HOW MUCH DOES FASHION REALLY KNOW ABOUT ITS PRODUCTS?

Inside The Industry Series

Paris Fashion Week is where fashion presents the finished product. But what we see in Paris is only the final chapter of a much longer story.

From London to Milan and now Paris, the Spring/Summer 2027 fashion calendar has taken the industry through three of its most important fashion capitals. Paris Fashion Week runs from 28 September to 6 October, bringing together shows and presentations from some of the world's leading fashion houses.

But rather than simply asking what is being shown, there is another question worth asking: what does it actually take to make what we are seeing?

Every product represents a chain of decisions long before it reaches the customer. What is it made from? Where did the material come from? How was it processed? Who made it? Can it be produced consistently? Can it be produced at scale? Can the economics work? And increasingly, can the brand demonstrate that its environmental and social claims are accurate?

These questions are becoming more important because the definition of a "better product" is changing. Performance, design and commercial viability remain fundamental, but increasingly they sit alongside sustainability, responsible production, traceability and the question of what happens to a product after it has been sold.

The product is no longer simply the product. It is the journey behind it.

IT STARTS WITH THE MATERIAL

Look at what is happening in Paris this week. Maxhosa Africa has become the first South African brand to stage a full runway show on the official Paris Fashion Week calendar. Its collection used locally sourced wool, with production taking place in the brand's factories in Johannesburg and East London.

The significance goes beyond the fact that a South African label has arrived on the official Paris calendar. It demonstrates how material, sourcing, manufacturing and identity can all be embedded in the product itself. The material is not simply something selected somewhere along the creative process. It can influence how a product looks, how it performs, where it can be manufactured, what it costs and what the brand can credibly say about it.

And there is significant investment going into finding new answers. Kering's Material Innovation Lab reported 8,000 component samples and 600 manufacturers in its material library in 2025, alongside 300 research and technical-assistance projects designed to help its Houses integrate new materials.

That tells us something important: fashion does not have a shortage of material innovation. The bigger challenge is turning that innovation into products that work in the real world. A new material is not automatically the answer. It has to perform, be commercially viable and scale. Increasingly, that is not enough either. Brands and consumers want to know whether it is genuinely more sustainable, whether it has been produced responsibly and whether the brand can actually substantiate those claims.

Finding a material that looks better on paper is one thing. Turning it into a great product, produced responsibly and at meaningful scale, is something else. And that is where the real challenge begins.

INNOVATION HAS TO WORK AT SCALE

Fashion has no shortage of innovation. The difficult part is getting those ideas into real products, at real scale. Can you get enough of the material? Can the quality stay consistent? Can you hit the price? Can existing factories work with it? Does the manufacturing process need to change? Can you produce thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of units?

And can you do all of that without losing the sustainability or ethical benefits that made the material attractive in the first place? Then comes the most commercial question of all: will customers actually buy it?

This is the gap between innovation and commercialisation. A material may work in a laboratory, a prototype or a limited development run, but that does not automatically mean it can work across a global fashion supply chain. Scale introduces another set of variables: availability, consistency, cost, manufacturing capability, quality control, lead times, capacity and demand.

The more successful an innovation becomes, the more these questions matter. Fashion therefore needs innovation that works commercially and responsibly, not simply innovation that looks promising in development.

Première Vision Paris' September 2026 edition provides a useful snapshot of this shift. Its offer spans the fashion value chain and includes biomaterials, technical textiles, circularity, traceability, recycling, certification, manufacturing technologies and Digital Product Passport solutions. The conversation is moving from simply asking what the new material is to asking how that innovation can actually be integrated into a functioning product and supply chain.

Because by the time a product reaches Paris, it has already passed through hundreds of decisions about material, design, sourcing, manufacturing, cost, quality and scale.

Increasingly, another word belongs on that list:

Proof.

HOW MUCH DOES THE BRAND REALLY KNOW?

That leads to the next question: how much does a fashion brand actually know about everything that happened before its product reached the factory?

Not just the factory itself, but the fabric, the fibre, the processing, the dyeing, the components, the raw materials and the businesses involved further upstream.

This is where traceability becomes much more than a sustainability exercise. If a brand makes a claim about a product, it increasingly needs to understand the evidence behind that claim. If a material is described as recycled, where did it come from? If a product is described as responsibly sourced, what does that mean in practice? If a supply chain is described as traceable, how far back does that traceability actually go?

The issue is not simply whether a product is sustainable. It is whether the brand understands why it believes the product is more sustainable or responsibly produced, and whether it can demonstrate it.

That is a very different challenge. And technology and regulation are beginning to accelerate it.

