Fashion’s Sustainability Pressure Test

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Hello! Happy New Year and Happy Friday,

This is Shayeza Walid, BoF’s sustainability reporter, and welcome to 2026’s first edition of the Frayed Edge –which as a reminder, will be coming to your inbox on a bi-weekly cadence for most of this year.

Not even a month in, fashion’s sustainability promises are already under pressure. This week’s through line is trust — and the ways it’s being tested across fashion’s sustainability ecosystem.

Whether it’s the growing gap between certification claims and farm-level practices, the hope of scaling circularity through resale, or evolving science on microplastics in the human body, the industry’s “responsible” story is becoming harder to control.

In short: sustainability in 2026 is shaping up to be less about polished pledges, and more about verification, accountability and consumer exposure.

So let’s get into it.

In this edition:

• PETA’s new investigation challenges whether the “Responsible Mohair Standard” can prevent cruelty — and puts animal welfare certification under renewed scrutiny.
• Vinted is expanding to the US, betting on resale’s next growth curve with a New York push aimed at building a self-sustaining local marketplace – but it still feels like the company is testing the waters.
• Microplastics research highlights what scientists still don’t know about plastic particles in the human body — and why fashion can’t afford to treat fibre shedding as someone else’s problem.

As always, send us your thoughts, feedback, tips and questions.

“Responsible Mohair” Under Fire

Fashion’s sustainability narrative increasingly leans on third-party standards: the labels that promise accountability across supply chains is too complex for brands to oversee directly.

But this week, one of those labels faced fresh scrutiny.

A new investigation by PETA Asia into mohair farms in South Africa and Lesotho alleges severe cruelty and mistreatment of goats, including footage showing animals being beaten, dragged and shorn so roughly they were left bleeding. The investigation was conducted between January 2025 and November 2025, and reviewed conditions across six farms, according to PETA.

As BoF reported, the watchdog group claims the farms were certified under the Responsible Mohair Standard (RMS), raising sharp questions about what certification schemes can realistically catch (and enforce) in day-to-day farm environments.

“Just because there’s a label or some sort of certification doesn’t equate to what’s actually happening on the ground,” said Yvonne Taylor, vice president of corporate projects at PETA UK.

Why This Matters

The investigation also attempts to link the alleged mistreatment to brand-facing supply chains.

“Just because there’s a label or some sort of certification doesn’t equate to what’s actually happening on the ground,” said Yvonne Taylor, vice president of corporate projects at PETA UK. “Nobody’s going to start kicking a goat in the face or hitting them with a pole when there’s an auditor there.”

The exposé most notably linked one of British brand Paul Smith’s wool suppliers, the Italian textile mill Vitale Barberis Canonico, to the mohair farms where abuse was recorded.

According to PETA, VBC, which also supplies other major brands like Suitsupply, purchased RMS-certified mohair at an October 2025 auction and regularly buys mohair through the same channel. PETA argues that mohair sourced through the auction can be traced back to farms documented in the investigation.

Paul Smith told BoF its supplier is RMS certified and described RMS as “the leading, most comprehensive, and highest recognised international standard for ensuring ethical, sustainable, and traceable mohair production.”

Textile Exchange, which oversees the Responsible Mohair Standard, said that if verified, the treatment shown would violate RMS requirements — but also said PETA has not provided verified evidence or identifying information to confirm whether the farms shown were RMS-certified. It added that there are currently no RMS-certified farms in Lesotho.

The findings have put renewed attention on the gap between certification-backed sourcing claims and on-the-ground practices, particularly as brands and suppliers increasingly rely on third-party standards to reassure customers about animal welfare and traceability.

Read our full exclusive on PETA’s new mohair investigation here.

Vinted’s US Expansion-ish

Resale has long been positioned as one of fashion’s most visible sustainability solutions, especially now as reported in BoF and McKinsey’s 2026 State of Fashion report noting that the category’s growth is increasingly being driven by something more durable than eco-marketing: value.

That’s the bet behind Vinted’s ramp-up in the US, starting with a deeper push into the greater New York area after the company connected the region with its UK marketplace in November.

“The Vinted mission is to make secondhand the first choice globally,” said Adam Jay, Vinted’s Marketplace CEO. “And to do that, we need to be global.”

Two months ago, Vinted began letting users in New York and the UK buy and sell across the Atlantic, a common “seed strategy” for the company as it enters new markets. “On day one, you give them access to the existing network,” Jay said. “Then try and create a network there.”

Now, the company says it’s moving beyond that initial test and investing more heavily in awareness and user activation to build local momentum. “The thing that’s different now is we’re going heavier,” he said, aiming to scale “that network of buyers and sellers.”

