Pictured above: Professor Donna Marshall, Vice Principal of Research Innovation and Impact, UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School

White Street Market Fashion Reboot was held on January 11-12, 2020—the first event of its kind dedicated entirely to fashion design and sustainable innovation in Milan, Italy. The White Street Market (WSM) Fashion Reboot event created multi-stakeholder collaborations to bring sustainability to the fashion industry level.

The WSM Interaction Hub brought together leading institutions and academics to promote sustainability education and facilitate some discussions to set a common understanding for sustainability in fashion, management and business education.

UCD Centre for Business and Society (CeBaS) was featured as one of the exemplars for research and teaching excellence for sustainability.

4000+ visitors explored the first edition of WSM Fashion Reboot featuring 80 brands, 20 startups (WSM Smart Contest), 10 universities (WSM Interaction Hub), open studio workshops and Sustainable Thinking Exhibit by Salvatore Ferragamo.

Professor Donna Marshall is Vice Principal of Research Innovation and Impact at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and leads the high-performing research cohort at CeBaS. Donna is also a global authority on sustainability and transparency in the supply chain and the fashion industry and one of the most published female academics in Europe.

In October 2019, Donna advised the policy committee of the UNECE, which is bringing together key decision makers from the fashion industry, policymakers and technology solution providers to provide a policy and standard for transparency and traceability of sustainable value chains in the garment and footwear industry. Over 100 experts including NGOs, associations and brands, such as Stella McCartney, Adidas, and Hugo Boss were in attendance.

Donna has created a toolkit for fashion companies showing them the level of information that they need to collect and release around their supply chain in order to reap these benefits.

The toolkit covers the types of strategies that companies adopt, the drivers of information disclosure and release, and the specific data companies need to collect and share in the public domain. It was published by MIT Sloan Management Review in 2016.

She is now leading colleagues from around the globe in a call for companies, governments and NGOs to commit to bringing UN SDGs to the core of decision-making as the “ultimate guardians of sustainable supply chains.” By asking them to sign the for colleagues launched the Sustainable Procurement Pledge.