Sartorial, Ethical, Sustainable: The Fashion of Venice Fashion Week

The planet’s resources, artisan talents, and sustainability expressed through fashion, lifestyle, and tourism are the themes of Venice Fashion Week, the Made in Venice version of fashion

Over 80 creatives, 50 locations, more than 40 Italian and international brands, 5 conferences, 3,000 accredited guests including visitors, journalists and buyers, unconventional fashion shows, the first artisan accessories salon, a showroom day, the conscious shopping weekend with over 40 boutiques and ateliers open in all districts, and a day dedicated to sustainable tourism aboard Repower‘s electric boat: the 2022 edition of Venice Fashion Week presented Venice as the place for debate on the future.

With the declared intent to turn the fashion scene’s spotlight on haute couture and high-level artisan crafts, the event, in its tenth year, presented to an international audience the Made in Venice version of fashion: a compelling sartorial story made of precious products, masters, cultural contaminations, and Venice as a source of inspiration.

The Themes of #VFW22

Here are the events and themes that emerged at the tenth edition of Venice Fashion Week promoted by Venezia da Vivere, a network for communication, cultural projects, and event organization.

The common thread of the event is sustainability, a crucial theme in a Venice seeking new models for quality tourism. The challenge involves enhancing high-level craftsmanship, which helps unite the heritage of the past with new horizons for sustainable lifestyles.

Fashion meets craftsmanship in hotel suites, workshops, and art galleries: artists Séverina Lartigue and the very young Nadia Syrkova transformed the Magazzino Gallery at Palazzo Polignac into a workshop for silk flowers for haute couture and handmade hats; the partnership between Liviana Conti and the artisan company Lunardelli Venezia produced a fashion exhibition in the carpentry workshop and furnishing accessories in the boutique. To present the new collection of sartorial kimonos In Azur, designer Antonia Sautter brought her atelier and the artists at work to the Renaissance spaces of Palazzo Nani, the new Radisson Hotel in Venice.

For three days the Sebastiano Ricci suite at Palazzo Sagredo Hotel hosted the art of Burano lace from Atelier Martina Vidal. In the spaces of Boutique Hotel Ca Maria Adele, guests witnessed a performance by models in the suites, interpreting the fashion collection by Myss Duval and the artisan eyewear by In Barberia designed by Nicola Zenella.

And while Palazzo Sagredo came alive with fashion shows and tableaux vivants featuring designers Mirco Giovannini and Hélène Kuhn Ferruzzi, and emerging labels Gaiofatto by Michela Gaiofatto, Romeo de Julieta and Endelea, an award-winning ethical fashion start-up, craftsmanship and design took center stage at Ornamenti, the artisan and design accessories salon with over 35 exhibitors, illuminated by the exhibition Seven Lamps for Venice.

Conferences, workshops, and meetings with Masters enriched the event: Confartigianato Sarti organized the workshop Upcycling, Camera Buyer and Italian Artisan participated in the roundtable The Value of Artisan Productions for Fashion Buyers, digital creator Judith Bradl, invited by Venice Fashion Week to interpret Ornamenti with her own visual language, and Alessandra De Nitto from Fondazione Cologni contributed to the workshop Communicating Craftsmanship with New Digital Tools.

Venice Fashion Week is always an occasion to celebrate key figures in the sector: two Masters of Arts and Crafts (MAM), the recognition awarded by the Fondazione Cologni dei Mestieri d’Arte, partner of the event, were celebrated during these days: Sebastiano Lunardelli and Franco Puppato. The latter presented his haute couture menswear models at the Hotel St. Regis. Carlos Tieppo, director of the Costume Atelier at Teatro La Fenice, was also celebrated together with his tailors in a moving conference where we could see and experience the creative moments of the historic atelier.

Atelier Aperti 2022

Sustainability as a lifestyle is the mantra of the Atelier Aperti weekend: more than 40 artisans opened workshops and boutiques to showcase their collections in their shops, places where the creative process begins that leads to the creation of unique garments and objects.

