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Tuesday Nov 05, 2024
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During the past five years, we have drawn attention to what Sri Lanka’s industries can do with integrating with design, how our industries can be thought leaders or how they are already on thought leadership in innovation and sustainability etc. We have nearly 50 international delegates from Western Europe, North America, East Asia and other markets that visit each year consisting of buyers, retailers, opinion leaders and the likes. What they all see is Sri Lanka showcasing something different, creative, new and fresh and they would like to see South Asia from our eyes in this area of fashion and apparel and design.
The launch of SLDF establishing the South Asian creative hub consolidating its key agendas is a direct response to this. This also works well with the country’s positioning as a knowledge hub and we feel we need to take the high ground on this and position Sri Lanka as South Asia’s creative hub.
With this, SLDF will be taking leadership in the region’s creative agenda. This means SDLF will pioneer the region’s creative industry issues and hotly debated topics. Hence SLDF, will now be a South Asian platform for creative thought leadership and hence a hub status. Our leading creative businesses, especially visionary apparel companies, are starting to drive innovation and seeing unmatchable value addition that comes through design while operating their business nucleus from Colombo and spreading their wings to reach Bangladesh, India etc. This will make them grow into the leaders in the region parallel to SLDF establishing South Asia’s creative hub.
Q: What are the components of the 2013 edition of SLDF with the South Asian creative hub platform?
A: SLDF 2013 brings back all its components that, in the last five years have helped it to set the pace for the South Asian creative hub that unfolds this year. This is chiefly the South Asian Apparel Leadership Forum, the Sustainable Fashion Summit South Asia and the much awaited fashion runways and design exhibition with sustainable fashion and emerging design talent.
In addition to this, we’re also presenting many new initiatives. One of the many new initiatives in our South Asian Edition is the Fashion and Apparel Awards that honours and celebrates our muti-billion dollar apparel industry and the developing fashion industry. This is backed by the apparel industry and had a strong response from established brands for to new designers; we’ll get to see the winners in a few weeks.
Q: Who are the key personalities and key discussion points to Sri Lanka on South Asian apparel leadership forum?
A:The South Asian Apparel leadership will include all Sri Lankan apparel heavyweights who play a huge role in creating the architecture of the industry vision as well as its future direction; represented by the JAAF (Sri Lanka Apparel Association) they will pose key topics and lead discussions alongside international delegates who will be at the forum.
From the international delegates, a key personality to look forward to is Janie Schaffer the founder of the popular brand Knicker Box and the former Chief Creative Officer of the world famous Victoria’s Secret. Janie is known to have played a crucial role in the development of what Victoria’s Secret is today, which makes her insights and input especially important to us as the emerging lingerie design and production capital of the world
Q: Why is the Sustainable Fashion Summit relevant to SL and who are the key people coming to SL?
A. This year’s Sustainable Fashion Summit (SFS) is especially important. From 2013, it will feed in to the Copenhagen Fashion Summit which is one of the most respected and prestigious global platforms for sustainability and fashion. The key conclusions made during SFS in Sri Lanka will be made into a white paper and contributed to the Copenhagen Fashion Summit where all major brands interested in sustainability and their decision makers will be present.
Additionally, we will also lead a delegation from South Asia, to the Copenhagen summit from Sri Lanka. This is a milestone is voicing South Asia’s sustainability policies to the world with Sri Lanka leading the way. The fantastic commercial opportunities through Copenhagen’s B2B’s will also add a massive benefit to our industry.
Q: Who is the GOSL partner for SLDF 2013 edition?
A: The key partner that helps with promoting design across the country is Ministry of Economic Development that has linked with us for long term support and guidance in developing rural crafts to become contemporary design products etc.
We have the EDB’s support from in its inception for the festival as they see the massive potential SLDF holds to not only further develop our major exports like apparel, but also to push the developing export industries like contemporary craft and design.
In addition, Sri Lanka Tourism has also showed us their support as the value in establishing South Asia’s creative hub in Sri Lanka will have long term benefits for the tourism industry too.
Q: How does the apparel industry get involved in the event?
A: The Apparel industry is one of Sri Lanka’s most visionary industries that sees the potential of SLDF and I must say it is an amazing strength to have them behind us throughout these five years. Originally we went to the industry and got them involved, but today they’re behind us completely, having understood the relevance and the impacts of SLDF.
