The Sustainable Fashion Read on August
August gave us a real mixed bag of news across the spectrum of sustainability.
From global partnerships really levelling up change to local milestones and innovations we need to celebrate.
At the heart of all of this we’re seeing a synergy between how brands, shoppers, institutions and governments alike are taking bio-based and circular innovations seriously as a way to pivot and differentiate how we engage with fashion.
We’ve pulled together a breakdown of key themes across the past month, and what they mean for industries across the fashion and innovation space.
Rental is having a huge moment
Big financial projections and diversifications in how rental is managed have come through in a powerful way across the past four weeks.
✷ A new report from The Business Research Company states the online clothing rental market is forecast to grow from $2.11 billion in 2026 to $3.15 billion by 2030, as access, affordability and occasion dressing keep making ownership less essential. See morehere.
✷Oxfam launched a 14-day fashion rental pilot from £22, testing whether charity retail can capture more value from garments already in circulation. Read more on how it worked.
✷ Nuuly is working withGreenEarth Cleaning as rental scales, spotlighting the operational infrastructure needed to keep garments moving between wardrobes. Explore why this kind of synergy is important here.
✷ Hauteline announced its rent-then-buy model where rental spend contributes towards purchase, giving customers a lower-risk route into ownership. See more on the benefits of the model.
For brands across the spectrum, August has highlighted the importance of meeting consumers where they’re at in terms of rental. As a circular avenue, it comes with its apprehensions and potential complications - addressing these through new ways of engaging with rental really opens this space up into its opportunities.
Seeing this from the charity sector in particular is a really interesting move, and many charities are struggling to stabilise and scale the wake of digital resale platforms providing extremely low buy-in prices for shoppers and scrollers.
National infrastructure partnerships
Progression at a large scale warrants huge collaboration. Increasingly, brands, organisations and governments are waking up to the economic potential of integrating circularity and setting up frameworks to navigate change.
✷ The UAE's Naseej initiative is working with theEllen MacArthur Foundation on a national textile circularity framework designed to connect policy, collection, recycling and industry action around the country's estimated 220,000 tonnes of annual textile waste. See the full breakdown here.
✷ UNDPhas mapped circular textile pathways for Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan after studying 134 businesses, identifying recycling infrastructure, traceability, finance and skills as the practical gaps between individual initiatives and functioning circular systems. A really interesting read of the full study here.
✷ TheEllen MacArthur Foundation has joinedAmerican Circular Textiles (AMCIRC) as an insights partner, bringing its systems expertise into US textile policy as circularity becomes an increasingly serious regulatory conversation. Check the full lowdown here.
✷Twyg's sixth AfricaTextileTalks brought policymakers, designers and industry leaders together around regenerative value chains, with a focus on keeping more manufacturing, materials and economic value within Africa. We’d recommend reading the full debrief. wards measurable improvements in throughput, accuracy and recovery value. The circular economy needs compelling brands, and it also needs machinery capable of handling enormous volumes of inconsistent products.
These partnerships and initiatives demonstrate how intersectional sustainability really is. We need voices in the room from all parties to have tangible conversations around opportunities, pain points and limitations within the systems we have and are looking to scale.
Brands need to be open to having these conversations to be seen as key, influential players driving change in the industry.
Resale fashion just keeps thriving
No surprises on a continued resale narrative. More brands are getting involved and seeing huge successes understanding that second hand purchasing is an entry point across market levels.
✷ The RealReal launched its 2026 Resale Report, saying resale is becoming many shoppers' first stop. Brands like CHANEL,Louis Vuitton and Hermès are gaining younger customers through pre-owned purchases rather than new. Catch the full 2026 report.
✷ lululemonhas brought its 'Like New' resale programme to Canada, extending the brand's relationship with its products beyond the first sale and bringing re-commerce directly into its retail model. See how they did it.
✷ eBay says 93% of regular Australian resellers now consider resale value when buying fashion, having launched a new AI listing tool claiming to make selling easier, facilitating future secondhand value into part of the original purchase decision. See what their new tool does.
✷ Depop and Spotify have teamed up with six artists on shoppable secondhand wardrobes, playlists and a Los Angeles activation, putting resale directly inside music and fan culture rather than selling it through sustainability alone. Check out who was involved.
Resale is a very well established space in 2026. Pivoting how to handle it is what is really making leaders within this space - cultural relevance is becoming everything.
From understanding that many people are considering the resale value of clothes and accessories before deciding to buy, or seeing that people still want to have aspiration associated with what they buy, there’s a lot of room for this space to continue to take weird and wonderful shape.
Universities and research landing hard
Arguably, nobody is connecting the dots like students and researchers are. Integrating and leveraging this type of thinking is what is so fantastic about institutions across the globe.
✷ New research fromChonnam National University found environmental responsibility can improve financial performance through increased sales, adding some useful evidence to the commercial case for genuinely doing better. See all details.
✷ De Montfort University is embedding CircKit into fashion education, giving students practical experience with lifecycle assessment and design data as sustainability skills move from theory into the tools they’ll actually use at work. Explore more on how this is making change.
