Fashion’s move toward more transparent and sustainable supply chains will depend on collaboration within companies as well as across the industry, speakers said at a preview session for the Munich Fabric Start trade show, which begins in January. Stricter regulation, digital product passports and growing waste concerns are adding pressure for brands and manufacturers to adapt.
Muchaneta ten Napel, founder and CEO of Shape Innovate, said fashion is developing tools for change without sufficiently changing the systems around them. She argued that companies should first align their own teams, from sustainability and design to public relations and accounting, before seeking cooperation with other businesses.
London-based women’s wear brand Nobody’s Child applied that approach as it expanded digital product passports across 1,400 products. Its head of sustainability, Philippa Grogan, formed an internal task force to coordinate the work and ensure product information was available from teams such as merchandising.
The brand uses Fabacus’s Xelacore platform, which combines information from its internal systems with traceability data from Fairly Made. The system creates serialized QR codes and brings product data together from sources that had previously been separate. Grogan said the framework is in place, but the completeness of each passport still depends on the quality of the data the company can provide.
Suppliers were initially cautious about sharing information, Grogan said. Nobody’s Child held repeated calls to explain its regulatory timeline and the value of preparing early. The rollout also exposed a need to integrate sustainability work more closely into production planning: suppliers’ preference for ordering labels through their own providers clashed with the brand’s goal of using one partner to manage its QR codes.
Grogan said the brand learned to treat suppliers as partners rather than simply issuing requirements. It offered end-of-season reports on suppliers’ traceability scores and life-cycle assessment information, giving them a way to review their progress. The experience also reinforced the importance of collecting information without disrupting product launches.
Collaboration is equally important when new materials move from development to manufacturing, said Elsa Parente, co-CEO and CTO of Portugal-based Positive Materials. She said the challenge often lies beyond creating a material: companies must establish whether it can meet quality requirements, be produced consistently, fit existing supply chains and reach a competitive price.
Parente said bringing brands and other partners into development early can help validate materials and make adjustments before adoption. Delvify AI founder and CEO Charles Allard Jr. described a similar need at the sourcing stage. His platform gives teams and suppliers a shared place to review material specifications, collections and sustainability information, rather than relying on scattered emails and spreadsheets.
Allard said sourcing teams need relevant information early to assess whether a material meets price and order requirements and whether its sustainability claims can be supported. He added that certificates and supplier credentials are useful only when teams can find and evaluate them, and when partners are working from the same data.
Industry-wide coordination is also part of the effort, said Marie Demaegdt, textile and sustainability director at the Alliance for European Flax-Linen & Hemp. The organization has created the Masters of Flax Fiber certification for products made with European-origin flax, and Masters of Linen, which requires the textile value chain’s spinning, weaving and knitting stages to be carried out by European companies.
Demaegdt encouraged businesses using flax and linen to begin testing the sector’s digital traceability system rather than wait for every supplier to be onboarded. She said a step-by-step approach could help bring smaller companies into the process.
Sources: WWD.