THE PRODUCT IS BECOMING DATA

The Digital Product Passport is one of the clearest examples of where this is heading. Under the EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, textiles and apparel are a priority product category for future product requirements. The European Commission's current timetable anticipates a textile-specific delegated act in Q4 2027, subject to the legislative and technical process.

That distinction matters. A textile Digital Product Passport is not currently mandatory for every fashion product. But the direction of travel is clear: the EU is moving towards a model in which information about a product becomes increasingly accessible throughout its lifecycle, including information relevant to sustainability, circularity and traceability.

This could fundamentally change the relationship between fashion brands, suppliers and consumers. The product begins to carry more information about itself, and that information increasingly needs to be connected to what actually happened throughout the supply chain.

THIS IS ALREADY MOVING INTO REGULATION

The shift is not simply about what might happen in 2027. Some of it is already happening. From 19 July 2026, large companies operating in the EU have been prohibited from destroying unsold apparel, clothing accessories and footwear, subject to specified exceptions. Medium-sized companies will come under the same prohibition from 2030. These rules form part of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation.

The significance goes beyond unsold stock. It changes the way we think about the lifecycle of the product. The traditional model was relatively simple: design, manufacture, sell. The emerging model is much longer: design, source, manufacture, sell, use, repair, reuse, resell, recycle and end of life.

Not every product will follow every stage, but strategically the lifecycle is becoming much harder for businesses to ignore. The product does not simply stop being relevant to the business when the transaction is completed.

FROM PRODUCT TO PRODUCT JOURNEY

This may be the bigger change taking place. Fashion has traditionally competed through the product itself: the design, the brand, the fabric, the price, the image and the experience. All of those things remain critical. But businesses increasingly need to understand the journey behind the product as well.

Where did it come from? How was it made? Who made it? What materials went into it? What claims can the brand substantiate? How durable is it? What happens if it does not sell? And what happens when the customer no longer wants it?

These are not separate sustainability questions. They connect product development, sourcing, manufacturing, merchandising, supply chain, technology, compliance, ecommerce and commercial strategy.

That is why this is bigger than sustainability.

It is about business intelligence.

A brand that understands its product journey has more information with which to make decisions. It can understand supplier risk more effectively, make better-informed material choices, identify where costs and inefficiencies sit, understand what claims it can credibly make and prepare for regulatory change.

Potentially, it can also build new models around repair, resale, reuse and recycling. The challenge is that none of this works without better information.

THE DATA CHALLENGE

This may ultimately become one of fashion's biggest operational questions.

A Digital Product Passport sounds simple from the outside: a digital record connected to a product, with information that can be accessed throughout its lifecycle. But behind that sits a much harder question:

Where does the data come from?

A brand cannot provide reliable information about a product if it does not have reliable information from the businesses upstream. Data has to move through the supply chain, and it has to be accurate, consistent and usable.

This creates a new requirement for brands and suppliers alike:

Know your product.

Not just when it arrives in the warehouse. From the beginning.

Première Vision's September 2026 programme reflects this direction, with companies working on raw-material traceability, product data, circularity and technologies designed to connect different stages of the value chain.

Traceability is therefore moving from a reporting exercise towards infrastructure. And that is a significant shift.

THE COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITY

It would be easy to see all of this as another cost for fashion. Another regulation. Another compliance requirement. Another data project. But there is another way of looking at it.

Better information can create better decisions.

If a brand understands its materials, it can make better sourcing and product-development choices. If it understands supplier performance, it can manage risk. If it understands product quality and durability, it can improve the proposition. If it understands its inventory and returns, it can make better decisions about what happens to products that do not sell.

And if it can substantiate the claims it makes about its products, it can build greater confidence around those claims. The opportunity is therefore bigger than compliance.

It is better intelligence about the product itself.

And better intelligence should lead to better decisions.

THE QUESTION FASHION SHOULD BE ASKING

Paris Fashion Week gives us the finished product. But perhaps the more interesting story is everything we cannot see: the material behind the garment, the people and businesses behind the material, the factories behind the product, the decisions behind the price, the data behind the sustainability claim and increasingly, the journey after the sale.

The future of fashion is therefore not simply about making better products.

It is about understanding the entire journey of the products we make.

That means knowing where they came from, how they were made, what went into them, what can be proved about them and, increasingly, what happens to them next.

The question is no longer simply:

Can we make a better product?

It is:

Do we know where it came from, how it was made, can we prove it, and what happens to it next?

Because Paris shows us the finished product.

The industry challenge is understanding everything that created it, and everything that comes after it.

TFTT INSIDE FASHION. NOT OBSERVING IT.