Destruction of unsold textiles: a historic ban… with many loopholes

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A turning point against waste: rules, exemptions, and the challenges for truly circular fashion


The European Union has put an end to one of the most controversial practices in the fashion world: the systematic destruction of unsold textiles. From 19 July 2026, large companies will be prohibited from destroying unsold clothing, accessories, and footwear. This provision will be extended to medium-sized companies from 2030 onwards.

This decision, implemented through the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), aims to break an unsustainable paradox: in Europe, between 4% and 9% of textile products are destroyed each year before ever being worn, generating 5.6 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions — an impact equivalent to that of the entire country of Sweden.

In this context, the measure takes on central importance. It aligns with the EU’s strategy to combat waste, reduce pollution, and accelerate the transition towards a fully circular economy. The intent is clear: to redirect unsold goods towards alternative virtuous channels, such as discounted resale, donations, material regeneration, or creative reuse.

Exemptions: the loopholes to monitor


The Commission has provided for exceptions to the ban, which are necessary but potentially ambiguous. Destruction of unsold textiles will still be permitted for:

  • Reasons of safety, hygiene, or public health.
  • Irreparable product damage.
  • Technical inadequacy for recycling or reuse.
  • Violation of intellectual property rights.
  • Situations where destruction is deemed the option with the lowest environmental impact.

In parallel, from February 2027, the obligation to declare disposed unsold garments via a standardised communication format will come into force, aimed at ensuring transparency.

However, it is precisely here that the greatest risks lie. Definitions such as “technical inadequacy” or “lowest environmental impact” are elastic and subject to interpretation. Without extremely clear guidelines and a rigorous control system, they could become loopholes to circumvent the spirit of the law. The danger is that the problem could simply be exported, with garments shipped outside the EU to be disposed of where rules are less stringent, thereby fuelling the phenomenon of waste colonialism.

Textile industry: a sector truly “at the forefront”?


The Commissioner for the Environment, Jessika Roswall, described the textile sector as “at the forefront of the transition towards sustainability,” while acknowledging that the data “demonstrates the need to act.”

This statement appears to be in strong tension with reality:

  1. The waste figures cited by the Commission itself depict a backward sector, symbolic of the “take-make-dispose” model.
  2. The very need for legislation highlights the failure of self-regulation. A sector truly at the forefront would not need a ban to stop such a wasteful practice.
  3. The real pioneers (circular brands, reuse models) remain a niche compared to the dominance of fast fashion and mass-market “luxury.”

The declaration is more of a political act—aimed at involving the industry rather than criminalising it—than a factual description.

The real challenge begins now


This ban is a fundamental step, but its effectiveness is not guaranteed. It will depend on three crucial factors:

  1. Stringent guidelines that minimise the ambiguity of the exemptions.
  2. A robust and uniform system of controls and sanctions across Europe.
  3. A definition of “destruction” broad enough to also cover disposal disguised as poor-quality recycling.

Final reflections

In conclusion, the regulation on the destruction of unsold textiles is a fundamental step forward that changes the regulatory paradigm.

The EU has charted a course towards a more circular and responsible textile and fashion industry. But the battle against waste will be won (or lost) in the details of implementation, in the vigilance of the authorities, and in the capacity to close every potential loophole.

Companies are now called upon to genuinely reinvent how they manage the value of products and materials, rather than merely finding new ways to circumvent the disposal problem.

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Milano Cortina Olympics: snow needs cold, not crude

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The uncomfortable truth behind “sustainable” and “neutral” Winter Olympics


There is a lot of excitement in the air for Milano Cortina Olympics. In fact, the Games are set to showcase sport, landscape, and international cooperation. We are told to celebrate fashion, food, culture, and people.

In reality, it risks becoming yet another glossy exercise in greenwashing. And not only that. The Games also reveal a deeper, more disturbing contradiction: selective ethics, selective exclusions, selective silence.

Winter sports need snow, not fossil fuels


Winter sports depend on snow, ice, and stable temperatures. Yet the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics are sponsored by Eni, one of Italy’s largest oil and gas companies—an industry that directly fuels the climate crisis threatening the very existence of winter itself.

This contradiction is not accidental. It is strategic.

As Greenpeace Italia recently stated:

Winter sports need snow, not polluting companies.”

Milano Cortina Olympics: when sponsorship becomes image laundering


Sponsorships like these are not neutral acts of support. They are tools of reputation laundering, designed to associate fossil fuel corporations with values such as resilience, excellence, and sustainability, while diverting attention from the environmental damage caused by their core business.

