For several hundred years, fashion has taken itself way too seriously. A cleansing fire of young, creative people is exactly what is needed right now. We should all take a page out their book and find joy in dressing in whatever we want.

When a practising lawyer decided to start a rent-your-clothes service in India way back in 2016, in a market where rental is still quite a taboo, she slogged at all levels—from the warehouse to the retail store and even home-delivered orders to customers. Her company, valued at ₹500 million, today rents out 300 garments each day. Aanchal Saini, Chief Executive Officer of the country's first and largest fashion rental company, Flyrobe, recounts her journey.

The VDMA or Verband Deutscher Maschinen-und Anlagenbau or the German Engineering Federation, representing more than 3,600 German and European mechanical and plant engineering companies, employs around 3 million people in the EU-27 with more than 1.2 million in Germany alone. Focused on innovation, exports and SMEs, around 80% of the machinery sold in the EU comes from manufacturing plants in the domestic market. texfash.com in conversation with Dr Harald Weber, who has been the Managing Director of the VDMA Textile Machinery Association since January 2023.

Cradle to Cradle Certified is the leading multi-attribute standard used globally for more than a decade for designing and making products that enable a healthy, equitable and sustainable future, according to the world’s most advanced science-based measures. texfash.com in conversation with Nienke Steen, Global Lead—Apparel, Textile and Footwear, Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute.

It's difficult to predict the future with certainty, but Colombia has the potential to become a more robust exporter. Abundant natural resources, a growing manufacturing sector and measures by the government to improve the country's competitiveness, make it easier for companies to export goods. However, the success of these efforts will depend on multiple factors, Craig Dempsey, Chief Executive Officer of the Bogotá-based Biz Latin Hub tells texfash.com in the concluding piece of this WireFrame series on Colombia.

Spearheading the promotion of the textiles & fashion industry of Colombia is ProColombia, under the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Tourism. The organisation's expansive mandate includes boosting international tourism, foreign investments and non-traditional exports. Carmen Caballero, ProColombia's President, tells texfash.com how the country is working to ramp up its textiles & fashion industry.

As the demand for near-shoring slowly gathers steam both for reasons of political compulsions and logistics issues, there is one country that is ready to make the best of it: Colombia. The country is both steeped in traditional textiles and is just as modern in its approach to environmental issues. But, can Colombia live up to the promise that the future holds? The first of a three-part WireFrame series from texfash.com.

Commodity prices have a direct bearing on farmer incomes, as do the prices that garment manufacturers are willing to pay for raw materials. Tamar Hoek, Senior Policy Director (Sustainable Fashion) at Solidaridad Network, disentangles the threads that make for these intricate relationships.

Garments traverse a complex global supply network by the time they reach stores thousands of miles away. Workers are caught in this web, exploited by factory management. Western brands escape the scrutiny of their governments by outsourcing production to low-cost countries and absolve themselves of direct responsibility. This complex system makes it hard to assign ethical responsibility, because everyone, and therefore no one, is guilty.

Multilateral government oversight of working conditions (at the point of production) combined with further regulations encouraging ethical supply chains (at the point of import), may be a more effective way to reduce the chances of another Rana Plaza.