New York, United States |US folk and rock legend Bob Dylan released his first album of original songs in eight years on Friday with the ten-track "Rough and Rowdy Ways."

Belgrade, Serbia | Serbians will elect a new parliament on Sunday in a expected to bolster the rule of the centre-right party that has led the Balkan state for the past eight years.

Here are five facts about the former communist country that loves sports, food and has a long history of balancing East and West. 

- Landlocked country -

Like neighbouring Hungary and Macedonia, Serbs have to travel abroad for a seaside vacation. But that wasn't always the case.

Under the former Yugoslavia, Serbia was joined with its Adriatic neighbours Croatia and Montenegro, plus Slovenia, Bosnia and North Macedonia to form the socialist federation.

A series of brutal 1990s wars under Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic unravelled the communist country.

Today tensions are still high between Serbia and its former province Kosovo, whose 2008 declaration of independence Belgrade has never accepted.

With no more access to the sea, Serbian navy ships now sail the country's rivers, notably the Danube that winds through the capital Belgrade.

- Balancing powers -

Serbia has for six years been in negotiations to join the European Union, its main economic partner.

But the country also maintains close relations with Russia and China.

Some Serbs have a fondness for Moscow as the country's Orthodox Slav "big brother", while China has become a growing source of investment.

Both powers crucially back Serbia on the Kosovo issue, rejecting its independence and helping shut the former province out of the United Nations.

Serbs are in fact used to looking in different directions: trapped for centuries between the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, they did not secure independence until the 19th century, though it has been constantly questioned amid the region's changing borders.

- Serbs home and abroad -

According to the 2011 census, ethnic Serbs account for 83 percent of the population and most of them are Orthodox Christians.

There are also about two dozen minorities living in the country including Croats, Roma, Albanians, Hungarians and Slovaks.

While 7.1 million people live in Serbia, several million more Serbs live abroad.

Vienna is considered the second-largest Serbian town in the world, while there are also large Serb communities in Toronto, Chicago, Paris and Australia.

Serbs also make up significant minorities in neighbouring Bosnia, Montenegro, Croatia and Kosovo.

- Sports stars -

The country's most popular ambassador is probably tennis king Novak Djokovic, the top-ranked player in the world.

Though he spends most of his time in Monte Carlo, the Serb regularly visits home and recently brought star players to his native Belgrade for a charity tournament.

Football remains the most popular sport, with a fierce rivalry -- and rowdy hooligan scene --  between Belgrade's main clubs Red Star and Partizan. 

Yet Serbs seem to have more success internationally in other team sports such as basketball, volleyball and water polo, where they regularly beat world and European rivals.

The country also takes credit for raising NBA centre Nikola Jokic, a rising star with the Denver Nuggets.

- The raspberry state -

With bucolic rolling hills and rich soil, Serbia is an agricultural country that few may know is one of the world's top raspberry exporters.

In 2019, exports came to around 215 million euros ($242 million), according to the statistics bureau.

Come spring, local markets are full of strawberries, blackberries and other fruits, which can be bought dried in winter.

Yet the real national passion is for grilled meat, the centre-piece of most meals at the lively kafanas -- similar to taverns -- where Serbians go to celebrate and enjoy traditional cuisine. 

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© Agence France-Presse

Serbians will elect a new parliament on Sunday in a vote expected to bolster the rule of the centre-right party that has led the Balkan state for the past eight years.

Here are five facts about the former communist country that loves sports, food and has a long history of balancing East and West. 

- Landlocked country -

Like neighbouring Hungary and Macedonia, Serbs have to travel abroad for a seaside vacation. But that wasn't always the case.

Under the former Yugoslavia, Serbia was joined with its Adriatic neighbours Croatia and Montenegro, plus Slovenia, Bosnia and North Macedonia to form the socialist federation.

A series of brutal 1990s wars under Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic unravelled the communist country.

Today tensions are still high between Serbia and its former province Kosovo, whose 2008 declaration of independence Belgrade has never accepted.

With no more access to the sea, Serbian navy ships now sail the country's rivers, notably the Danube that winds through the capital Belgrade.

- Balancing powers -

Serbia has for six years been in negotiations to join the European Union, its main economic partner.

