Soul Salon is an inspiring place where the designers, brands and shop owners gather and share their passion for fashion and sustainable design. Does that sound too good to be true? Of course not. Soul Salon has turned this vision into reality. As an international fashion trade exhibition in Amsterdam, this exhibition has a special focus on sustainability and sharing the future trends of the industry. The event is held every two years, January and July, organized by Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week.
On January 21st and 22nd 2018 a few months ago, the second edition of the Amsterdam-based trade fair took place. This exhibition focuses on future trends and sustainable fashion. In addition, the exhibition is designed to offer retailers inspiration about current developments in the fashion and retail markets.
Information and Background of the Soul Salon Exhibition
This event is more than just a fashion exhibition that focuses on sustainable fashion. The event also offers more than just a trade show experience. They will make sure you will be truly inspired by the ‘future look’ given to you during the exhibition. Not only in the fashion industry but also in the field of inspiration for the ‘green’ store. Soul Salon is not accessible to consumers but only for retailers and professional buyers.
As the initiator of The Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week, they have a large network of retailers, fashion brands and other important people in the sustainable fashion business. This allows them to introduce this event to a high level and connect with other colleagues.
The event aims to make sustainability an important theme for fashion retailers. Retailers play an important part in the process of transforming the fashion industry into a more sustainable business model. However, at this time, they were limited by a number of factors but they were convinced that sustainable fashion would be in all the leading retailers.
The Message of the Soul Salon to the World
The sustainable design follows all the latest trends and they want to inspire retailers in moving towards a sustainable business model. That’s why they conduct research on how to empower and influence retailers’ choices. Based on that, they made critical and inventive choices about trade show programs, choices of brands and products presented.
Soul Salon takes place at Westergasfabriek, a place that also hosts Amsterdam Fashion Week and Amsterdam Denim Days. This year’s speakers are: Ellen Mensink, founder of Brightloops; Ellen Haeser, trendwatcher and fashion consultant and a fashion blogger, Chanel Trapman.
In addition to the discussion, there was a panel discussion which included Linnemore Nefdt, the concept of circular mode and design consultants, Lotte Schuurman, Fair Wear Foundation; and Feico van der Veen, founder of Polylana and Summit Company. On January 21, Soul Salon has held Storytelling Awards as part of a trade show.
More than 100 sustainable fashion brands have been exhibited at the Soul Salon exhibition, including Anitpode, By Biek, Elements of Freedom, Granny Finest, Hobo Shoes, Komodo, Miab Jewels, Rio Design, Swedish Stockings, and Zazu Amsterdam.
This event debuted in July 2017 with 60 brands participating in this event. The sustainable fashion trade show was founded by Cécile Scheele, who also served as the Creative Director. Soul Salon is organized by Powering Sustainable Fashion, the initiator of Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week and the Dutch Retail Experience Awards and the owner of the platform InspiringStories.nl and Goodbrandz agency.
