‘We Will Not Save the World by Fashion’

When it came time for the iconoclastic English fashion designer and environmental campaigner Dame Vivienne Westwood to take the podium at the International Herald Tribune’s Luxury Conference, which this year focuses on the luxury market and Africa, she chose to speak about “things worrying me,” with climate change at the top of her list. “I am traumatized by this problem,” she said. And all of humanity should be too. “We’re just not looking at the future,” she rued.

The title of her talk at the conference was Causes and Issues: Fighting for What Is Right. And Ms. Westwood stated clearly that, for her, climate change takes priority over both business and development, the twin themes of the conference, which brings together hundreds of top fashionistas from the industry and the media.

With the risk of human extinction increasingly real and the planet south of Paris at risk of desertification as temperatures rise, why spend time pondering the growth of the middle class on the African continent, a subject at the heart of several panel discussions on Thursday. “This is complete nonsense,” Ms. Westwood exclaimed to bemused applause and cheers.

“We will not save the world by fashion,” she acknowledged, though Ms. Westwood has been doing her bit by working with women in Kenya to produce bags in collaboration with the Ethical Fashion Initiative, which supports women living in extreme poverty. (See her in the Ethical Fashion Initiative video below.)

Ms Westwood also supports Cool Earth‘s community driven rainforest projects. (“We’ve saved three rainforests,” she said.)

Admittedly, there has been a growing shift in the way many people are living their lives, which Ms. Westwood identified as a “climate revolution.” People are making choices about the way and how much they travel, they’re making pondered decisions about whether or not to bring children into a world where human annihilation is a viable possibility, they’re making day to day choices about “saving plastic bags,” she said.

But more tangible efforts are needed to influence governments and economic policies, which have had devastating impact on the environment. “Economists pretend they are separate things, but if you don’t start with climate change, you will never have a sound economy,” said Ms. Westwood. “We’ve got to plan for that” and develop policies accordingly.

The world is being driven by questionable principles, she said. “The idea that you must produce all these useless things in order to grow, but we’re not growing in our humanity,” Ms. Westwood said in conclusion. “It is very difficult to pursue quality. My high fashion is supported by all these by products. I don’t like most of them, but I do like African bags.”