But the country also maintains close relations with Russia and China.

Some Serbs have a fondness for Moscow as the country's Orthodox Slav "big brother", while China has become a growing source of investment.

Both powers crucially back Serbia on the Kosovo issue, rejecting its independence and helping shut the former province out of the United Nations.

Serbs are in fact used to looking in different directions: trapped for centuries between the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, they did not secure independence until the 19th century, though it has been constantly questioned amid the region's changing borders.

- Serbs home and abroad -

According to the 2011 census, ethnic Serbs account for 83 percent of the population and most of them are Orthodox Christians.

There are also about two dozen minorities living in the country including Croats, Roma, Albanians, Hungarians and Slovaks.

While 7.1 million people live in Serbia, several million more Serbs live abroad.

Vienna is considered the second-largest Serbian town in the world, while there are also large Serb communities in Toronto, Chicago, Paris and Australia.

Serbs also make up significant minorities in neighbouring Bosnia, Montenegro, Croatia and Kosovo.

- Sports stars -

The country's most popular ambassador is probably tennis king Novak Djokovic, the top-ranked player in the world.

Though he spends most of his time in Monte Carlo, the Serb regularly visits home and recently brought star players to his native Belgrade for a charity tournament.

Football remains the most popular sport, with a fierce rivalry -- and rowdy hooligan scene --  between Belgrade's main clubs Red Star and Partizan. 

Yet Serbs seem to have more success internationally in other team sports such as basketball, volleyball and water polo, where they regularly beat world and European rivals.

The country also takes credit for raising NBA centre Nikola Jokic, a rising star with the Denver Nuggets.

- The raspberry state -

With bucolic rolling hills and rich soil, Serbia is an agricultural country that few may know is one of the world's top raspberry exporters.

In 2019, exports came to around 215 million euros ($242 million), according to the statistics bureau.

Come spring, local markets are full of strawberries, blackberries and other fruits, which can be bought dried in winter.

Yet the real national passion is for grilled meat, the centre-piece of most meals at the lively kafanas -- similar to taverns -- where Serbians go to celebrate and enjoy traditional cuisine. 

bur-mat/ev/ks/ssm/bp

© Agence France-Presse

Los Angeles, United States | The guitar that grunge rock icon Kurt Cobain played during his legendary 1993 MTV Unplugged performance sold Saturday for a record $6 million, the auction house said.

Paris, France | AFP 

From a 14-year-old Japanese racing driver to a 17-year-old Russian goalkeeper to an English striker claiming a maiden professional hat-trick at 18, it was a good weekend for teenagers in sport.

Juju Noda - like father, like daughter

-- Just 14, Noda has motor racing in her blood after her father Hideki who raced in Formula One and Indy Cars in the 1990s and early 2000s.

On Saturday she took victory from pole position to win the Danish Formula 4 race at Jyllandsringen, in what was the first single-seater race in Europe since the coronavirus lockdown.

Such is the hype surrounding Noda, who only turned 14 in February, that she has already been compared to F1 tyro Max Verstappen.

"I think it is something necessary if you want to be competitive and professional," Noda told thepitcrewonline.net.

"If you cannot deal with it, that means you are not good enough. To be honest, sometimes it is a bit hard to handle but I always do my best."

Denis Popov - lets in 10 goals, is man of the match

-- Denis Popov was man of the match in Rostov's loss at Sochi in the Russian Premier League, which might strike some as odd.

After all, he was the goalkeeper buried beneath an avalanche of goals in his team's 10-1 mauling on the banks of the Black Sea.

But the 17-year-old still won rave reviews for pulling off 15 saves, including one from a penalty.

The Rostov team was made up entirely of teenagers after their senior squad was placed into quarantine due to players testing positive for coronavirus.

Sochi refused to postpone the game leaving Rostov with a squad of two 16-year-olds, 12 who were 17, three at 18 and one 19-year-old.

"First of all -- our 17-year-old goalkeeper, Denis Popov, made 15 (!!!) breathtaking saves (including one penalty), which is a Russian Premier League new record! Denis absolutely stole the whole show today and got his well-deserved Man of the Match award," tweeted a proud Rostov club.

