texfash

The world's cotton importers have shifted towards a single dominant exporter at a time of rising weather risk. Brazil shipped 3.37 million tonnes in 2025/26, far ahead of the United States, and its Centre-West cotton belt is in El Niño's dry zone. Conab and StoneX both expect each hectare of Brazilian cotton to yield less this season.

Fashion's sourcing data and its fibre data are moving in different directions. Companies in Textile Exchange's benchmark raised the share of five fibres sourced through standards and certification programmes to 72% in 2025, while polyester took most of the growth in fibre output in 2024. A cotton shortfall driven by El Niño would show which measure defines progress.

Global cotton supply is projected to fall short of demand independently of El Niño. The USDA's August figures put the gap at about 5.3 million bales, and prices rallied on supply concerns before falling back by about a tenth. For spinners that contracted near the peak, a weather shock later this year would compound an existing loss.

Much of India's textile waste is too mixed or contaminated to resell, reuse or recycle. Asha Singhal, Director, Nature of Fashion at The Biomimicry Institute, explains what the fourth Nature of Fashion pilot will target, what India can take from earlier work in Ghana, the Netherlands and Germany, and why local conditions must shape the technologies tested.

India generates an estimated 7.8 million tonnes of textile waste a year, and much of the low-value, mixed or contaminated fraction has no commercially viable end-of-life pathway. Shruti Goel, Chief Executive Officer of Upaya Social Ventures, explains how a new accelerator run with The Biomimicry Institute will support decomposition enterprises while tying their growth to dignified, verifiable employment.

Wellness claims in apparel can drift from what a fabric contains to what it supposedly does for the wearer, and the evidence needed rises in between. Vamsi Sivalanka, Founder and Executive Director, and Akhilesh Karni, Co-Founder and CFO, of NITISI Limited, set out how they separate material, biological and wearer-level evidence, and why sustainability verification cannot substitute for technical proof.

Growing commercial interest in traditional techniques has turned handmade irregularity into a marketable quality, yet the labour and knowledge behind it often go unexamined. Sayali Goyal, a textile visual artist, discusses natural dyes, mechanisation and the line between inspiration and extraction, and why communities should have a say in how their knowledge is represented and sold.

Lower fossil-carbon content is increasingly presented as proof of sustainability, though a single percentage can obscure emissions, water use, durability and end-of-life outcomes. Kiki Chen, Global Marketing Communications Manager, Sorona Apparel at Covation Biomaterials, argues for clearer distinctions between feedstock, polymer and finished-product content, independent certification and fuller lifecycle disclosure before bio-based performance materials are judged.

Seamless construction has given Indian intimatewear a new vocabulary of comfort, softness and stretch, yet the manufacturing economics behind it remain demanding. Pankaj Kabutarwala, Founder and Owner of Piccion, a venture of Pigeon Industries, argues that advanced Italian machinery matters far less than four decades of accumulated knowledge in yarns, dyeing and integrated garment production.

The environmental debate around fast fashion has long turned on a single question: cotton or polyester, which is greener. A comprehensive lifecycle assessment now suggests the question itself was misplaced. Tracing garments from raw material through disposal, the research finds transport mode and garment lifespan reshape emissions by margins that no fibre substitution can match.