2026 Sustainable Fashion Predictions

Last year the fashion industry experienced a whole wave of shifts reshaping behaviour and commercial viability around how fashion is made, sold, verified, and valued.

This year won’t be defined by who talks loudest about sustainability. It’ll be shaped by the brands that quietly build systems capable of surviving cultural pressure, regulatory exposure, and consumer intelligence at the same time.

Here’s our top 2026 sustainable fashion predictions.

Kick Off For Upcycled Football Shirts

Wardrobes are being vision boarded on Pinterest like there’s no actual tomorrow (guilty), and football shirts are everywhere.

Between the cultural aftershocks of Oasis nostalgia, the lead-up to the 2026 World Cup, and a broader appetite for sport-coded fashion, old kits are being pulled back into circulation and reworked with intent. Brands like Equipo FC , Unwanted FC , and Proto-types are treating football jerseys like a source material, and some really interesting design approaches coming out of it.

This would be so ideal, because football kits are a nightmare waste stream: constant seasonal changes, synthetic fabrics, short emotional lifespans. Upcycling doesn’t erase that story, it builds on it.

Bio Materials Growing Up and Moving Out

Bio-materials had a turning-point year, not because they were new, but because they stopped acting like science projects. That’s the tell for 2026.

These are materials made from natural or regenerative resources, designed to replace petroleum-based synthetics - and now they’re starting to behave like something you can actually build a supply chain around.

‘Vegan' is finally being forced to mean more than plastic. Feather alternatives like FEVVERS® are part of a wider shift where softness and movement don’t have to come with a petrochemical aftertaste. For years, the industry tried to sell 'vegan' as automatically better. Consumers aren’t buying that shortcut anymore.

We’re also seeing naturally derived leather alternatives quietly challenge the dominance of so-called 'vegan leather', alongside materials engineered to absorb carbon rather than just reduce harm. The important bit isn’t the innovation itself - it’s adoption. When big houses start using these materials without making it the whole headline, that’s when scale becomes possible.

Affordability won’t arrive overnight. It comes the boring way: licensing, standardisation, repetition. The luxury end of the market is basically acting as the R&D budget for what eventually trickles into the mainstream.

Battle for Luxury Resale

Secondhand is projected to hit roughly US$350–360 billion by 2030, and it’s growing far faster than the overall fashion market. That tells you resale isn’t a trend - it’s a category. And luxury is one of its most profitable corners, because trust (authentication) turns secondhand from 'risk' into 'asset'.

Platforms like Vestiaire Collective and The RealReal helped make resale feel smart rather than second-best. But 2026 is where more brands stop outsourcing the relationship and start trying to own the loop.

You can already see the early moves: Gucci with Gucci Vault, Burberry testing recommerce, Balenciaga experimenting through partnerships. The incentive is obvious: resale keeps customers in orbit, keeps pricing power intact, and keeps brand image from being entirely defined by third-party listings.

The cultural piece is even more interesting. Y2K resale is rewriting what 'luxury' means in real time. Coach and GUESS?, Inc. aren’t being revived by runway moments - they’re being revived by resellers, thrift markets, and archival TikTok edits. In resale culture, history outperforms novelty. The archive is the flex.

If luxury brands take resale further in-house, resale platforms will have to lean harder into what they do best: culture engines. It’s becoming increasingly clear that top sellers are tastemakers.

Luxury Circularity Entering its Collab Era

Luxury has always been obsessed with exclusivity. Circularity needs the opposite: cooperation, scale, shared infrastructure.

That’s why Chanel’s NEVOLD is such a moment. It’s not a cute capsule. It’s a materials platform designed to turn discarded luxury inputs into new textiles - basically treating waste as a resource bank.

The key detail is what it’s focused on: the fibres luxury is actually made of - wool, cotton, cashmere, silk, leather. The ones becoming more expensive, more scarce, and more politically visible. And instead of saving it for a 'look how sustainable we are' runway moment, the materials are already being folded back into everyday products.

That’s the break from tradition. Luxury is starting to understand that future-proofing supply chains might matter more than protecting mystique.

XXL Verification

2025 belonged to internet detectives.

TikTok scandals exposed fake 'made in Italy' labels. Viral breakdowns questioned whether luxury pricing actually reflected ethical processes. And the public loved it - not out of cynicism, but because transparency had been promised for years without proof.

In 2026, scrutiny is only going to get sharper, because regulation starts matching the cultural mood. Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are being rolled into Europe next year, which means traceability stops being an optional brand story and becomes an operational requirement. Product-level data - materials, sourcing, lifecycle - gets harder to fake and easier to interrogate.

And it won’t just hit legacy luxury. All brands will get it. The era of vague claims and vibes-based ethics is closing.

QR-led Resale Spaces

It’s hard to carry hangers when your phone’s always in your hand.

Phones have already replaced half the retail experience. QR-led resale rails feel like the next logical step: not racks packed with inventory, but spaced, gallery-style displays where one piece represents a seller. Scan it and you’re instantly in their wardrobe, their track record, their taste. You get the trust signals buyers actually care about, without rummaging through chaos.

The physical store becomes an index, not a warehouse. Browsing feels intentional. Stock scales without filling the floor. People - not piles of product - become the organising principle.

QR taking up space in Korean immersive visual merchandising

This works especially well for platforms like Depop, where sellers already function like micro-brands. The QR rail just brings that structure into real life.

2026 Sustainable Fashion Predictions: Alignment

Between what brands claim, what systems support, and what people can actually see for themselves. Between innovation and infrastructure. Between culture and consequence.

Sustainable fashion in 2026 isn’t louder or more moral. It’s more exacting. Less tolerant of vague language. More comfortable being audited - by regulators, platforms, and the internet.

The brands that move forward won’t be the ones with the best slogans. They’ll be the ones building quietly enough to withstand attention when it arrives.

This is where Irigai operates, translating complexity into relevance, and helping brands understand where systems need to evolve before the conversation forces them to.