The Abraham Accords signed between Israel and regional neighbors opened new avenues for collaborations. Shenkar Fashion Design Department, led by department head, Ilan Beja and faculty, Gili Bahat Eshkol and Anna Solo, recently conducted an online course in collaboration with ESITH school in Morocco and FAD in Dubai. The collaboration, generously supported by the American Embassy in Jerusalem, was initiated and coordinated by Dr. Ruti Bardenshtein of the International School. The primary objective of the course was to enhance awareness of sustainable fashion and engage participants as future designers in the transformative process of the fashion industry and its products.

The fashion industry, ranking as the second-largest source of environmental pollution, sees tons of textiles being discarded each year, causing significant environmental contamination. Whenever a textile factory in China dyes fabrics, the adjacent river serves as evidence of the processes within the facility, as its water change colors.The escalating global population's consumption patterns further amplify environmental damage annually.

Sustainable fashion emerges as the pivotal factor for instigating change across the fashion industry's entire production chain. It aims to mitigate harm to both people and the environment throughout development and production processes, material selection and the consumption practices of clothing and accessories. Achieving this change involves elevating the value of local production, extending the product's lifecycle and the lifespan of materials, reducing overall consumption, minimizing excess production, curbing waste generation and reducing environmental impact during design, development, production and even the product's end-of-life stage.

The concept of Zero Waste Design, as a design technique, plays a crucial role in eliminating textile waste right from the initial stages of design and planning. The course provided various tools, predominantly technological, starting from digital design work through the development of patterns and designs in fabrics and materials. It employed zero waste techniques, eliminating physical constraints to digital fashion design. The culmination of the course involved the creation of an entire virtual fashion collection, set to be showcased in a virtual fashion show.