Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
Date: 6th December 2025
Hosting partner organisation: Civitta Ukraine
On December 6th, Civitta Ukraine successfully brought together 20 Ukrainian women working in the textile industry for the national ideathon. Despite a massive missile attack across Ukrainian cities during the night before the ideathon, the team welcomed participants from across the country, ranging from Uzhhorod to Kryvyi Rih. Some people travelled for over 10-12 hours to attend the ideathon. This shows how much the industry needs projects like “W4TEX”.
The ideathon began with inspiring short presentations, in which women introduced themselves, shared their career journeys, and presented their businesses. These stories were truly inspiring: some women had been internally displaced but still rebuilt their careers from scratch to become successful employees; some developed careers as fashion designers, consultants, and stylists; while others created bags or clothing from eco-materials, building sustainability in their business practices.
This initial round of introductions helped to build a sense of connection, creating an open and collaborative atmosphere. With this positive foundation in place, the session transitioned to its core content. The Civitta Ukraine team presented key challenges for the textile industry, which led to a very meaningful discussion, mainly because the participants of the ideathon were already working on these problems. The challenges focused on shifting from fast fashion to sustainable business models, developing circular solutions, and creating effective systems for collecting, sorting, and recycling textiles.
With these topics defined, the event proceeded to its core format – the ideation session, where teams began developing solutions to address these specific challenges. The Civitta Ukraine team divided participants into small groups. The teams worked through a structured process: they began by brainstorming the best idea for their challenge, then developed it further, and finally prepared, practiced, and delivered their pitch to the jury.
Ultimately, the teams developed creative and practical solutions to their challenges, earning strong scores from the jury. For example, the “Reweave” team proposed collecting fabric scraps from local brands to transform them into new, usable material. “Ambasadoria” focused on building a special association only for women in the textile industry. “Adaptive ReWear” aimed to produce adaptive clothing from reused materials. “Eco-style” planned to build a community-driven system for recycling old textiles by involving pensioners.
Most notably, the winning team, “Easy Stylist”, introduced a capsule clothing collection designed to be integrated into personal wardrobes with the help of an AI stylist. Their success came from having a strong and sustainable project concept, delivering a convincing pitch, and working excellently as a team. Now, the Civitta Ukraine team looks forward to supporting 3 women professionals at the upcoming international ideathon in Greece.