Eni’s presence at the Olympics does not reduce emissions.
It does not protect glaciers.
It does not safeguard mountain ecosystems.

What it does is offer a powerful stage to rewrite a narrative.

The climate crisis is not an abstract backdrop


The climate emergency is already reshaping winter sports:

  • artificial snow replacing natural snowfall
  • shortened seasons and shrinking glaciers
  • increasing environmental pressure on fragile alpine territories

Allowing companies that actively contribute to global warming to sponsor the Winter Olympics means ignoring this reality—or worse, normalising it.

As Greenpeace puts it:

“Those who fuel the climate crisis, threatening the survival of ice and snow on which the Winter Games depend, cannot be sponsors of the Games.”

This is not radicalism. It is coherence.

The IOC’s responsibility


The International Olympic Committee often speaks the language of sustainability. But language without action remains branding.

If the Olympic movement genuinely wants to protect the future of winter sports, it must take a clear stance and end sponsorships from oil and gas companies—just as tobacco sponsorships were once banned from sport for ethical reasons.

Some industries are simply incompatible with certain values.
Fossil fuels and the Winter Olympics are one of those cases.

A double standard dressed as neutrality


Russia is out. Israel is in.

The official justification for excluding Russia from the Olympic Games was the violation of international law and the incompatibility of war with Olympic values. Yet the same principles seem to dissolve when it comes to Israel, despite the scale of destruction and civilian deaths in Palestine far exceeding many past conflicts that have led to sanctions.

This selective morality undermines any claim of neutrality. When sport chooses silence in the face of certain atrocities and outrage in others, it stops being a space of peace and becomes a mirror of geopolitical hypocrisy.

The discomfort was impossible to fully contain. During the opening ceremony, J.D. Vance was met with loud boos from the audience—an unplanned rupture in the performance of neutrality. Even as cameras attempted to manage the narrative, the reaction exposed a growing gap between institutional silence and public conscience.

Israel’s parade was embarrassing. 
Just as embarrassing was the attempt to erase Ghali through selective camera framing—an evident effort to censor his words and silence his pro-Palestinian stance.

Is it really still unclear that Israel is committing genocide, as widely documented by human rights observers?

Ghali, Rodari, and the words that should never be censored


Ghali recited Reminder, a poem by Gianni Rodari:

“There are things to do every day:
wash, study, play,
and set the table at midday.

There are things to do at night:
close your eyes, sleep,
have dreams for dreaming,
ears for hearing.

There are things never to do,
neither by day nor by night,
neither by sea nor by shore:
for example, WAR.”

Words simple enough for a child. Apparently too dangerous for a stage.

What kind of future are we celebrating?


The Olympic principles are excellence, respect, and friendship. They aim to unite people through sport, promoting peace, solidarity, and inclusion.

And yet, this is what Ghali later wrote on Instagram:

“Peace? Harmony? Humanity?
I did not feel any of this last night, but I felt it through your messages.
People are what truly matter, and in a time of so much hatred, please do not play their game. Respond as we would want the world to be.
‘There are things that must never be done.’”
Ghali

Beyond the beautiful façade


We can celebrate Italianness at Milano Cortina Olympics. We can take pride in the landscape, culture, fashion, food, and athletes and everything else. But this could also be an opportunity to rethink how major events relate to territory, climate, and responsibility.

Instead, it risks becoming another case study in how sustainability is used as a decorative word—applied after the damage is done. A study in beautiful façades.

Snow is not a metaphor.
Ice is not a logo.
The climate crisis cannot be sponsored away.

And humanity does not come in Series A and Series B.

If they sold you the Winter Olympics as ethical and sustainable, this is greenwashing.

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Couture in the digital age: art beyond the algorithm

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Is couture becoming a prop for the digital spectacle?


What does haute couture in the digital age represent: craftsmanship, complexity, and technical innovation—or pure spectacle? In an era where we judge everything from our phones, how can we possibly appreciate the hundreds of hours of handwork, the weight of a bespoke silk gown, the architecture of a hidden seam?

Platforms like 1Granary have sparked debates by placing designers like Blazy and Anderson at the centre of a modern couture dilemma. Anderson’s silhouettes were elaborate, with floral decorations, built for impact—a showstopper perfectly engineered for the digital gaze. This, in turn, ignited debate over Blazy’s Chanel: was it true couture, or elevated ready-to-wear? Dubbed “boring” by some, his collection was a quiet manifesto for wearability, for the tactile, a dreamy escape. What scrolled past as a simple suit may have taken weeks just to weave the fabric.
This is the ocean between a post and a piece of art: one is designed for reaction, the other for reality.

