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TOP STORY
Functional Clothing / Compressionwear

13 May 2026

 8 minutes

Brands Are Selling Controlled Outcomes in a Category Short on Control

The compression wear category is expanding across athletic performance, medical therapy and smart-textile development simultaneously, placing new demands on product precision and evidentiary standards across all three segments.

Few apparel categories are being asked to do as much at once as compression wear. In the space of two years, brands have pushed the garment into premium athletic performance, post-surgical recovery, smart-textile development and sustainable material sourcing, each requiring a different standard of proof. What that simultaneous expansion reveals about the category's commercial ambitions and their limits is the subject of this analysis.

  • Subir Ghosh
 Feature
Latest: Updates
Other Top Stories
Event Report / Performance Days Report
Circularity, natural performance, seamless construction, and lightweight design are no longer differentiators in the bodywear category. They are the minimum a material must offer to be considered.

From Display to Delivery: Functional Textiles Sector Full of Tools and Short of Systems

  • Subir Ghosh

12 May 2026
Functional Clothing / Adaptive Garments Feature
Conventional garment construction assumed two-handed dexterity and full-range mobility as starting conditions, distributing ease of dressing unevenly across the full range of bodies that needed to wear clothing.

The Clothing Industry Called It Accessibility and the Market Called It an Opportunity

  • Richa Bansal

11 May 2026
 
ITMA 2027
Textiles Recycling Expo 2026
CIRCULARITY / RECYCLING / SECONDS / WASTE
New apparel imports into El Salvador fell by nearly a third between 2019 and 2023, as secondhand clothing filled the affordability gap left by rising prices and constrained household budgets.

El Salvador's Secondhand Clothing Market Is a Blueprint for Affordable Reuse at Scale

In El Salvador, the secondhand clothing market has grown into a primary source of affordable apparel for millions of households navigating inflation, informal employment, and limited purchasing power. A just-released joint study by Garson & Shaw and Full Cycle Resource Consulting maps how US-collected surplus clothing moves through a commercially disciplined supply chain to reach Salvadoran consumers at prices calibrated to local demand.

Special Correspondent
Fashion’s sustainability gains from recycled inputs rely heavily on PET bottles, revealing dependence on another sector’s recycling success rather than internal waste solutions.

Recycled Activewear Reveals the Structural Limits of Fashion’s Sustainability Claims

  • Caroline Swee Lin Tan
  • Saniyat Islam
 Commentary

4 May 2026
Global clothing debates often ignore the basic commercial truth that garments move because people actively choose to buy them.

Evidence Challenges Claims of Waste Hidden in Clothing Trade Flows

  • Special Correspondent
 Interview

16 April 2026
 
Intertex Portugal
Intertextile Shenzen
FLASHPOINT: CLIMATE
Material Innovation / Bezos Fund
The funding signals a research-led push to make alternative materials commercially usable, not merely experimental answers to fashion’s environmental footprint or laboratory curiosity.

The Race to Reinvent What We Wear Gets $34 Million from Bezos Earth Fund

  • Staff Writer
 Update

27 April 2026

Breakthrough textile materials have received $34 million in new Bezos Earth Fund grants, backing research into bacterial fibres, spider-silk-inspired biodegradable materials, coloured cotton and cotton seedbank restoration. The funding targets materials that can match rayon, silk and cotton while improving cost, performance and environmental outcomes across fashion and textile supply chains.

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.

 
Saudi Fashion Tex 2026
COLUMNS
 
EXCLUSIVES
 
Intex Bangladesh
Intex Sri Lanka
Inmac Sri Lanka
FOCUS: COTTON
The Mission for Cotton Productivity targets 140 districts across fourteen states, a coverage that reflects the crop's political and economic weight in India's agrarian landscape.

India Cannot Sell Its Cotton to the World Until It Admits Why the World Stopped Buying

India's cotton sector has a productivity problem, a quality problem and a market-credibility problem. On Tuesday, the Union Cabinet approved a Rs 5,659.22 crore mission that proposes to address all three simultaneously, through seeds, ginning modernisation, traceability infrastructure and a national branding programme. What the mission does not address may be more revealing than what it does.

Subir Ghosh
 
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"

Lalit Kumar Gupta
Lalit Kumar Gupta
Chairman-Cum-Managing Director
Cotton Corporation of India
With a pan-India presence over 570 procurement centres across 11 major cotton-growing states, CCI directly procures raw cotton from farmers at APMC yards while closely monitoring market conditions throughout the season. Digital initiatives, such as the Kapas Kisan mobile app, enable Aadhaar- and land record-based self-registration and slot booking, ensuring efficient and transparent procurement. All cotton and cotton seed stocks are sold via an independent e-auction portal, making the sales system market-driven and transparent.
MORE: ‘MSP Isn’t Distorting Prices’: CCI Head on Imports, Yields, and the Road to Cotton Stability
 
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