Louie Sibley - a Rams man

-- Derby County Academy graduate Louie Sibley grabbed his first professional hat-trick in the 3-2 win against Millwall in the second-tier English Championship, keeping the Rams on course for the play-offs.

"I'm absolutely buzzing. I did well but I just want to keep going, keep playing and to get a hat-trick is unbelievable," the 18-year-old told the Derby website.

"I don't think it will sink in. All my family are big Derby fans and they will all be texting me and ringing me but they will all be over the moon."

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Francois Pienaar, even 25 years on, conveys a sense of disbelief and awe when he talks of that crisp Highveld winter's day that the Springboks won the Rugby World Cup for the first time.

The Springbok captain's wonder is not so much about the fact that his team won the Webb Ellis Cup at Ellis Park on June 24 1995, for he says he always felt they could pull it off, but that he received the golden trophy from President Nelson Mandela.

"I am probably the luckiest sports person ever because of the unique relationship (with Mandela)," he says of a man who became a father figure to him.

Their close bond, a young white Afrikaner and the famous black prisoner of Robben Island, grew out of Pienaar's captaincy of the Springboks and Mandela's visionary and altruistic support of a team who played in a jersey many of his followers despised.

It started with a cup of tea, he told AFP.

"The president invited me to visit him in his office at the Union Buildings in Pretoria. We talked about all things –- not just the World Cup. He wanted to know a lot about me.

"There were so many high-powered people waiting outside to see him and every time Mary (Mxadana, Mandela's assistant) would come in to hurry him up he would say to her: "Mary, I'm speaking to my captain."

"I was so nervous before I went into his office and when I left I sat in my car and just felt I had been in the presence of a very wise and caring man and I felt safe.

"I know it sounds bizarre. You have no idea of his aura, the genuineness, the sense of humour. We laughed. There was an immediate bond," says Pienaar.

Mandela visited the Springboks at their final pre-World Cup training session at sports fields in Cape Town and wished the awe-struck group of young men well; receiving in return a Springbok cap from Hennie le Roux, spontaneously removed from the head of Japie Mulder.

To a refrain of "Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!" Mandela officially opened the tournament in Cape Town and the Springboks took what their coach Kitch Christie had referred to as the "high road" by beating defending champions Australia.

Thirty-one days and four more games packed full of dramatic incident later Pienaar and his men contested the rugby championship of the world against their oldest and most respected foe, the All Blacks.

- Epic final -

An epic final went into extra time before Joel Stransky landed his storied knockout blow sending a wave of patriotic harmony that swept over all creeds and hues such as the country had never experienced before.

Pienaar, interviewed on the field immediately after the final whistle, spoke the inspirational words, "not for 60,000 but for 43 million South Africans" that united a euphoric nation.

Pienaar's men had lived up to their motto "One Team, One Nation" with their 15-12 victory and Madiba's captain recalls in wonderment that as the cup was being handed to him they spoke, almost in unison, exactly the same sentence.

"Francois, thank you for what you've done for this country" –- "Mr President, thank you for what you've done for this country."

The bond between the rugby player and the struggle hero would extend well beyond the World Cup.

"He invited himself to our wedding," laughs Pienaar. "We were having a celebration at the Union Buildings and I said I wanted to introduce him to my fiancee Nerine. He took her hand and said "would you feel offended if I come to your wedding Nerine?"

"When my son Jean was born he said he wanted to be his godfather, 'if we didn't mind', and he gave him a Xhosa name: Mkhokheli, which means leader.

"Madiba regularly invited us for tea and our second son, Stephane, who was four or five at the time asked 'why is Mr Mandela only Jean's godfather and not mine too?' We had to explain that he didn't get the call!

"However Stephane ran straight to Madiba and said to him, 'Mr Mandela, will you please also be my godfather? And Madiba didn't miss a beat, saying of course and adding that his Xhosa name would be Gorha, the brave one.

"We had such intimate conversations. I am truly the luckiest sportsman alive by a long way; to be so privileged at that time to be the captain, to share the platform with him, to be influenced by him and to get to know him so well," Pienaar said.

Pienaar was dropped from the Springbok side in 1996 and when he announced he would be leaving to join Saracens in London, Mandela summoned him to lunch and left him with a final request.

