Why High Fashion Can’t Quit Polyester

For Delhi-based couturier Gaurav Gupta, polyester is as much a staple as silk.

Uniquely moldable and malleable, the synthetic fibre is a key ingredient in the designer’s sculptural gowns and body-moulded silhouettes, which have become instantly recognisable fixtures on red carpets and global stages, worn by everyone from Beyoncé during her Renaissance tour to Reliance Retail executive Isha Ambani at this year’s Met Gala.

That material is now under pressure. Polyester is essentially a form of plastic derived from petroleum. The US-Israel war in Iran and escalating disruption around the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of global oil passes, has sent oil prices surging, rippling across fashion supply chains and driving up the cost of polyester, the industry’s most-used fibre. A recent Morgan Stanley analysis warned the disruption could become the largest oil supply shock in market history, forecasting that Brent crude could remain above $100 a barrel through much of 2026 if disruption around the Strait of Hormuz persists.

The impact of rising polyester prices has already materialised across much of Asia, with mass-market brands already feeling cost pressure and brands including H&M, Next and Marks & Spencer warning that they may eventually pass rising costs onto consumers.

Gupta, however, isn’t concerned.

“I don’t think it’s going to make that drastic a difference to us and hasn’t affected us so far,” Gupta said, though he acknowledged that prolonged global instability would eventually ripple across the broader luxury economy.

While polyester has become widely known as an inexpensive material used by fast fashion, design-forward labels have also relied on it for decades, not because it was cheap but because of what it allowed them to create: sculptural silhouettes and material structures impossible to achieve in quite the same way with many natural fibres. Comme des Garçons boils it. Issey Miyake folds it into pleats that permanently hold their shape. Other brands have used it to add technical stretch or wrinkle resistance.

“Plastic is an incredibly versatile and useful material,” said Beth Gardiner, environmental journalist and author of Plastic Inc. “Combined with its affordable nature, synthetic fibres are almost the opposite of natural materials — you can sort of order up exactly what you want.”

That flexibility is part of why polyester became so deeply embedded in modern fashion after World War II, explained Gardiner. Beyond enabling cheaper mass production, synthetic fibres opened entirely new categories of clothing, from innovative fabrics to technical couture and sculptural ready-to-wear.

Unlike mass-market brands racing to manage razor-thin margins, design-led labels appear relatively insulated from the immediate shock of polyester’s recent price hikes. Their products are made in smaller quantities, priced around craftsmanship and exclusivity rather than material cost, and often supported by wealthy global clientele less sensitive to price increases.

“We are not filling a need,” Gupta said. “We are filling a desire.”

Even so, the oil shock now reverberating through polyester’s supply chain has underscored the fact that high-end fashion’s dependence on polyester is a dependence on fossil fuels.

Buffered From War Impacts

Japanese label CFCL, which built much of its business around recycled polyester knitwear produced through tightly controlled local supply chains and computer-programmed knitting technologies, has so far avoided major disruption from polyester’s recent price volatility, said founder Yusuke Takahashi, the former head designer at Issey Miyake Men.

Nearly 90 percent of the brand’s polyester inputs are now recycled, distancing it from fluctuations in virgin oil prices. It gets most of the fibres from China, which has also been relatively insulated from oil shocks because it already held large stockpiles of the material before oil prices climbed. Much of CFCL’s production happens locally in Japan after it buys the polyester.

“As long as we can procure the yarn, all the remaining production processes are done in-house,” Takahashi said.

While high fashion hasn’t yet been hit by polyester’s price volatility, it isn’t totally shielded from the oil market. Sally Qiu, senior researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said polyester production is not only oil-dependent but also highly energy intensive.

“Even if production doesn’t stop, it becomes much more expensive,” she said, noting that many fashion businesses still underestimate how deeply embedded fossil fuels are within textile supply chains.

This means that although fashion brands are increasingly shifting manufacturing onto renewable energy or marketing “sustainable” collections, polyester remains tied to the petrochemical system underpinning oil and gas extraction. Plastic production has also become a critical future growth area for fossil fuel companies as the world slowly transitions away from oil as an energy source.

“These materials are part of the fossil fuel economy,” Gardiner said. “This is really underscoring in the most vivid way imaginable that so many of the materials that surround us, including our clothing, are fossil-fuel products.”

A Unique Material

The link to fossil fuels, as well as growing health concerns around issues such as chemicals and microplastics, has led to consumers increasingly rejecting synthetic materials. But even if brands wanted to move away from polyester entirely, many would struggle to find ready replacements.

“What are they going to use instead?” said Rebecca Early, sustainable fashion textile designer and professor at Chelsea College of Arts in London. “If they want to keep that look, that shape, that aesthetic, I really don’t know what else they can use right now.”

Early said what makes polyester so useful is that, like plastic, it can be moulded by heat, allowing it to hold sculptural shapes. Bio-based polyester alternatives and next-generation materials have improved greatly over the years, but many remain expensive, difficult to scale or unable to fully replicate polyester’s performance at a technical design level.

That tension is especially visible in luxury and couture, where polyester is often hidden in embellishments and textile innovations. Gupta’s atelier, for example, works extensively with softer fabrics, but many of the structural techniques underpinning his signature silhouettes rely on finer corsetry boning, shaping techniques and synthetic support.

Brands trying to reduce their environmental impact are also finding that simply avoiding polyester isn’t an answer. Research has found that natural fibres are not automatically low-impact alternatives. Cashmere, wool and virgin cotton can carry significant environmental footprints depending on how they are produced, processed and transported.

At CFCL, Takahashi is working towards a 100-percent recycled polyester composition. The material’s toughness, stretch, wrinkle resistance and versatility remain central to the functionality of the brand’s garments, he said. It is also a more sustainable material with a ten times lower emissions footprint than the small percentage of non-synthetics in the brand’s material mix – a key part of Takahashi’s choice of the fibre.

As such, for now, designer brands remain reliant on polyester. And that seems unlikely to change, even as oil prices rise and push up the cost of the virgin fibre.

“The industry can’t function without synthetics,” Early said. “It has been hijacked by fast fashion…But can we use them better? Absolutely. It’s all about intention and purpose.”