Fashion, Sustainability, and the Future of an Industry: Inside Bocconi’s Summer School

Fashion is no longer a sector where aesthetic vision alone determines success. Today, the most competitive brands are those that can integrate environmental responsibility into their core business strategy, build transparent and traceable supply chains, and leverage digital technologies to accelerate the “twin transition“: simultaneous movement toward sustainability and digitalization.

The course covers the Italian Fashion System as a starting point, examining how some of the world’s most iconic brands have built and managed their identities. From there it moves into brand strategy, collection development, and the managerial decisions that sit behind a fashion product.

A significant portion of the program is dedicated to circularity: the logic of designing products and systems that minimize waste and extend material life. Students engage with real frameworks and case studies from companies actively working on circular models, responsible innovation, and extended producer responsibility.

On the digitalization side, the course examines how technology is changing retail, merchandising, and the way fashion businesses measure and communicate their impact. This is not speculative, it is grounded in real business cases and the experiences of professionals operating in these roles today.

What distinguishes this program from a standard lecture course is its structure. The teaching method combines academic frameworks with business cases, and students work on a group assignment throughout the program that is tutored and presented at the end.

Beyond the classroom, the course incorporates companies visits and spaces relevant to the themes being studied. Past editions have included exposure to brands and organizations operating at the leading edge of sustainable fashion in Italy. These encounters are not optional extras, they are part of how the course is designed to work, connecting theory to practice in a concrete way.

Guest speakers from the industry join specific sessions throughout the program, representing a range of professional roles: brand managers, sustainability coordinators, founders, and executives from companies of different scales and models. Their presence grounds the academic content in the realities of working in the sector today.

The course is led by faculty and instructors from Bocconi and SDA Bocconi School of Management, with expertise in fashion industry dynamics, sustainability, circularity, and brand management. The program draws on research conducted through dedicated academic initiatives focused on circular fashion, giving students access to thinking that goes beyond what is available in standard textbooks.

Location matters. Milan is an active part of the learning environment. Italy’s fashion system, with its concentration of global luxury houses, manufacturing heritage, and design culture, is itself a subject of study. Being present in the city while examining how Italian fashion brands have built competitive advantage is a different experience from reading about it elsewhere.

The course awards 6 ECTS credits, upon sitting and passing the final exam. The program runs across three-weeks in late June and early July, combining morning and afternoon sessions.
It is designed for students with a basic foundation in business strategy. No prior specialization in fashion is required.

If you are drawn to questions about how industries change, how companies build value while managing environmental responsibility, and how digital tools are rewriting the rules of retail and supply chains, this program gives you the conceptual tools and the real-world exposure to start answering them.