"Francois you promise me you will come back one day and you'll make a difference."

On his return to South Africa, Pienaar obliged by establishing the Make a Difference Leadership Foundation (MAD) in Mandela's name with the aim of developing academically talented scholars with leadership potential into future leaders for South Africa.

He runs his own sports eventing company, Advent Sport Entertainment and Media (ASEM), which is responsible for, among other properties, the hugely successful Varsity Cup student rugby competition and the Cape Town Marathon.

Pienaar says the life lesson he learnt from the late president Mandela is that "good leadership is based on good values".

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London, United Kingdom |Ascot took a financial hit by putting on Royal Ascot behind closed doors and lessons were learned for the Epsom Derby and Oaks, the next highlights of the racing calendar.

Royal Ascot went ahead without its crowds and well-dressed punters but the final winner's name, Who Dares Wins, seemed apt as most commentators concluded it had been a success in difficult circumstances with stringent health constraints. 

A winner for Queen Elizabeth II, Stradivarius's third successive Ascot Gold Cup and Nando Parrado -- at 150/1 the longest-priced winner in Royal Ascot's history -- were some of the on-track highlights.

The organisers of the Epsom Derby and Oaks have won permission to stage both races without spectators on July 4 as part of a seven-race card.

AFP Sport asked personalities from different walks of racing life what Ascot had proved to them, as England emerges from the coronavirus lockdown.

The racecourse manager

Ascot director of racing Nick Smith and his team added six races to the five-day programme and set up a super Saturday with three Group One races, switching two of them from earlier in the week. 

He said: "It has been a great, if strange week.

"Running six extra races seemed like the right thing to do in the environment we faced and were well supported

"Two wins for lady jockeys (Hayley Turner and Hollie Doyle) and a win and three seconds for America were amongst the many landmarks of the week."

The owner

Richard Morecombe, co-founder of Chelsea Thoroughbreds which has around 20 horses with a limit of 10 investors per horse, says potential owners may be put off buying horses if they are not allowed on the racecourse.

It is not all doom and gloom though.

"What would be good news going forward is if the extending of the programme at Royal Ascot is something they would keep," he said.

"By doing so it gives owners like us the opportunity of a genuine chance of a Royal Ascot winner.

"I don't think it dumbs down Ascot by having extra handicaps. Goodwood and York have non-championship races and they work very well." 

The trainer

Mark Johnston admitted he had a frustrating week but at least came away with his first win in the Royal Hunt Cup.

The 60-year-old -- the all-time record holder for training winners in the United Kingdom -- is a firm advocate of allowing owners back onto the racecourse.

"The only lesson we can take forward is, could we have more people at the racecourse? And that stable staff can stay overnight."

Although Johnston was himself laid low with coronavirus for a fortnight earlier this year, he believes the risk to staff being at a course is low.

"It is all about perception but the risk of catching it (COVID-19) is so negligible there is no reason not to have more people on the racecourse," he said. 

The jockey

Jim Crowley rode a career-best six winners at a meeting where you would "take your hand off" to have just one.

The 34-year-old Englishman was only denied top jockey honours by Frankie Dettori. The Italian's last-day treble saw him also finish on six and pip Crowley due to more placed finishes.

Crowley said he can't wait for spectators to return, even if some of his rides such as top sprinter Battaash -- who won the King's Stand Stakes after finishing runner-up in 2018 and 2019 --benefited from the lack of them as he "can boil over."

"I will say that a lot more people tuned in on television," he said, referring to the one million who watched Stradivarius win the Gold Cup.

"A lot of the people who go racing never see a race as their priority is the social aspect. Those who tuned in did so for the right reasons.

"People should be watching the racing and hopefully the viewers included a new audience."

The bookmaker

William Woodhams, CEO of Fitzdares, had a rollercoaster week -- just one pound was laid on his firm's books for Nando Parrado on Saturday but then they took a hit in the next race.

He said France offers hope for getting people back onto the track.

"France will allow a limit of 5,000 people onto racetracks from July 11," he said.

"I believe Glorious Goodwood (July 28 - August 1) will allow owners back and that would be a wonderful thank you for them keeping the industry afloat through the lockdown.

