1 Sustainability in the fashion industry. Using EEG to understand consumers’ intentions towards sustainable eco-luxury items Balconi Michela, Research Unit in Affective and Social Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy Sebastiani Roberta, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy Galeone Annalisa, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy Angioletti Laura, Research Unit in Affective and Social Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy *Corresponding author Angioletti Laura Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy Largo Gemelli, 1, 20123, Milan, Italy Tel: +39-2-72345929 E-mail address: laura.angioletti1@unicatt.it ABSTRACT Cortical activity was assessed in fashion-luxury addicted consumers with a different sustainability orientation, in order to obtain insight on implicit dynamic towards eco-luxury products. Findings highlighted a strong emotional negative impact elicited by sustainability pictures implying a high engagement in luxury consumers when exposed to specific sensitive issues. Key words: sustainability, fashion industry, EEG, eco-luxury consumers, consumer behaviour. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, the fashion industry is growing day-by-day due to the increasingly frequent demands of the population, gaining success and popularity, but also generating new social, environmental and economic issues which need to be solved through global solutions. This industry is one of the major contributors to problems of social and environmental sustainability (Pedersen & Andersen, 2015). Indeed, the entire lifecycle of a garment in the clothing supply chain (i.e. from the materials to the disposal, going through fabric and garment production, distribution, retail and use), faces several sustainability challenges. The latter can be social (e.g. working conditions, sweatshops, child labour, workers’ rights, different types of risks, animal welfare) or environmental (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, water use, toxicity, energy use) (Pedersen & Gwozdz, 2014). Their impact is extremely enhanced by the exponential growth in clothes’ daily consumption and more and more