Still, Jay stressed that transatlantic trading is not the end goal. “Our ambition… is not to be trading a lot of items across the Atlantic,” he said, calling it “a relatively expensive way to trade.” Instead, the goal is to build a self-sustaining New York marketplace, “buyers buying from sellers in that area.”

Still Testing the Waters

The biggest hurdle is what every platform entering a new geography faces: “a cold start activation,” Jay said. “You’ve got to get the flywheel going.” It’s also “a big, complicated market,” he added.

That nuance is worth noting given how Vinted’s US momentum has been framed elsewhere, including an interview in The Wall Street Journal in which CEO Thomas Plantenga said the company was “pouring tens of millions of dollars” into US efforts. Jay struck a more measured tone in his conversation with BoF, repeatedly emphasising that the near-term strategy is a controlled rollout focused on New York, and that building a winning marketplace can take time.

“There are many markets where we have ultimately been very successful,” Jay said, “where it took us years, and multiple attempts, to get the proposition right.”

Vinted’s move isn’t remarkable because it’s radically new, resale platforms have been jostling for US scale for years, but because it reflects how quickly secondhand is becoming a mainstream channel, not a niche sustainability add-on.

The company is also positioning itself against US incumbents by leaning into what it argues is Vinted’s core advantage: everyday resale at scale, rather than luxury-led e-commerce. Jay described Vinted’s sweet spot as “$10, $20 T-shirt, jeans,” supported by its promise of no seller fees.

As it stands, if the company’s New York push succeeds, it could offer a blueprint for mass-market resale growth in the US; but given Vinted’s cautious tone it seems the company sees this as a long, costly effort to change consumer behaviour, not an overnight land grab that would allow it win over US consumers.

Microplastics: The Sustainability Problem Fashion Can’t Outsource

Microplastics have become a catch-all term but the science is still evolving in ways that should worry fashion, especially as polyester fibre, made from fossil fuels continues to rise as the mainstream material going forward.

A new report from the Guardian highlights how researchers are continuing to debate what microplastics detected across the human body actually mean for long-term health outcomes, as well as a race to publish results on the topic, that in some cases by groups with limited analytical expertise, has led to “rushed outcomes and routine scientific checks sometimes being overlooked.”

While no malpractice was found, the new findings show that some of the most alarming recent headlines about microplastics “accumulating” in the human body were possibly overblown.

At first glance, that nuance can seem reassuring. But for fashion, it arguably sharpens the challenge rather than easing it: microplastics remain a fast-moving reputational and regulatory risk precisely because the evidence is messy, the science is evolving, and consumer concern is being driven by exposure - not certainty.

Crucially, synthetic textiles — especially polyester, which makes up most of the world’s garments today — are widely considered a major source of microfibre shedding for example from faux fur or through washing and everyday wear, yet accountability remains fragmented.

Unlike carbon emissions, microplastics are not yet fully embedded into mainstream fashion reporting, traceability requirements or supply-chain due diligence frameworks. This makes the extent of their threat to human health from garments murky.

The hope, albeit perhaps naive, is that this gap may not last, especially as the public conversation shifts from an “ocean problem” to a “human body problem”– coercing brands to consider their polyester usage beyond the emissions concern as consumers’ awareness on the topic and as such demand of certain plastic-heavy apparel also alters.

What Else You Need to Know:

Nike’s Landmark Worker Compensation Deal: Nike agreed to substantial payouts to thousands of former garment workers at a Thai supplier including an individual worker who faced criminal charges. At $42,000, the deal marks one of the largest compensation settlements in the garment industry to a single worker. [The Business of Fashion]

An Innovative Factory in India: One of Asia’s largest apparel manufacturers has opened a new net-zero factory in India that uses electricity-powered heat pumps rather than fossil fuels. The facility offers a glimpse of how fashion manufacturers might slash their emissions, if only there were a one-size-fits-all solution. [The Business of Fashion]

Tariffs Are Already Affecting Amazon Prices: prices on the e-commerce platform are starting to rise as third-party sellers pass on higher costs caused by US tariffs. [The Business of Fashion]

How Wall Street Turned Its Back on Climate Change: Six years after the financial industry pledged to use trillions to fight climate change and reshape finance, its efforts have largely collapsed. [The New York Times]

Trump Tariffs Are Causing Layoffs Across the Supply Chain: Nearly one-third of supply chain companies are culling their ranks amid protracted tariff uncertainty and rising costs. According to the Association for Supply Chain Management research shrinking workforces can be “directly attributed” to the lack of predictability created by President Donald Trump’s tariff regime. [Sourcing Journal]

Want to dive deeper into an insight from this article? Check out The Brain of Fashion, BoF’s new generative AI tool where you can unlock BoF’s sustainability archive with a single question.