“Green Conscious, Earth Sensitive” fashion will take centre stage at HSBC Colombo Fashion Week (CFW), as the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society of Sri Lanka (WNPS) collaborates with CFW, for the first time, to raise awareness about and showcase Colombo’s amazing wetland ecosystems.

The current season of CFW is set to take place from the 24th to 26th February 2022, celebrating and showcasing over 21 established and emerging South Asian designers, with runway shows at Shangri-La, Colombo, along with an exciting line-up of workshops, panel discussions, and live events. One of the highlights this season is expected to be the collaboration between CFW and the WNPS to celebrate Colombo’s Wetlands, marking World Wetland Day and the WNPS’s Wetland Month, alongside the glitz and glamour of Fashion Week. This is the first collaboration between the WNPS, Sri Lanka’s oldest conservation body established in 1894, and CFW, one of Asia’s most prominent fashion weeks. 

One of CFW’s primary objectives is to create globally relevant solutions through products that help take the industry forward, while also having as much of a positive impact on the environment and society as possible. Thus, building on 2020’s Responsibility in Fashion programme, this year CFW, in partnership with WNPS, is sharing its platform and resources to communicate and bring much needed awareness to the diverse and important wetland ecosystems found across Colombo, through design, thought leadership, and encouraging action that will result in positive outcomes for Colombo’s wetlands.

In 2022, it is critical that fashion is sensitive to the needs of the environment – incorporating Responsibility in every part of the design process as well as during consumption. By creating a responsible design ecosystem, CFW has encouraged designers to embrace their journey towards a more sustainable future through the use of the Responsible Metre. This focuses on the societal and environment impact that Fashion creates, and strives to reduce both designers’ and consumers’ environmental footprint by adopting greener business models and changing consumption patterns. 

Colombo was among 18 cities, globally, to be named a ‘Wetland City’ at the 13th Conference of the Parties to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (COP 13) in 2018, and is the only South Asian Wetland City. The Ramsar convention identifies lakes and rivers, underground aquifers, swamps and marshes, wet grasslands, peatlands, oases, estuaries, deltas and tidal flats, mangroves and other coastal areas, such as coral reefs, and all human-made sites such as fish ponds, rice paddies, reservoirs and salt pans, as wetlands.  

Wetlands are critical to Colombo and its residents as they are estimated to carry 39% of the City’s stormwater, thereby functioning as a natural defence against flooding. By sequestering carbon, these ecosystems also help mitigate the effects of climate change. Wetlands also purify water, absorb contaminants and pollutants and act as a natural cooling system, without which cities like Colombo will continue to become warmer and less liveable. These ecosystems are also a source of daily sustenance for a number of urban dwellers at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum and, overall, make Colombo a more vibrant and liveable city.

Members of the WNPS Youth Wing will shine a spotlight on Colombo’s Wetlands, throughout Colombo Fashion Week, exploring the importance of wetland ecosystems, to inspire wider conversations about environmental and social sustainability in fashion, among industry stakeholders and other participants. CFW’s 2022 focus on “Green Conscious, Earth Sensitive” is in keeping with the joint of objectives of both CFW and the WNPS; ethical, sustainable fashion and a long-term commitment to the environment to address the worsening climate crisis, and deliver sustainable conservation programmes for Sri Lanka’s natural ecosystems and biodiversity by raising awareness, promoting thought leadership and through facilitating constructive dialogue.