PARIS — “The worth of fashion is 5 euros,” said Yann Rivoallan, president of the Fédération du Prêt-à-Porter Féminin, or French federation of girls’s ready-to-wear, on the Forum de la Mode, or Fashion Forum, on Wednesday.

The style executive, who can be president of the All over the place Anytime vocational school dedicated to technology, was collaborating within the opening keynote of a sixth edition dedicated to “The Value of Fashion in a World in Movement,” alongside Pascal Morand, executive president of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, and Institut Français de la Mode’s general manager Xavier Romatet.

While that quantity represented the value of a T-shirt on ultra-fast fashion giant Shein, Rivoallan offered other figures, equivalent to 5 million people shopping on secondhand resale platform Vinted; 500 million, the number of garments still in good condition exported to Africa, or 50 billion, the variety of TikTok videos talking about Shein.

And “we haven’t seen anything yet,” he was quick so as to add, noting that the arrival of AI will bring further fundamental shifts. To Rivoallan, the rights and respect of staff, innovation with sober consumption in mind and traceability were among the many paths to solving the riddle of fashion’s future value.

Morand said the actual query was how you can define and quantify what “value” is, offering readings that went from the philosophical to so-called hard sciences.

“These are real topics that condition public policy and the way private and public actors can harmonize,” he continued, mentioning that the industry found itself at a specific juncture of the technological, digital and ecological revolutions.

With the style and luxury sectors representing some 150 billion euros in France, or some 2.7 percent of the country’s GDP — greater than the automotive and aviation industries combined — Romatet said fashion had “a significant dimension to weigh on absolutely needed evolutions” like ecological transition.

“That’s why France must lead the impetus for change,” he continued, citing the polarization toward either luxury or entry-level prices and changes in buying behavior among the many industry’s current mutations.

“We are going to only find answers through innovation, in fact, but most of all, in education and training, a fundamental pivot in behavior,” he said, highlighting the “market inversion” of secondhand fashion, which had grown from 1 billion to six billion euros I the space of 5 years, driven by consumer price concerns and desire for responsible purchases.

The importance of fashion and consumers’ decisions as political ones was highlighted the primary roundtable of the day. Echoing Romatet’s earlier comment about “voting with one’s bank card,” journalist and writer Mélody Thomas said “clothing has symbolic value beyond a consumer product, so long as consumers realize who made them, what they’re wearing and what image the brand carries.”

On deep societal issues equivalent to reproductive rights, diversity and inclusion, Thomas said that “it’s not visible support but transparency” that’s the important thing for brands.

This is especially essential as “we’re today in a world of symbols and signs. Even a brand that might determine to haven’t any image positioning and only create clothes can be seen as [making] a press release and appeal to the ecologically committed consumers,” said fashion critic and doctoral candidate on the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales research institution Saveria Mandella.

One other key to the long run for fashion was its heritage, but on the condition that or not it’s leveraged into recent creations and with innovation in mind, with Patou’s artistic director Guillaume Henry likening patrimony to a conversation shared between stakeholders and generations. “A house that lasts [does so] because its characteristics are transmitted from one designer to the following,” he said.

Within the age of “everlasting buzz,” Julien Tuffery, third generation and chief executive officer of denim manufacturer and brand Atelier Tuffery, said a 340-million-euro plan to support specialized “métiers d’art” crafts unveiled Tuesday by the French culture minister Rima Abdul Malak and deputy minister for trade crafts Olivia Grégoire was a robust signal of France’s desire to reindustrialize its fashion sector.

“And is [handcraft] not essentially the most beautiful answer to AI?” he mused, although he characterised this buzzy technological field as an ideal source of inspiration that wouldn’t replace human imagination.

But innovation mustn’t just be driven by the search for brand spanking new materials, reminded Nativité Rodriguez, general manager of social and environmental responsibility initiative L’Atelier des Matières, speaking at the ultimate roundtable.

At this juncture, the industry must be specializing in “having a positive impact” and on mutualizing, said Aude Vergne, chief sustainability officer of Chloé. “On this constant improvement approach, we’re asking quite a bit from our suppliers to guage and there’s real interest in mutualizing and having a standard approach because they can not answer [individual] requests from each brand,” she said.

While regulations and constraints are needed to kickstart the following era of fashion, communicating concerning the changes creates additional value for Dorothée Contour, founding father of the 13-year-old JEM Jewelry Ethically Minded brand.

“I’m convinced that example, hope and positivity that can get people on board and provides them the need to vary,” she said.