"It would be a refreshing change for them from being interviewed via Zoom in the corner of their kitchen." 

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Berlin, Germany | AFP | The 30th anniversary of the removal of the Checkpoint Charlie border crossing between the communist East and capitalist West Berlin during the Cold War.

A designated crossing for foreigners and allied troops, Checkpoint Charlie was also used for prisoner swaps between East and West.

Thirty years on, the site has been turned into a tourist trap and authorities are mulling its future.

Here are five things to know about the iconic checkpoint that James Bond, played by Roger Moore, passed through in the 1983 film "Octopussy": 

- Three checkpoints -

In fact, there never was a Charlie: The checkpoint was named after the letter C in NATO's phonetic alphabet. 

Checkpoint Alpha, the largest and most important border crossing, was located at Helmstedt between Berlin and Hanover, while Checkpoint Bravo was at Dreilinden in southwestern Berlin.

However, Checkpoint Charlie was the most important crossing point for foreigners and the Allied forces.

- Escape attempts -

Checkpoint Charlie was the site of various daring attempts by East Germans to escape to the West, since it was one of the only gaps in the mass of concrete and barbed wire that made up the Berlin Wall.

In April 1962, Austrian Heinz Meixner managed to smuggle his East German girlfriend and her mother across the border in a rented Austin-Healey convertible by removing the windshield and speeding underneath the checkpoint's vehicle barrier. 

In another famous escape, photographer Horst Beyer staged a photoshoot during which he fled across the border.

- Tuba player -

Every Berliner knows his face and millions of tourists have taken their picture with him.

The soldier in the picture at the site of Checkpoint Charlie today is a former US army tuba player called Jeff Harper. He was 22 when he was photographed as part of a series to commemorate the last Allied soldiers in Berlin in 1994. 

His portrait was later chosen to hang alongside an image of a Soviet soldier at Checkpoint Charlie.

- Tank stand-off -

In October 1961, combat-ready US and Soviet tanks stood facing each other for 16 hours at Checkpoint Charlie in one of the tensest confrontations of the Cold War.

Deployed as part of a border dispute, 10 tanks from each side faced each other just 100 metres (yards) apart, their engines rumbling and clouds of thick smoke filling the air.

Thankfully, a third world war was averted after US president John F Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev finally agreed to withdraw the tanks.

- Future plans -

In the years since German unification in 1990, Checkpoint Charlie has turned into a sort of "Disneyland" of history, with vendors selling fake Red Army fur hats and gas masks and people dressed in US military uniforms charging tourists for snapshots.

A debate has been simmering for some time in Berlin about how to develop the area.

After a row over private investors' building plans including for a Hard Rock Hotel at the site, city authorities have drawn up more restrictive planning rules for the area -- including limiting the height of new buildings as well as requiring 30 percent of apartments to be social housing.

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Paris, France | Balenciaga said that it intends to enter the elite ranks of Paris haute couture -- more than half a century after the founder of the storied fashion house staged his last couture show.

Despite being called "the king of couture," the Spanish-born designer Cristobal Balenciaga spent years feuding with the French Federation of Haute Couture, whose members decide which houses are allowed to call themselves haute couture under French law.

The Basque creator, whom Christian Dior deemed "the master of us all," pointedly held his shows a month after the official couture presentations, before shutting his workshop in 1968.

But Balenciaga's current designer Demna Gvasalia told Le Figaro that "relaunching haute couture is my mission for this house."

"This is where we came from, and after 50 years we're coming back," he said.

The federation told AFP they could not confirm if Balenciaga was being admitted to the elite body, which currently counts just 16 haute couture practitioners.

Haute couture shows are held twice a year, in January and July, separately from the presentations of ready-to-wear collections.

Gvasalia, the Georgian-born provocateur, might seem an unlikely choice to spearhead a revival of painstaking and time-consuming craftmanship at the esteemed brand, now owned by French luxury conglomerate Kering.

But the founder of the poverty-chic brand Vetements -- known for subverting expectations with items such as a $2,000 leather version of Ikea's iconic blue shopping bag -- said he was already dedicating one day a week to couture at Balenciaga, which he joined in 2015.