Let’s be clear: couture is the highest form of fashion, and it is elitist by definition. It exists for the few who can afford it. It’s a matter of wealth, not representation. Yet, its audience is now global, watching through a screen. Even if they can’t afford it, they judge it.

So what does haute couture in the digital age, in the age of content, represent? Why do houses continue? Because Haute Couture is the ultimate engine of the dream. It is high-stakes marketing, an artistic flag planted to validate the entire brand’s luxury status. The shows themselves are rarely profitable, but they generate the priceless cultural capital that sells perfumes, lipsticks, and handbags. 

It’s a brilliant, necessary paradox: they craft the unattainable to move the mass-produced.

This brings us to the core tension: spectacle versus substance. When a gown goes viral, are we admiring art—or just consuming content? 
Has couture become a prop for the digital circus, where the “wow” factor must be instantly legible in a thumbnail?

Perhaps the most radical act in today’s couture is not extravagance, but integrity. It is the insistence on existing beyond the scroll—in three dimensions, in time, in the human hand. The greatest luxury it offers now may not be the price tag, but its physical, tangible truth in a world of filters and facades.

So, does it matter if it keeps the ateliers alive? Absolutely. But let’s look closer, beyond the spectacle. The real dream isn’t just the dress on the runway; it’s the persistence of craft in a disposable age. It’s the hand that sews, the eye that fits, the art that refuses to be flattened.

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Portrait of contemporary madness

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Feeling overwhelmed? Perhaps we all are


Portrait of contemporary madness.
Milan men’s fashion week.
The buzz of Prada on sustainability.
Doing our work “at its best” doesn’t change reality.
Doesn’t solve anything.
A five-year-old child arrested in the US.
What is innocence in the age of surveillance?
Tear-gas shadows across playgrounds.
Twelve thousand people killed in Iran —
grief measured in hashtags, silence in policy halls.
The world scrolls.
Paris men’s fashion week.
Dior: what’s the point?
Identity disrupted, a punkish take designed for someone else’s customers.

A cyclone, Harry, devastates Sicily —
a climate out of control is no longer news.

Runways glowing while real lives bleed outside the glass.

In Minneapolis on January 24, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse and US citizen, was shot and killed by federal immigration enforcement agents during protests against a swelling ICE operation — the second fatal shooting by federal agents in the city this month. Videos and witness accounts show he was filming and attempting to help others when the confrontation escalated, raising intense public anger and prompting investigations and lawsuits over denied evidence access and use of force. 

The official narrative and the evidence clash.
The streets erupt in outrage.
Protesters push back as cities shudder.

The runways continue:
models beneath spotlights, ideal silhouettes, future trends.
In the streets:
crowds march in frozen cities, shouting,
“We want justice.”
“We want dignity.”

One world churns in couture,
the next bleeds on asphalt.

Israel admits at least 70,000 people killed in Gaza
numbers turned into headlines, then scrolls.

But what is life without empathy?
What is fashion without empathy?
What is style when bodies are collateral?
When governments shoot their own citizens?
When children are detained? Or when faraway wars count their dead by the thousands?

And when horrors are normalised, and a global war feels closer?

This is not future fiction.
This is now.

A portrait of contemporary madness.

And still — the fashion industry speaks of next season’s must-have.
Feeling overwhelmed? Perhaps we all are.

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The luxury dilemma: what does it mean “to do our work properly” in a broken system?

Reading Time: 5 minutes

FW26 Men’s Fashion Week: unpacking Miuccia Prada’s statement on sustainability


Men’s Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2026/27 has just wrapped up in Milan, bringing the luxury dilemma sharply into focus. Beyond the collections themselves, one statement in particular stood out — a widely shared comment by Miuccia Prada on sustainability.

In a season marked by uncertainty, many brands sought reassurance either in the past through nostalgia or in bold contemporary provocations, while reaffirming tailoring and colour as anchors of meaning. Following a runway show explicitly reflecting on the present moment, Miuccia Prada and co-designer Raf Simons spoke to the press. Sustainability inevitably entered the conversation.

Abstract image of an unrecognisable garment blurred in the background, overlaid with a barcode reading “OVERPRODUCTION”, symbolising the luxury dilemma at the heart of the fashion system.

