Copenhagen Fashion Week has long positioned itself as fashion’s more responsible alternative to the traditional runway circuit. This month, that reputation was once again put to the test as the Danish capital hosted its Spring/Summer 2027 season from 3–7 August, marking the event’s 20th anniversary.
Unlike many major fashion weeks, sustainability at Copenhagen is not simply a theme. Brands hoping to appear on the official show and presentation schedule must meet a set of minimum sustainability standards as part of the application process. The framework covers areas including materials, working conditions, waste, production and transparency.
The requirements were first introduced in 2020 and became mandatory admission criteria for the official schedule in 2023. They were subsequently revised, with the latest framework becoming mandatory from January 2025. Brands are screened against their submitted information and documentation by an external committee led by consultancy Ramboll.
Skall Studio SS27.
The distinction is important: Copenhagen Fashion Week does not claim that participating brands are automatically “sustainable”. The organisation explicitly states that meeting its requirements is not a certification or guarantee of sustainability, but rather establishes a baseline that brands must meet to participate.
That baseline was visible throughout this year’s edition. Sustainability and circularity appeared not only in brand collections but also in the wider programme, with repair, upcycling and alternative approaches to production receiving attention alongside the runway shows.
New York-based Collina Strada, Copenhagen Fashion Week’s first International Guest brand, presented a collection created using forgotten swatches, fabric experiments and studio scraps. The approach turned materials that might otherwise have remained unused into new garments, putting waste reduction directly into the design process.
Repair also featured during the week, with on-site garment repairs highlighting a simple but often overlooked part of circular fashion: keeping existing clothes in use for longer.
Collina Strada SS27.
But Copenhagen’s model is not without its complications.
For the SS27 season, two of the 19 minimum standards were temporarily suspended. One concerned the use of a preferred-materials list, while another required at least 60 per cent of a collection to consist of certified, preferred or deadstock materials. The decision demonstrates the difficulty of applying ambitious sustainability requirements consistently across different brands and business models.
There is also an important limitation to the framework itself. Copenhagen Fashion Week's screening process validates information submitted by brands, but it is not an audit. Meeting the requirements therefore establishes eligibility for the official schedule rather than providing a comprehensive assessment of a brand’s environmental impact.
Still, the significance of Copenhagen’s approach may lie less in whether it has created a perfectly sustainable fashion week and more in the precedent it has set. Its framework has already begun influencing other fashion weeks. Berlin Fashion Week adopted the requirements for its official schedule, while Amsterdam Fashion Week announced plans to implement the framework fully from September 2026.
Anne Sofie Madsen SS27
That could prove more important than any individual collection shown in Copenhagen this season. Fashion weeks traditionally act as powerful platforms for deciding which designers, ideas and aesthetics receive attention. By making sustainability part of the entry criteria, Copenhagen is using that influence to establish a minimum level of responsibility rather than leaving environmental considerations entirely to individual brands.
The bigger question is whether other fashion weeks will follow.
As the fashion industry faces increasing pressure to reduce waste, emissions and resource consumption, voluntary sustainability statements are becoming less convincing. Copenhagen’s experiment suggests one possible alternative: instead of asking brands whether they want to be more sustainable, fashion institutions can begin asking what standards they are prepared to meet before they are given a platform.
Twenty years after its first edition, Copenhagen Fashion Week may therefore be offering the industry something more valuable than another set of sustainable collections. It may be showing what happens when sustainability stops being a selling point and starts becoming a requirement for participation.
