Change Now 2025: LVMH engages its partners towards circularity

From Thursday, April 24 to Saturday, April 26, 2025, the Change Now trade fair was held at the Grand Palais in Paris. To mark its report on the first day of the trade fair, FashionUnited chose to focus on the speech by Hélène Valade (LVMH) about strategic partnerships with suppliers and on the presence of a Native American chief, who came to remind everyone of two basic principles.

Change Now, with 40,000 participants, 10,000 companies and 140 countries, aims to be the trade fair “where global leaders and change-makers meet to shape a sustainable world”.

Although the ‘Fashion’ zone was small (28 exhibitors) compared to other sectors (healthcare, energy, food, agriculture, etc.), it nonetheless signalled the involvement of fashion players in the move towards a circular industry.

In terms of fashion, FashionUnited noted the presence of major players in the industry: the Fédération de la Mode Circulaire, which has brought together 300 members since its creation in 2020, and recently published a study with KPMG France, an audit and consulting firm, on the economic and environmental levers for the sector's transformation in Europe.

Other well-known exhibitors included: Kering via the ‘Kering Generation award’, the Institut Français de la Mode and L’Atelier des Matières. There were also start-ups such as ‘Save your Wardrobe’, which offers brands a way to manage product returns, and Prolong, which offers the same principle, but in the form of software rental.

On the Agora stage, FashionUnited met Hélène Valade, environmental development director at LVMH and chair of the Observatoire de la responsabilité sociétale des entreprises (ORSE), “an NGO that brings together more than 100 companies and enables work on transformation and collective intelligence”, along with Attila Kiss, chief executive officer of Gruppo Florence, an Italian production centre serving luxury brands, controlled by the Permira investment fund (opening photo).

‘Licensing business partners’ or LVMH’s desire to harmonise traceability needs between major luxury players

“In Italy, around 60,000 small businesses work in the luxury supply chain. Collecting information from such fragmented players is complex, but it’s the challenge we need to address in terms of sustainability,” explained Kiss.

“We’ve announced a new action plan, ‘Licensing Business Partners’, to collect data and support our suppliers in their environmental transition. They waste valuable time answering the same questions from Chanel, Hermès, Dior, etc.,

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