Daniëlle Bruggeman was invited as a speaker at Rio Ethical Fashion 2020 last October. This event included panel sessions with leading professionals in global fashion, talks, thematic discussion as well as network rooms, fashion films, complementary study packages and a sustainable and thorough immersion in fashion issues.

Daniëlle Bruggeman participated in the cultural appropriation panel, titled ‘inspiration or appropriation?' Here she engaged in a conversation with Monica Moisin founder of Cultural Intellectual Property Rights Initiative, and Rodney William, author and social scientist, moderated by Carol Barreto, Authorial Fashion Designer and Professor of Gender and Feminist Studies. Within this panel Daniëlle Bruggeman reflected on Dissolving the Ego of Fashion in relation to current debates on cultural identity, power structures and cultural appropriation. Various themes were addressed within this panel: dissolving power relations and systems of domination and dissolving the dynamics of Orientalism and neocolonialism along with giving more agency to precarious people. The contributors also spoke of giving more agency to objects that are otherwise captured by the logic of (re)appropriation through commodification.