Today was very exciting!

We started early, at 8:15am local Milan time, and took Milan’s public transportation system to The Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. There we went through an amazing lecture from a local professor for international students. Francesca Romana Rinaldi’s lecture was on fashion supply chain and how it connects with sustainability. Francesca works with the United Nations to reinforce and develop sustainable practices in the fashion industry.

She focused on the key differences between fashion and luxury, describing the timelessness of luxury and the intentional seasonality of fashion. We learned that luxury items tend to net a larger income, but with newer strategies of fashion retailers (H&M, Zara) increase demand through limited production of certain items. This decreases risk related to overstock and allows for a greater income in fashion!

In regards to sustainability, Francesca explained to us that you must always keep the three “P’s” in mind: Profit, People, Profit. The three overlap and require a balance to be struck for a company to be sustainable and practical.

After this lecture, we were given a tour of the Universita Cattolica by students of the university. We grabbed lunch with the students and met back to explore the Museo Nazionale e della Scienza e della Tecnologia and got to see many physical models of Leonardo Da Vinci’s feats of engineering. Leonardo Da Vinci has always been an inspiration to me for his mind understood the overlap between science and art, an understanding that is sorely lacking in today’s world.

We explored the rest of the museum, which reminded me of the the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

We returned home to relax, with plans to visit the canals of Milan for dinner. After a quick nap, a group of eleven of us took the metro to the Milanese canals for dinner. We enjoyed a beautiful evening together and have returned to rest up for the night. Tomorrow we travel to Como!

Buonanotte!