2025: The Fashion Technology Rearview
An annual tradition: our team recaps and comments on the stories that defined each month of this year in fashion technology.
The Trouble With Trying To Regulate Demand
Europe is stepping up enforcement and legal challenges against fast-fashion platforms, while domestic retailers struggle with the deeper reality of an affordability crisis. In that context, is “fair competition” really the right lever for fashion to pull?
Can Shared Data Help Fix Fashion’s Climate Problem?
The Fashion Pact’s European Accelerator aims to bring consistency to supplier reporting, and to test whether standardised data can help fashion make real headway on emissions.
Regulating Fast Fashion in a Cost-Conscious Market
France and Italy are tightening scrutiny on Shein and ultra-fast fashion, but consumer demand shows little signs of slowing in a price-driven market.
Fashion’s Coal Addiction Is Blocking The Very Innovations That Could Save It
While the rest of the world embraces renewables, the fashion industry remains hopelessly besotted with coal. In doing so, it’s not only polluting the planet but also locking itself out of the very innovations that could make sustainability possible.
Fashion And Beauty’s Race To Lock In Recycled Inputs
Forward-thinking companies are shifting from published commitments to pre-emptive contracts designed to redress the balance between the materials they need and the availability of recycled and preferred feedstocks and inputs.
Podcast: Climate Transformation And The Circular Economy
A grounded perspective on environmental tipping points, the reality of recycling, and the gap between fashion’s linear growth economy and the vision for a viable circular alternative.
Podcast: Making Climate-Conscious Menswear Work Commercially
From transparency and take-back to 3D technology, Nick Reed, Founder of Neem London, talks about the practicalities of building a slow fashion business - and the need for great product to be at the front of it all.
The Hidden Cost of Carrying On
Holiday forecasts point to rising sales but falling sentiment. If demand softens, fashion and beauty keep producing, and the cost of waste is finally coming due.
Putting Cotton’s Value Chain In Focus
From innovation to sustainability to digital design, cotton’s journey connects the entire industry. A new content channel from CottonWorks highlights how those connections are defining the fabric of fashion today.
Does Fashion’s Continued Reliance On Fossil Fuels Make It More Fragile?
New investigations into the industry’s upstream energy mix - in synthetic fibres and production - remind us that fossil fuels are not just a blindspot in disclosure, but also a potential point of failure.
The New Arms Race in Lab Testing And Compliance
Navigating Regulatory Compliance with Digital Tools.
The Fork In The Road To Fashion’s Future Impact
Sustainability is finding measurable momentum, culturally and commercially, but fast fashion, as a business model and a mindset, is still accelerating at the same time.
Fast Fashion Fines Arrive, But Circularity Infrastructure Is Showing Cracks
Governments are taking more punitive steps in what they see as a fightback against ultra fast fashion - even if they’re coming from unexpected angles. But this new pressure point is getting squeezed just as the physical systems required to make fashion more circular are under heightened strain.