Luxury fashion and sustainability: pragmatism versus idealism


Miuccia Prada reiterated her long-standing commitment to doing her work conscientiously and striving for excellence. She stated:

“I’m trying to get on with my work and do it properly. If we truly wanted to be sustainable, we’d have to stop everything: no cars, no clothes, no consumption at all. We must be honest and do our work to the best of our ability, bringing creativity, quality, and awareness to it.”

It is a compelling, deliberately provocative statement — one that exposes the tension between idealism and pragmatism in sustainability discourse.

A titan of the luxury fashion industry and a figure known for her intellectual and often contradictory positions, Prada draws a stark dichotomy:

  1. The pure ideal: true, absolute sustainability would require a complete halt to modern industrial life — no cars, no new clothes, no consumption.
  2. The pragmatic reality: since such a scenario is implicitly deemed impossible or unacceptable, the alternative is not withdrawal but “doing our work properly”.

The underlying message is clear: perfection becomes the enemy of improvement. Prada rejects a paralysing purity test in favour of an ethic of incremental responsibility.

The luxury dilemma and its internal contradictions


Yet this statement also reveals a deeper contradiction.

1. A defence of the luxury system
At its core, the quote functions as a defence of high-end fashion’s right to exist. Prada suggests that even the creative and qualitative apex of the industry would fail a test of absolute sustainability. The implicit argument is: if fast fashion is condemned, then so must luxury be — the overproduction model is the same.  And if that happens, society risks losing creativity, craftsmanship, culture.

2. Quality and creativity as a smokescreen
For luxury brands, “quality” (durability, materials, craftsmanship) and “creativity” (cultural and artistic value) are repeatedly invoked as ethical justifications for continued mass production. But this framing sidesteps the central issue: the business model itself.

Whether it is a €50 polyester blouse or a €5.000 nylon bag, the luxury industry still depends on:

  • Seasonal cycles, driving perpetual “newness” and the obsolescence of desire
  • Marketing-driven consumption, creating symbolic rather than utilitarian needs
  • Vast, opaque supply chains, with environmental and social impacts regardless of material quality
  • Manufactured exclusivity and scarcity, fundamentally at odds with the anti-consumption logic Prada herself references

Within this structure, creativity and quality are not neutral values — they are often the very engines of consumption.

Blurred garment with a barcode reading “OVERCONSUMPTION”, symbolising overconsumption as a consequence of the luxury dilemma in fashion. AI-generated image.

3. Intellectual honesty vs corporate reality
There is undeniable honesty in Prada’s acknowledgement that true sustainability would mean “no clothes”. It openly names the conflict at the heart of fashion. Yet the conclusion — “do our work well” — feels like an intellectual sleight of hand.

The problem shifts from systemic change (overproduction, growth imperatives, marketing pressure) to individual ethics: my work, our work. In doing so, responsibility is displaced from the corporation and its structural drivers onto personal integrity.

By articulating the critic’s most radical argument — we should stop everything — Prada positions herself as the sober realist. The critique is acknowledged, absorbed, and then dismissed as unworkable. It is a sophisticated form of containment: recognising the radical in order to defend a softened status quo.

What the luxury dilemma leaves out

  • A false binary
    Prada presents a choice between total civilisational shutdown and business-as-usual with better intentions. This erases the vast middle ground: degrowth, sufficiency, circular systems, and radical business-model innovation.
  • Denial of agency
    As creative director of a billion-euro group, Prada possesses exceptional power to experiment with new models. Retreating to “just doing my work” understates this agency. The argument might be defensible from a junior designer — far less so from one of the most influential figures in fashion.

Final thoughts


One could read the collection itself — clothes that appear worn yet are brand new — as an implicit suggestion: use what you already have. This is a ritual we always cherish at the end of a Prada show, because there is always a message that transcends the clothes. But the more pressing question remains how to build genuinely sustainable models for the fashion business.

Terms like degrowth or smaller production volumes threaten the very structures that allow luxury brands to maintain their cathedrals — architectural, symbolic, and economic. And so they remain largely unspoken.

Miuccia Prada’s statement ultimately becomes a revealing manifesto of the luxury dilemma. It is intellectually lucid about the problem, yet philosophically conservative in its solution. It mobilises the language of ethics — honesty, awareness — to justify the preservation of a system that, by its own admission, cannot exist within true planetary limits.

Focusing on “doing the work at its best” inside a broken model, even with the best intentions of creativity and quality, amounts to a form of managed dissent: it critiques the ends, but fiercely defends the means.

The luxury dilemma: what does it mean “to do our work properly” in a broken system? Read More »