Fashion and Textiles NZ “Threads of Tomorrow” Summit

“From Noise to Coherence: Building a Future-Ready Fashion and Textiles Sector”

I delivered a keynote at the Threads of Tomorrow Summit, exploring the forces reshaping Aotearoa New Zealand’s fashion and textiles sector, from geopolitical disruption and climate regulation to artificial intelligence and demographic change. I encouraged delegates to look beyond individual trends and focus on where these forces converge, identifying the strategic moves that work across multiple plausible futures. The keynote challenged the sector to close the gap between the stories it tells and what it can prove, and argued that New Zealand’s greatest opportunity is not to compete on scale or price, but to build a coherent, connected and trusted industry grounded in traceability, natural fibres, specialist skills and verifiable provenance.