His workshop will be at the same address on the Avenue George V where Balenciaga began plying his trade in Paris in 1937.

"Haute couture implies certain constraints but it also allows a unique aesthetic freedom," Gvasalia told Le Figaro.

"This project is also my response to the question: 'What is luxury today?'" he said.

"I know that fashion wants to present itself as inclusive, but not everything can be available to everybody. And that's the way it should be."

His announcement comes just days after French legend Jean Paul Gaultier said he would present his final haute couture show on Wednesday, capping a 50-year career that saw him explode the boundaries of what fashion could be.

The flamboyant creator said he would bow out with a "big party" before embarking on an as-yet unspecified new project.

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Paris, France | Paris fashion fortnight began last week with an apocalyptic warning.

"Our Mother Earth will not be able to support life, we will not be able to breathe... If we don't open our hearts and our minds, it's the End," a disembodied voice intoned as hot Hollywood label Rhude made its Paris debut.

The very next show, Phipps' "Treehugger, Tales of the Forest", was teased on Instagram with pictures of rescued koalas from the Australian wildfires.

It was another sign that fashion now sees itself on the climate change frontline.

But when AFP questioned Rhude designer Rhuigi Villasenor backstage, he admitted there was nothing sustainable about his collection.

He had found the stirring speech on the internet the day before, and didn't know who had made it.

But he insisted his clothes were  "timeless" and would "live through ages and trends".

Campaigners say such "greenwashing" is typical of an industry "that is talking the talk but not walking the walk" on sustainability.

While Rhude is a young brand, it has a starry roster of clients from Justin Bieber to rapper ASAP Rocky and Ellen DeGeneres.

Yet some of the most fabled luxury houses in fashion -- even some whose designers are activists for change -- have found themselves caught short.

- Luxury labels in dock -

Dior's last women's show played hard on its eco-credentials. Set amid trees that were later used to create urban parks, it went heavy on eco-friendly hemp and raffia with models in Greta Thunberg plaits.

Designer Maria Grazia Chiuri told AFP that nature and "humans need to live together if humanity is to survive."

"It is not just about image but action," she added.

Weeks later a damning report by the Changing Markets Foundation on toxic pollution caused by viscose production put Dior and a swathe of other luxury labels including Prada, Versace, Fendi, Armani, Miu Miu and Marc Jacobs in the dock.

Dolce & Gabbana came in for particular criticism.

The much-vaunted biodegradable fabric -- which often is used like silk, has been seen as a silver bullet for fashion's eco woes, a way to wean it off synthetic fibres that come from the petrochemical industry.

While some fast fashion groups like H&M, C&A and ASOS -- which luxury labels blame for fashion's pollution and runaway overproduction -- were praised for making progress in the in-depth "Dirty Fashion Disrupted" study, designer labels were excoriated.

"Three quarters of the luxury brands we looked at were failing to take any meaningful action to clean up their viscose supply chain," its author Urska Trunk told AFP.

Viscose, which comes from wood pulp, is now the third most used fibre in the world and "genuinely has the potential to be a sustainable", Trunk added.

"Unfortunately most of it is still produced in a very dirty process," causing water pollution and an alarming array of mental illnesses, strokes and cancer close to factories in India, China and Indonesia.

While she lauded British designer Stella McCartney for her transparency and ambition, "with most of the other luxury brands it is lip service, mostly hollow words... And that is a major concern."

- Spin but little change -

The report is the foundation's second tracking whether brands were cleaning up their act. With only a handful of firms producing almost all of the world's viscose, Trunk said pressure from brand could make "a massive difference".

For Christie Miedema, of the Dutch-based Clean Clothes Campaign, brands have become expert as "eco messaging" with "one-off collections or clever initiatives to make it looking like they are doing something" without actually changing the way they operate.

Versace, which came bottom only to Walmart in the Changing Markets table, made the front pages by sending Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen to New York's Met Gala in a "100 percent green eco-dress" while Prada -- which is also deep in its "red zone" -- got admiring media coverage for their Re-Nylon "eco handbag".

Dior is part of LVMH, the world's biggest luxury group.