I believe the industry also appreciates our mission to push design, because we can just ignore design and keep focusing on manufacturing, but if we want to take a deeper approach towards giving the industry a unique edge that no other South Asian market can present, it’s got to be design. Therefore, they have had the vision to invest on a long term partnership like with us and we’re very happy about it.
From our end, we have also seen how they have evolved over the past five years with us. In, 2009 at the first ever SLDF, almost all industry fashion collections featured were all what our industry has developed from international brands, but today they have their own designer collections from their in-house teams. It’s a huge leap for only five years! That is why in the 5th year we felt it’s time to bring in the SL Fashion and Apparel Awards to recognise this remarkable evolution and the leaders who have invested in the transformation.
Some of the companies showcasing this year are MAS Holdings, Brandix, Melbourne, Jinadasa, Hirdaramani, Penguin, Avirate and Hameedias along with many individual designers and brands like Mihiri de Silva and RedCocoon.
Q: Any business deals that can spring up post the 2013 edition? Did anything good happen to Sri Lanka from last year’s event?
A: Yes. Among them, the most recent would be between MJM International that owns the Ultimo lingerie brand in the UK and MAS Holdings. This is a noteworthy outcome of SLDF as it somewhat means that we have a Sri Lankan company now owning a substantial part of a high-street fashion lingerie brand in the UK.
The partnership is still very young and we cannot say a lot, but this is a first of its calibre and we definitely hope for more. Among other deals are the major brands Ted Baker, Warehouse and Topshop that have now converted to regular visitors to Sri Lanka to explore sourcing possibilities.
This year’s SLDF has reached beyond our traditional markets in Europe and America and is reaching the emerging high-end markets like Japan and is bringing in new buyers from Japan; so we can wait to see what comes out of that. We see big business opportunities for SME’s; that is in smaller brands looking to make ethically and big brands from abroad are more and more interested in these SME’s.
Q: Who is the key partner from private sector for this year’s SLDF and why do they want to partner?
A: MAS Holdings is our principal sponsor this year. MAS is one of the most visionary apparel companies in the country and they are true believers of innovation. If you followed their recent identity update, you would’ve noticed their commitment to innovation with the philosophy that ‘Change is Courage’. SLDF shares the same view, that it’s only true innovation that can create and drive the future.
We need to make constant changes and upgrades to our industries in order to become a game-changer, a leader and a hub. This is why MAS took on the challenging position of the principal sponsor of SLDF 2013; a critical year for the event with massive changes coming forth. MAS led by Deshamanya Mahesh Amalean and his team have been a crucial part in the new initiatives we’re launching this year and their expertness in innovation is a massive strength for SLDF to keep making waves.
Q: Who is behind
SLDF?
A: SLDF has a strong core teams that drives this vision. We have industry leaders like Kumar Mirchandani who have been part of the event from day one and Nikhil Hirdaramani, Nilmini Jayasinghe, Mihiri De Silva, who have great expertise from working with the apparel industry along with Rohantha Athukorala on the Marketing side and Naresh Abeysekera on finance.
We have had a group of supporting partners over the years. Brandix first supported this event back in Year 2009 and industry leaders like Ajith Dias in its early days gave us great support. In 2010 we had MAS pick up the baton and support us and over more recent years we have had Coats Thread Lanka who have been a massive supporter and this year their global CEO Paul Forman will be part of SLDF through the invitation of Coats Thread Lanka’s Managing Director Giles Watkins. His insights will be extremely valuable to us from the point of view of the world’s largest thread manufacturer.
GT Nexus and their global CEO Kurt Cavano has given us tremendous support over the past three years and we’re excited to have Kurt again for SLDF 2013 who will also co-chair the South Asian Apparel Leadership Forum.
Standard Chartered Bank with their tremendous commitment to sustainability, have also come forward to join hands to support the Sustainable Fashion Symposium which will, as previously mentioned, go on to become the South Asian voice in the world sustainable fashion discussion. We have Textured Jersey and Hellmann Fashion Logistics play crucial roles with our official host, the beautiful Mount Lavinia Hotel. The British Council plays a massive role in maintaining the transparency and the judging etc. of the Fashion and Apparel Awards.
Sri Lanka Apparel is again a big part of the festival. In addition to this we have many more contributing partners like our international media WGSN, Just-Style, Drapers and the Goethe Institut. We look forward to SLDF 2013 with their amazing support.
