It ain't fashion, if it ain't sustainable
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TOP STORY
Climate Action / Decarbonisation Costs

23 February 2026

 6 minutes

Fashion’s Growth Model Faces a Structural Climate Stress Test

Climate exposure in apparel is increasingly expressed in margins and capital flows rather than abstract sustainability metrics or voluntary disclosures.

Climate risk is increasingly being modelled not as a reputational concern but as a margin-level financial exposure. New analysis suggests operating profits in apparel could shrink sharply under accelerated net-zero transitions. Kristina Elinder Liljas, Senior Director of Sustainable Finance and Engagement at Apparel Impact Institute, argues that carbon exposure now belongs inside capital allocation models, not sustainability reports.

  • Subir Ghosh
 Interview
Latest: Updates
Other Top Stories
Forest Resources / MMCF Pressures Analysis
The promise of renewable fibres rests on a forest economy now tightening under climate pressure, land competition, and regulatory scrutiny across multiple jurisdictions.

Textile Brands Underestimating Wood-Fibre Exposure as Climate and Regulation Converge

  • Subir Ghosh

19 February 2026
Consumer Returns / Fast Fashion Analysis
Free returns reshaped digital fashion by lowering purchasing risk, but they also embedded hidden environmental costs within everyday shopping routines.

Charging for Returns Won’t Fix Fast Fashion’s Structural Waste and Overproduction Model

  • Anastasia Vayona

18 February 2026
 
Intertextile Shanghai Apparel Fabrics – Spring Edition
CIRCULARITY / RECYCLING / SECONDS / WASTE
Informal employment and thin profit margins heighten vulnerability to unsafe conditions, wage insecurity and labour exploitation across collection and sorting activities.

Informal Recycling Work Heightens Exposure to Labour and Environmental Harm Across Value Chains, OECD Analysis Finds

Recycling processes in the garment and footwear sector were found to carry heightened labour, environmental and governance risks, driven by widespread informality, low margins and hazardous working conditions. The analysis highlighted forced labour, child labour, unsafe facilities and criminal waste practices as material exposures within collection, sorting and reprocessing systems.

Staff Writer
 
FLASHPOINT: CLIMATE
Beyond Headlines / STICA Report
The gap between what the apparel industry reports on climate and what its emissions trajectory reveals is a defining tension of the current sustainability era.

Fashion Industry's Climate Reporting Has Outrun Its Actual Emissions Progress

  • Subir Ghosh
 Analysis

17 February 2026

The apparel sector now produces more climate data than at any earlier point. Fifty companies under the STICA initiative disclosed emissions inventories, transition plans, and targets in 2025. Yet sector-wide emissions continue to rise, and nearly half of signatories report they are behind on primary climate targets. The distance between disclosure capability and actual decarbonisation performance is not closing.

Climate Impact / Garment Workers
Supplier investments in renewable energy and efficiency upgrades are largely self-financed or debt-funded, while formal brand-backed adaptation frameworks remain rare across assessed companies. Worker exposure to heat stress, flooding and income disruption was repeatedly documented, yet structured financial support from buyers remains minimal.

Climate Adaptation for Garment Workers Remains Critically Underfunded in Global Supply Chains, Report Finds

  • Staff Writer
 Update

13 February 2026

A new Roadmap has urged global fashion brands sourcing from major garment-producing hubs to fund and implement a Just Energy Transition across their supply chains, warning that persistent financing gaps, weak adaptation measures and price-driven purchasing practices are shifting climate risks onto suppliers and workers throughout production networks.

 
Morocco Fashion Tex 2026
COLUMNS
 
EXCLUSIVES
 
Saudi Fashion Tex 2026
FOCUS: COTTON
The rise in imports reflects short-term domestic supply constraints and competitive global prices, particularly for higher staple-length cotton.

‘MSP Isn’t Distorting Prices’: CCI Head on Imports, Yields, and the Road to Cotton Stability

The single largest cotton trading company and a public sector undertaking under the Union Ministry of Textiles, the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI), established in 1970, undertakes price support and commercial purchase operations to safeguard the economic interest of farmers in the cotton growing regions and to ensure its smooth supply to the textile industry. A Q&A with its Chairman-Cum-Managing Director, Lalit Kumar Gupta.

Richa Bansal
From sowing to spinning, every segment of India’s cotton value chain is under stress, affected by rising costs, outdated technology, and fragmented policy oversight across ministries.

Frayed Futures: India’s Cotton Crop Unspooling Fast

  • Richa Bansal
 Report

3 November 2025
 
 
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"

Kristina Elinder Lilja
Kristina Elinder Lilja
Senior Director, Sustainable Finance and Engagement
Apparel Impact Institute
Carbon pricing would be the most structurally embedded risk and hardest to reverse. Carbon pricing is different as it sits directly on Scope 3, where 96–99% of apparel emissions occur. That means it’s embedded in Tier 2 manufacturing and upstream energy systems. Unless those systems decarbonise, cost exposure compounds year over year.
MORE: Fashion’s Growth Model Faces a Structural Climate Stress Test

"Quote Unquote"

Mihir Bholey
Mihir Bholey
Former Principal Faculty, Interdisciplinary Design Studies, Science and Liberal Arts
National Institute of Design
In the Indian context, fashion is inseparable from textiles. India has a very rich textile tradition, deeply rooted in ethnic practices and aesthetics. At the same time, design is also a global language, and globalisation has led to homogenisation. When you visit superstores in Europe or Asia, you often see similar, standardised products. The truly distinctive items usually come from traditional markets. Once a product is converted into a brand, it risks becoming homogenised and losing its uniqueness.

MORE: How Indian Design and Craft Can Stay Relevant by Blending Tradition with Modern Innovation
 
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