Unlike its main rival Kering and 24 other major clothing companies, LVMH pointedly refused to sign up to "The Fashion Pact" on fighting climate change at the G7 summit last year.

- 'They will be found out' -

Owner Bernard Arnault -- the world's richest man -- later criticised teenage activist Greta Thunberg for "surrendering to total catastrophism" even as he appointed McCartney his personal advisor on sustainability in September.

Kering -- which controls Gucci and Saint Laurent -- has since said it has gone carbon neutral and has vowed to halve greenhouse gas emissions in its supply chain within five years.

Joel Hazan, luxury goods analyst at the Boston Consulting Group, said the industry "had passed a tipping point", and warned those who pretend to embrace sustainability would be found out.

"The demographics will make the difference," he told AFP. "Eight out of 10 millennials expect labels to play a strong part socially and environmentally."

Since almost all growth in luxury goods in the next five years "is predicted to come from millennials, brands have no choice" but to change, Hazan argued.

Indeed Vetements, the hot youthful rebel brand which has shaken Paris fashion in recent years, used its men's show to pour scorn on its elders with slogans such as "Cutting down the bullshit", "Fully sustainable show" and "It costs $0 to be a nice person".

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London, United Kingdom |Despite her tiny stature, Sinead Burke has become a force to be reckoned with in the world of fashion, pushing for designs to become accessible for all.

The 29-year-old Irishwoman, just 1.05 metres (three feet and five inches) tall, has not gone unnoticed at London Fashion Week.

Burke was in the front row at the Victoria Beckham and Roksanda catwalk shows, sitting just a few places away from Anna Wintour, the high priestess of fashion.

She cuts a surprising figure amidst the models, movie actors and pop stars -- yet she too sports luxurious outfits.

Before the Beckham show, Burke was wearing some of the former Spice Girls singer's creations, donning a canary yellow blouse decorated with a black flower, and a straight brown skirt.

But there is plenty more in her wardrobe that she could have chosen from.

"There is some Gucci, some Prada, some Dior, some Balenciaga, some Victoria Beckham, some Christopher Kane, some Burberry," she told AFP.

How did the school teacher from Dublin end up on the cover of Britain's Vogue magazine?

The journey started in March 2017 with a TED Talk -- the online ideas conferences -- and a speech entitled "Why design should include everyone".

Her talk went over the obstacles she faced in daily life in the designed world, from the height of locks on toilet doors to the available range of shoe sizes.

The video, which has been viewed 1.4 million times, seems to have triggered some changes.

"That seemed to be a moment when people were listening to design and accessibility and thinking about this industry in a different way for the first time, so there has been progress," said Burke.

- Vogue cover star -

Burke did not leave it at that. At London Fashion Week in February 2018, she introduced herself to British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enniful, tugging on his sleeve at a Burberry show.

Then she ended up on the cover of the magazine's September 2019 issue, chosen by guest editor Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex as one of 15 female "forces for change".

Top designers have created custom-made outfits for her -- something she considers a "huge privilege and an honour" -- but that was never her goal.

"What I want is just that people understand disability as customisation, which the fashion industry already is familiar with, and make that a tool that is available for everybody," she said.

More than just the symbolism of disabled people on catwalks, she wants long-term systemic change so that "an 18-year-old who is at university, who studies marketing, who is a little person like me, can understand that he can work for Victoria Beckham or for Gucci".

Burke hosts a podcast where she conducts interviews on the theme of identity and difference.

She has also collaborated with the Open Style Lab, an organisation which works on creating wearable clothes for people with disabilities without compromising on style or comfort.

"The idea of this is not necessarily that that collection would be marketable and commercial," she said.

More so that the young designers would learn from working with "different types of bodies" and take that forward into the companies they go on to work for.

"Change has to happen at the most senior level with the chief executive and creative directors but also with the new generation" of designers, said Burke.

Little by little, representation and visibility of people with disabilities was improving, she said, citing the example of 18-year-old Aaron Philip -- the first transsexual, black, disabled model to have joined the books of a large modelling agency, Elite.

There is still a long way to go to transform "the most exclusive industry in the world", she said, though she remains optimistic.

"I thought I would be a teacher for ever and here we are, in London Fashion Week!"

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