Fashion Isn’t Sustainable…But It Could Come Close

“Sustainable” is now one of the most overused words in fashion. It appears on swing tags, marketing campaigns and corporate reports, yet the industry continues to overproduce, over-ship and under-value the very materials it relies on. The uncomfortable truth is that sustainability in fashion is not failing because brands don’t care – it’s failing because the system itself was never designed to support it. 

Now the industry is at a crux – to be sustainable, which fashion, let’s fact it, can never entirely be, brands need to produce less, closer to home, remove the use of chemicals, excessive water use…the list goes on…sell and make a profit. This is where the transition lies to be as sustainable as possible and make enough profit to function as a business with longevity!

The true cost…

Let’s use a simple garment as an example: the cotton T-shirt. A standard cotton T-shirt can travel 15,000 to 30,000 miles before it reaches a UK shop floor. In many cases, it passes through eight to twelve separate touchpoints across five to eight countries.

Cotton may be grown in India, the US or Pakistan. It is then ginned, shipped to another country to be spun into yarn, moved again to be knitted into fabric, transported elsewhere for dyeing and finishing, then sent to a different country entirely to be cut and sewn. From there it travels by ship or by air, if speed is required to a distribution hub before finally reaching retail.

Each stage is optimised for cost, not proximity. Each movement adds carbon, complexity and risk. And this is before returns, which can effectively double the footprint of a single garment. Calling this system “sustainable” because the cotton is organic just makes a mockery of the notion.

The old model is collapsing

For decades, fashion has relied on a business model built on long lead times, globalised production and volume-driven margins. It only works when demand is predictable, growth is constant and waste can be hidden through discounting.

That model is now unravelling. Retailers tied to high volumes and distant supply chains are closing in their droves, caught between rising costs, overstock and consumers increasingly aware of waste. At the same time, brands pursuing slower, more responsible production are gaining media attention and consumer goodwill yet many are struggling to survive economically.

The contradiction is stark: doing the right thing environmentally often makes it harder to stay in business.

The sustainability myth

Much of the sustainability conversation has been framed around absolutes: zero impact, closed loops, fully traceable garments made in one place. In reality, this is neither achievable nor helpful.

The more meaningful question is not “Is this garment sustainable?” but “Is it less damaging than the alternative?” Progress in fashion will not come from eliminating supply chains, but from shortening them.

Reducing a T-shirt’s journey from eight countries to three or four can cut transport emissions dramatically. Keeping spinning, knitting and making within the same region, even if that region is Europe rather than the UK, has a far greater impact than swapping one fibre for another while maintaining global complexity.

Producing closer to home

The UK will never be a mass cotton producer, but it does have underused strengths that are increasingly relevant.

Wool remains one of the country’s most abundant and under-valued resources, suitable not just for heritage knitwear but for modern jersey, blends and lightweight fabrics. The UK also produces large volumes of leather as a by-product of the food industry, alongside growing capabilities in recycled fibres, yarn spinning and textile innovation.

Flax and hemp, once central to British textile production, are re-emerging in small but promising ways. Meanwhile, the UK is becoming a hub for textile sorting, recycling and fibre-to-fibre research, an essential move if the industry is serious about circularity. The opportunity is not to replicate fast fashion locally, but to design differently around what already exists.

“Let Mother Nature be your co-designer. She wastes nothing. She balances every system. She creates beauty with purpose.” – Jane Goodall

Reuse before recycling

One of the industry’s biggest blind spots is the sheer volume of textiles already in circulation. There is no shortage of material – only a shortage of systems to reuse it effectively.

Recycling has an important role to play, but it is energy-intensive and often downcycles fibres into lower-quality products. Reuse, reprocessing and intelligent upcycling keep materials at their highest value for longer.

This requires design decisions made at the very beginning: simpler constructions, fewer blended fibres, removable trims, and garments intended to be repaired rather than replaced. It also requires upcycling to move beyond one-off aesthetics and into repeatable production models that small brands can actually scale.

A path forward for small brands

For emerging designers and independent labels, sustainability cannot be a solo endeavour. The economics rarely work in isolation.

Shared production runs, collective dyeing, pooled minimums and cooperative logistics offer a more realistic route forward. Collaboration between brands, mills, manufacturers and recyclers provides an environmental and economical pathway.

Redefining success

The fashion industry is at a pivotal moment. The old model is collapsing under its own weight, while the new one is still being built. In this transition, sustainability must be reframed not as a badge of moral purity, but as a process of continual improvement.

True progress will come from:

• Fewer touchpoints
• Shorter journeys
• Better use of existing materials
• And business models designed to endure, not just to impress

EPR implementation 

As the fashion industry grapples with its systemic flaws, legislative momentum is beginning to align with the urgency of circular solutions. In the UK, updated Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations for packaging, part of a broader shift toward product life-cycle accountability, are set to take effect from 1st January 2026, requiring producers to cover the environmental costs of their products’ end-of-life impacts and incentivising reuse and recycling over disposal. These changes mark a significant step towards embedding circularity into the lifecycle of products and signal that brands need to implement sustainable and circular practices now!

By JoJo Iles

Images by Ron Lach via pexels.com