It ain't fashion, if it ain't sustainable
texfash.com
 
TOP STORY
Rethinking Circularity / Garments Apart / PART II

8 April 2026

 7 minutes

Circular Design Is Not Compromising Performance; It Is Redefining What Performance Means

The argument for circular outerwear does not begin at the end of a garment's life. It begins with what the garment is made from, and why those choices matter.

High-performance outerwear has been optimised, for decades, around functional benchmarks that left little room for circular thinking. A project built around one garment—drawing on down insulation, heat-dissolvable stitching, and recycled nylon shell fabric—is testing whether that incompatibility is real or assumed. The findings, drawn from contributors across the supply chain, suggest the conflict is more a question of material selection than structural limitation.

  • Subir Ghosh
 Feature
Latest: Updates
Other Top Stories
State of Sourcing / China Angle Report
A decade of deliberate diversification has redistributed apparel assembly across multiple countries, without meaningfully reducing dependence on Chinese upstream supply chains.

The Sourcing Story: Industry Rewrote Its Geography Without Rewriting Its Dependence

  • Richa Bansal

7 April 2026
Rethinking Circularity / Garments Apart / I Feature
Where performance apparel meets its limits, the real question is not what a garment is made from, but how it was conceived to end.

Four Partners, One Jacket, and a New Logic for End-of-Life

  • Subir Ghosh

6 April 2026
 
ITMA 2027
SMART 2026
CIRCULARITY / RECYCLING / SECONDS / WASTE
Textile recovery depends not only on what is collected but on whether the system receiving it has the capacity to distinguish value from waste at scale.

The Recycling System Was Not Built for What It Receives

Textile collection is expanding. Recovery is not keeping pace. The gap between the two is not primarily a question of ambition or regulation—it is a question of material reality. What enters collection systems is compositionally diverse, conditionally uneven, and frequently incompatible with the processing infrastructure waiting to receive it. The scale of that mismatch is only beginning to be properly understood.

Special Correspondent
Collection infrastructure has grown faster than the systems needed to interpret, sort, and process what arrives—exposing a structural imbalance at the heart of textile circularity.

Circularity Has Been Mistaken for the Act of Gathering

  • Special Correspondent
 Report

1 April 2026
 
FLASHPOINT: CLIMATE
Climate Action / Ethiopia Project
Ethiopia's garment sector is entering a new phase, where climate resilience, cleaner production and worker advancement are becoming central to industrial strategy.

Climate Resilience and Workplace Safety Drive New ILO-Japan Programme for Ethiopian Garment Factories

  • Staff Writer
 Update

1 April 2026

Climate resilience, productivity and workplace safety are being advanced across Ethiopia's leather, textile and garment sector through a new ILO-Japan joint initiative. The one-year programme targets 40 factories across five cities, integrating Japanese expertise, digitalised safety tools and a women's leadership development programme to drive sustainable and inclusive industrial growth.

Climate Action / Toolkit
The System Map visualises the textiles industry as an interconnected ecosystem shaped by flows of capital, incentives, innovation, regulation and demand, highlighting where decisions shift system-wide outcomes.

H&M Foundation Launches Open-Access Workshop Toolkit to Help Fashion Stakeholders Halve Emissions Every Decade

  • Staff Writer
 Update

30 March 2026

H&M Foundation has launched an open-access workshop toolkit enabling brands, suppliers, policymakers and investors to apply its System Map across the textiles industry. Developed with Accenture, the toolkit identifies leverage points to halve greenhouse gas emissions every decade until 2050, while supporting a just transition that avoids shifting costs onto the most vulnerable.

 
ITMA 2027
COLUMNS
 
EXCLUSIVES
 
FOCUS: COTTON
Regenerative agriculture asks that farming restore what it takes from the land—a principle now embedded in the standards governing how Better Cotton is grown worldwide.

Regenerative Practices Move to the Centre of BCI's Revised Cotton Farming Standard, Effective April 2026

Cotton's farm-level production standard has been strengthened with a sharper regenerative agriculture focus, following BCI's release of Principles and Criteria v.3.2. The updated standard introduces targeted improvements to selected indicators, enhances auditability across diverse growing contexts, and advances BCI's broader ambition to operate as a fully regenerative standards system.

Staff Writer
 
Saudi Fashion Tex 2026
SPOTLIGHT ARTICLES: MOST READ
 
SPOTLIGHT EDITIONS: SELECT 4
Cotton for Good 2024 7 Oct 2024
One Crop, One Fibre, Many Stories
 
 

Highlights: Sea Change

"Quote Unquote"

Mattias Wallander
Mattias Wallander
Chief Executive Officer
USAgain
The real hurdle isn't the map, but the fragmented municipal governance: complex, varying permit costs and restrictive zoning are barriers to expansion. If local governments can align on model ordinances and move away from restrictive industrial-only zoning, the 13% yearover- year growth seen in France may be possible in California.
MORE: California’s Textile EPR Ambition Hinges on Infrastructure and Local Regulation

"Quote Unquote"

Dr Arup Rakshit
Dr Arup Rakshit
Director
Man Made Textiles Research Association
In the early years, MANTRA focused mainly on testing and R&D support for the textile industry in Surat. It provided services to weaving units, dyeing units, and processing houses. Over time, the scope expanded. Technical textiles emerged as a new focus area, and MANTRA started taking up projects in geotextiles, medical textiles, and other specialised areas.
MORE: To Remain Competitive Globally, Surat Must Embrace Sustainability
 
FOCUS: LEATHER
The fair's expansion into newly constructed exhibition halls at Chennai Trade Centre failed to address fundamental organisational issues, with similar product categories scattered across disparate locations forcing extended navigation.

IILF 2026 Exposes Gap Between Boardroom Sustainability and Tannery Floor Reality

Chennai's IILF 2026 exposed contradictions shaping India's leather industry: innovative chemical systems alongside organisational failures, Trump tariffs suppressing demand yet prices holding firm, and sustainability frameworks that never reach tannery workers. The 'Leather Carnival' demonstrated both the sector's professionalisation and its struggle to reconcile traditional identity with market realities.

Vasan Suri
Lineapelle 2025 demonstrated that the industry is ready to communicate in a different way. The collaboration between UNIC, Lineapelle, La Conceria, Is It Leather?, and voices like Volkan’s marks the beginning of a more open, consumer-connected era. But collaboration must extend to influencers, educators, and storytellers, people who can speak the language of the next generation of consumers.

The Power of Storytelling, Community and Leather’s Next Chapter

  • Blake Garavaglia
 Commentary

14 October 2025
 
 
ATTENTION: DENIM
 
COMPANY NEWS / PRESS RELEASES
 
 
Young India Fashion Survey 2025