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Join us for an in-depth seminar tailored for fashion industry professionals and designers seeking to strengthen their business foundations and drive long-term success. This comprehensive session explores the four essential pillars of modern fashion entrepreneurship: sourcing, selling, sustainability, and scaling. We’ll unpack sustainable practices that are both environmentally responsible and commercially viable, and guide participants on how to scale operations, expand into new markets, and build brand equity. Key Takeaways:

- Smart sourcing strategies for quality and sustainability
- Sales approaches for digital, wholesale, and direct-to-consumer models
- Building a brand with ethical and environmental impact
- Scaling through systems, partnerships, and market expansion
- Real-world case studies and practical frameworks

This is a must-attend for fashion designers, startups, and retailers ready to evolve with purpose and profitability.

Digitising materials is emerging as one of the most powerful enablers of the circular textile economy. This session explores how material digital twins, shared data standards and end-to-end value-chain visibility can shift the industry from fragmented sustainability claims to reliable, machine-readable material intelligence.

We’ll unpack how structured digital material data is already transforming sourcing and circularity—enabling faster verification, smarter buying decisions, improved surplus reuse, and new commercial pathways for circular materials at scale. With a focus on practical, real-world applications, this session highlights the systems, tools and collaborations that are reshaping how materials are tracked, validated and reused across global supply chains.

You’ll leave with a clear understanding of how digitalisation can accelerate your organisation’s progress toward traceability and circularity—while unlocking efficiencies and value along the way.

With four decades at the forefront of fashion education, Nicholas Huxley has played a critical role in shaping Australia’s design talent pipeline and influencing industry practice. An award-winning designer and illustrator, and a 2019 inductee into the Design Institute of Australia Hall of Fame, his former students include Nicky Zimmermann, Dion Lee, Akira Isogawa and Alex Perry.

Having worked extensively with fashion institutions, manufacturers, and artisan communities across Europe, the US, Asia, Africa and the Pacific, Huxley brings a unique perspective on how education intersects with industry needs worldwide.

In this Q&A session, he will discuss the importance of fashion education and how it differs around the world, how students can best harness the skills they learn at school, the imperatives of gaining practical work experience while studying and developing your own design handwriting, and how best to navigate the ever-evolving demands of the fashion industry.

Carla Zampatti is one of Australia’s most enduring fashion houses, known for its distinctive tailoring, sophisticated silhouettes and decades-long connection with Australian women business leaders, politicians, and media figures. Founded in 1965 by Italian-born designer Carla Zampatti, the brand has grown into an influential force in Australian fashion and a benchmark for quality and modern elegance.

Today, chief executive officer Alexander Schuman is guiding the company into its next chapter. In this session, he will explore the brand’s evolution over six decades, the foundations of its remarkable longevity, and the strategic decisions shaping its future. Schuman will discuss the opportunities and challenges of second-generation leadership, the company’s commitment to Australian manufacturing, and its ongoing focus on sustainability and ethical business practices. He will also share insights into maintaining brand relevance in a global, rapidly changing fashion landscape.

Australia once had a vibrant textile, clothing and footwear manufacturing sector. Following the removal of tariffs and quotas from the 1980s onward, the industry contracted sharply, and today an estimated 97 percent of production occurs offshore.

Recent global supply chain disruptions have renewed interest in rebuilding local capability. A growing grassroots movement is working to preserve surviving heritage manufacturers and explore opportunities to return production to Australia. In March, the Australian Fashion Council released its National Manufacturing Strategy, outlining a pathway to revitalise and future proof the nation’s TCF manufacturing ecosystem.

This session features Adelaide entrepreneurs and co-owners, Melanie and Dean Flintoft, who in 2024 rescued the 74 year old knitting mill Silver Fleece from liquidation. Known for its legacy as a historic Australian knitwear and textile manufacturer, Silver Fleece proudly produces premium apparel and fabrics in South Australia – including for the Australian cricket team and schools nationwide.

The Flintofts will share how they are revitalising a heritage factory, the realities of manufacturing onshore, and the vision behind their new contemporary Australian apparel brand, Crestwell Australia.

What if clothing didn’t just avoid harming the planet — but actively healed it? After years of research through our Regenerate program, Kowtow has developed a world-first innovation: garments made from organic cotton that can be transformed into biochar, returning to the soil to restore carbon, improve biodiversity, and regenerate ecosystems.

In this session, we’ll take you behind the scenes of this breakthrough — from seed, to garment, to soil. You’ll learn how circular design, responsible farming, and science-driven innovation can work together to create fashion that enriches the earth rather than depleting it.

Join us to explore what truly regenerative fashion looks like, how biochar is reshaping circularity, and why the future of apparel lies in designing products that give back more than they take. Walk away understanding the science behind regenerative fashion.

Most business owners are either drowning in tasks they should never be doing or spending a fortune on local staff that bleeds their margins. This presentation shows a smarter path: combining remote teams with cutting-edge AI to build a lean, leveraged business that grows without the owner being the bottleneck.

Taylor isn’t presenting theory, she’s actively building systems, practical, no-fluff, and built for business owners who are ready to stop doing everything themselves.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how founders approach production and sourcing, offering powerful ways to save time, reduce complexity, and make faster, more informed decisions. This session explores how AI can be used as a practical support tool across supplier research, material selection, production planning, and risk management—freeing founders to focus on strategy, creativity, and growth. Using real-world creative industry examples, the session demonstrates how AI can streamline workflows, improve visibility across supply chains, and support smarter sourcing decisions without replacing human judgement or craftsmanship.

Clothing does more than cover us. It affects how comfortable we feel, how independently we can function, and whether we can participate fully in our lives. Yet some of the factors that determine wearability aren’t always visible in the design process.

This session explores what makes clothing genuinely inclusive, including factors that often go unnoticed but dramatically affect wearability: Sensory experience: How fabrics, seams, tags, textures and visual elements can either support comfort or create genuine distress and overwhelm. Physical demands of dressing: The real impact of fastenings, reach requirements, grip strength, fatigue and limited mobility on whether someone can dress themselves safely and independently.

Functional realities: How clothing performs during everyday activities like sitting for extended periods, using mobility aids, managing pressure areas, or maintaining dignity whilst moving.

Design details that matter: The small, intentional choices that dramatically improve comfort, safety and ease of use across a wide range of bodies and abilities.

Drawing on clinical expertise and lived experience, this session brings together consumers, designers and sourcing professionals to examine apparel from a practical perspective. You’ll gain concrete insight into what bodies and brains actually need from clothing, and discover how thoughtful, inclusive design choices can make everyday comfort, confidence and participation genuinely achievable.

Global snow sports are exploding. China’s snow tourism market is on track to hit 1.5 trillion yuan by 2030, Japan’s ski fields are drawing record international crowds, and Australia is joining the action with Western Sydney’s $700 million Winter Sports World opening in 2028. Worldwide, more than 150 indoor snow centres are already operating across 35+ countries, with rapid expansion in China, Europe and the Middle East.

This surge is fuelling massive demand for high performance winter apparel—on and off the mountain. With the snow wear market forecast to more than double to US$54.2 billion within seven years, brands blending technical innovation with lifestyle appeal are leading the charge.
To unpack this fast moving opportunity, the panel brings together two standout Australian founders: Luke Mitchell, co founder of Yuki Threads, known for fusing mountain functionality with streetwear culture; and Anthony Symonds, co founder of LÉ BENT, the performance brand born from a single hero product—a Merino bamboo ski sock engineered in the heart of Val d’Isère.

Together, they’ll explore where the winter sports market is heading, what consumers want now, and how Australian brands can carve out global relevance in the hottest cold weather category.