fabric feel, art, at the end of the day you have a business plan!
I mean you can't buy something and relabel it! It's like to have it at the price of a fast food lunch and try and match it up with this beauty here! (points at the clothes on Cantarelli's both at Sofia Fashion Week - ed.).
Smart people, I believe will see through this!
/BGNES