Cotton Australia’s Brooke Summers last week joined a panel of fashion and textile innovators at the Melbourne Fashion Festival Business Lunch, to bring the perspectives of on-farm innovation to nearly 300 fashion brands and designers.
Brooke joined K-Mart Australia Managing Director Ian Bailey, PayPal General Manager Andrew Toon and CEO of digital body scanning company BODD to discuss a wide range of topics around design and product development, sustainability, responsible fashion sourcing, digital fit technology and e-commerce.
The panel was moderated by CEO of the PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival, Ralph Smith with the theme Innovating to Secure the Future of Australian Fashion.
“After many years arguing that sustainable fashion must begin with sustainable farming, it was such an honour to be included in this panel. Our farmers have a great story to tell and it’s always a privilege to represent their voice to our customers at forums like this,” Cotton to Market lead Brooke Summers said.
“There was a lot of interest in our on-farm innovations such as drones and robots, our work in circularity and data collection and the research and development that sits behind the story,” she said.
Ian Bailey, Managing Director Kmart Group (also a brand partner of Cotton Australia), began the lunch with a keynote titled “Charting the Course of Retail Innovation”.
The PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival 2023 was a vibrant celebration of Fashion, Art, Creativity, and Ideas over 9 days and 109 events.