✷ Fashion Vocabulary founder Hana Towobola launches a shared sustainability language for fashion, tackling the confusion that makes regulation, education and claims harder to navigate. 100% recommend checking it out here.
✷ Arts University Bournemouth is exploring seaweed as a future denim ingredient, adding marine-based fibres to a growing wave of research looking for scalable alternatives to cotton's resource-intensive footprint. Read more on the exploration.
Facilitating context and exploration around design thinking is essential. Whether that lands on biomaterials, entire circular considerations or expanded knowledge of the breadth of the sustainability landscape, all these movement lend themselves to creating a generation of designers and innovators working with an expansive view of the fashion system.
Innovation to scale
Scale in terms of material development and more conscious ways of designing has always been an area where true possibility has often faltered. We’re seeing rapid change in that across various fields.
✷VTT TECHNICAL RESEARCH CENTRE OF FINLAND has developed a pulp-based mycelium material that can be produced continuously using existing industrial equipment, directly tackling one of biomaterials' biggest barriers: making enough of them. Check out what these mushrooms can do.
✷ Arc'teryx Equipment has rebuilt one of its jackets from the inside out, designing materials, trims and construction together so the product can actually be recovered at end of life rather than relying on recycling as an afterthought - describing is as its 'most circular product yet'. See more on the jacket and framework.
✷Arda Biomaterials is scaling New Grain™, its plastic-free material made from beer and whisky waste, towards commercial launch in 2027. Very cool - read about it.Circularity is becoming a professional skillset with technical, creative and organisational value.
Not only are brands and biomaterial innovators now having the opportunity to test scale, we are increasingly developing a landscape where these initiatives are backed by consumers, design houses and funding initiatives. This is a great opportunity for brands who want to be first movers in the space to leverage innovators moving at this rate.
Suppliers and social impact
With so much discourse on the innovations in circular economy, labour rights and violations remain an underserved part of the discussion. We’ve seen some positive spotlights on this area across the past month.
✷ Rana Plaza survivors are seeking to take their campaign directly to the UK Labour Party conference, keeping worker representation and financial hardship on the political agenda 13 years after the disaster. See the plan.
✷ Manchester labelWAWWA is growing its local manufacturing operation around UK-made clothing, Living Wage production and profit sharing, an interesting counterpoint to fashion’s continued reliance on outsourced, low-cost production. Check it out.
✷ A new ethical marketplace Causee is prepping to launch with its first charitable partner Pepala signed up, this will test whether social impact works better when it is embedded into commerce itself. Read more.
✷ The Apparel Impact Institute has launched a new supplier decarbonisation fund, directing finance towards factories where the majority of fashion's emissions sit - acknowledging that brands cannot hit climate targets without their supply chains coming with them. Explore how this runs and what it means.
✷ Research into Jordan’s garment industry has again put migrant worker conditions under scrutiny, while the Jordanian government andInternational Labour Organization begin a new programme covering labour inspection, forced-labour prevention, fair recruitment and access to remedy. See more on the report.
We have a huge way to go in this area of the fashion industry. Brands need to take accountability for the way their supply chains are handled - taking thorough precautions and a much more involved approach into the inner workings of labour practices is one of the most valuable ways to demonstrate commitment to a changed industry.
Learn more on the ongoing exploitation of the industry here.
Struggles to scale & goodbyes
Sustainable processes have their limitations. ‘Goodwill’ isn’t enough to make a brand or initiative succeed - resource-oriented and commercial understanding is essential.
✷Vinted-backed sustainability-themed design competition ReStyle with Emma Willis has been cancelled by Amazon Prime after just one season after not hitting the audience numbers needed for a new series. See more.
✷MUD Jeans has been declared bankrupt despite reaching positive EBITDA earlier this year, exposing how hard it still is to turn circular leadership into long-term financial resilience. Read the full story.
✷Oxfam says it cannot guarantee the future of all 500+ UK charity shops as falling donations, rising costs and competition from Vinted and eBay create an increasingly difficult pathway for traditional ‘pre-loved’ to survive. Explore the complications of the industry’s current state.
✷ Canadian thrift stores are paying to dump donated clothing as traditional bulk-buying routes collapse, showing why circular fashion needs infrastructure for excess stock as much as it needs more places to donate it. An interesting read.
We need to continue to push for consumer education around these complexities - but this cannot be moralised. Funding around managing circular solutions needs to be reallocated and reframed, but brands and organisations need to remain agile in the wake of a rapidly changing fashion landscape. A lot of this comes down to communication.
Where Irigai sits
At Irigai, we work at the point of translating sustainable fashion innovation and goals into a strategy which will land with those who will elevate them. We support founder-led brands, circular businesses and material innovators turn complex work into clearer positioning, aligned communication and stronger commercial relevance.
August’s updates paint a clear picture how much of the industry’s progress is reliant on commercial and cultural narratives. New systems need buyers to understand their value, teams to know how to use them and customers to recognise why they matter.
Irigai helps that work land with the people who can move it forward.