At multiple forums during New York Climate Week in late September, "whether sustainable fashion has a business case" became a core topic repeatedly pressed. Industry advocates are shifting to persuading corporate decision-makers, especially CFOs, in the language of growth, resilience, and returns.

Key Points

  • Dôen's secondhand resale platform Hand Me Dôen grew 61% last year, with 92% of shoppers being repeat customers and average order value rising.
  • Canopy calculates that blending 5% next-generation textile-to-textile recycled fiber into conventional man-made cellulosic fiber production can bring immediate high returns for brands and fiber producers, without the need for policy mechanisms.
  • The Global Fashion Agenda (GFA)'s CFO agenda points out that if extended producer responsibility fees are levied, large fashion companies' profits could decrease by as much as 4% by 2030.

On the consumer side, Kate Sanner, founder and CEO of resale platform Beni, noted that sustainability is more like a "free gift" that makes consumers feel good, but is not the "ultimate driver" of behavior. She said the key question is whether more sustainable ways of acquiring can be made the obvious and more valuable choice—if so, consumers will naturally choose resale or rental because it is "higher value." Gen Z has driven the cultural trend of thrifting and renting, and "thanks, it's thrifted" is becoming a badge worth showing off.

This consumer psychology has already translated into actual revenue for brands. Dôen's branded buyback resale program Hand Me Dōen, powered by recommerce service provider Treet, allows customers to exchange eligible old clothes for store credit, with the brand handling authentication, pricing, and resale. Christine Kim, Dôen's president of impact and responsible sourcing, said the brand wants to "capture" this portion of sales back and create a formal resale channel consistent with the new-clothing shopping experience. The program grew 61% last year, and 92% of buyers were repeat customers, making it a true loyalty program for the brand.

The economics on the upstream materials side are more challenging. Nicole Rycroft, founder and executive director of Canadian forestry nonprofit Canopy, pointed out that ethical reasons are not enough to persuade CFOs to greenlight next-generation products. An economic model commissioned by Canopy shows that blending 5% next-generation textile-to-textile recycled fiber into conventional man-made cellulosic fiber production can immediately deliver high-impact returns for brands and fiber producers, without relying on policy mechanisms. For viscose producers seeking to hedge risk, this 5% integration is an immediate hedge. She also said that if the industry adopts 5% next-generation feedstock now, price parity with conventional viscose or lyocell fiber could be achieved by 2031; by 2036, next-generation sources could account for 40% to 50% of the MMCF fiber basket.

But Priyanka Khanna, scaling innovation director at innovation platform Fashion for Good, cautioned that expecting new technologies to be plug-and-play and price-competitive from the start is unrealistic, with early testing costs and lack of economies of scale being the main obstacles. The platform is creating economies of scale by aggregating brand demand, for example replicating Circ's Fiber Club model to lock in brand purchasing intent before capacity is in place, simplifying specifications and reducing costs.

Federica Marchionni, CEO of the Global Fashion Agenda, said the think tank changed its strategy this year, no longer targeting only corporate CEOs but trying to persuade CFOs to view sustainability as a financial management issue of cost, risk, capital allocation, and long-term value creation. Through its Circular Fashion Partnership project in Bangladesh, GFA separates high-grade 100% pure cotton scraps from mixed waste in production workshops and connects them with local mechanical recyclers, turning byproducts that were previously incinerated, landfilled, or downgraded to mattress filling into profitable feedstock.

At the policy level, California's SB 707, the Responsible Textile Recovery Act, requires textile and apparel producers to fund producer responsibility organizations through eco-differentiated fees, with lower fees for companies that have adopted reuse, repair, and recycling measures. Rachel Kibbe, founder of the American Circular Textiles group, emphasized that the intersection of capital and policy is where change happens—"capital will not show up until policy exists."

For the old clothing and textile recycling industry, the signal from New York Climate Week is clear: sustainability is shifting from a moral narrative to a financial narrative, and the business models of resale, repair, and regenerated fiber are being priced by both capital and policy.

Source: Can Fashion Make the Business Case for Sustainability? · Originally published 2026-10-05