“Venice presents itself as an exemplary city for the transition to sustainability” highlighted the organizers Laura Scarpa, Lorenzo Cinotti and Jacopo Casotto. “It has always been a slow factory of ethical fashion, characterized by precious and durable fabrics. The objective of the event is to transform the city into a laboratory of creative talents, including university students, from all over the world.”

“A communication repositioning of Venice is underway. We have worked to identify new forces, energies, and areas to cultivate. Among these is fashion, both in terms of fashion shows and the enhancement of territorial excellence” were the words of Councilor Simone Venturini: “Venice’s calendar is now filled with fashion events, initiatives of great international appeal. A discerning tourism arrives here seeking authentic, exclusive, and unique creations, like those of our artisans in the fashion, wood, jewelry, and glass sectors. Tourism and craftsmanship together therefore to elevate Venice, which now also presents itself as the capital of sustainable fashion. We return to exclusive garments that last, created with passion, with precious raw materials. Venice Fashion Week allows us to discover the artisan beauties of Venice.”

“The city is well-suited to host the initiative because quality, sustainable, and exclusive craftsmanship is part of its DNA” added Councilor Paola Mar. “Venice has always produced art, fashion, and luxury craftsmanship. Here, since the year 1000, great textiles have been created—we recall, for example, silk processing—and fantastic jewelry is also produced. Venice as a sustainable place, a forge of equally sustainable craftsmanship: in the city, in fact, production has never been on a large scale.”

“Venice’s future is to become the seat of a global dialogue on sustainability, a platform for the inclusion of creative talents in fashion and design, a destination for tourism attentive to the culture of beauty and respect for the territory,” declared Marina Iremonger, strategic consultant for Venice Fashion Week and for over 20 years a promoter of sustainable fashion and emerging designers.

“Thanks to Venice Fashion Week, multiple parties are brought together, from Repower with its sustainable mobility ecosystem to many realities in the fashion world, also including the opening of many luxury hotels to the public,” said Fabrizio D’Oria, director of Vela. “In this way Venice truly becomes a protagonist and not a showcase city. Projects like the Repower^e boat are highly valued by the administration, which has already launched electric mobility in buses at the Lido.”

“The objective is for sustainable mobility to be seen for what it already is: a key business lever for tourism, capable of intercepting a demand increasingly attentive to sustainability in every moment of the travel experience,” explained Davide Damiani of Repower Italia.

Sustainable tourism was the theme of the meeting among the directors of some of the city’s most important hotels, including Alain Bullo of Londra Palace Hotel, Patrizia Hofer of St. Regis Hotel, Gioele Romanelli of Hotel Flora, Casa Fora, Hotel Novecento and Inside Venice, Gloria Beggiato of Hotel Metropole, Gianluca Lorenzet of boutique hotel Corte di Gabriela, and Andrea Di Maso of Hotel Luna Baglioni, held aboard the Repower^e electric boat.

“It emerged how much sustainability is requested by the very clients who arrive in Venice, a city that by its very nature lends itself to becoming a laboratory for experimenting with new forms of quality tourism,” concluded Laura Scarpa, summarizing the focal points of the exchange among those who have their finger on the pulse of the visitors arriving in the city.

VENICE FASHION WEEK

Upcoming editions: March 30 – April 2, 2023 | October 19-28, 2023

The event is on the social media of @Veneziadavivere and @Venicefashionweek. Official hashtags #venicefashionweek #VFW22

Venice Fashion Week is a project by Venezia da Vivere, a Venetian company specializing in digital communication, city projects, and events.

Illustrator Jacopo Ascari is the signature of the official poster for Venice Fashion Week 2022.

Photos by Marta Formentello, Igor Serdyukov, and Judith Bradl for Venice Fashion Week 2022 and Venezia da Vivere.

Sartorial, Ethical, Sustainable: The Fashion of Venice Fashion Week