OTB has set to achieve carbon neutrality of internal operations by 2030 and of the entire value chain by 2050. Another target is to go public between the end of 2024 and 2025.

This is an international fashion and luxury group whose brands include Diesel, Jil Sander, Maison Margiela, Marni, Viktor & Rolf. OTB has joined the Roadmap to Zero Program of the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) Foundation, committing to the development of a responsible water and chemical management strategy and to the elimination of the use of hazardous chemicals from production processes by 2030. About 40 per cent of the electricity used for OTB's internal operations comes from renewable sources.

In addition, since 2020, Diesel has joined The Fashion Pact, the global coalition of fashion and textile companies acting in three main areas: mitigating global warming, restoring biodiversity, and protecting the oceans. Used Diesel-branded denim garments are meticulously repaired, refurbished and sold in selected Italian stores and online throughout Europe. Maison Margiela has a line of restored and repurposed limited-edition garments or accessories. Jil Sander has a collection made of organic, high-performance and environmentally sustainable fibers that combine aesthetics and comfort, sophistication and high resistance to the elements.

Seoul Fashion Week will be held October 11 to 15, 2022.

South Korea’s largest fashion event will present spring-summer 2023 collections by 30 designers. Four to eight brands will present runway shows on each day of the five-day Seoul Fashion Week. Some 200 buyers from 23 countries will visit the event.

A trade show will be held in a hybrid format, combining online and in-person formats. A total of 86 Korean designer brands will show their collections at 67 separate booths and four joint booths set up in a 2,992-square-meter hall. Brands will set up stores where people can make purchases at discounted prices using QR codes. Actor Lee Jung-jae was the global ambassador of the previous fashion week, featuring fall-winter 2022 collections. The event was held in an online-offline hybrid format.

Bangladesh is aiming at hiking apparel exports to South Korea. A big push will be taken this year to capture a bigger share of the South Korean marketwith diversified items such as underwear, denims, shirts, jackets and pullovers as South Korea has a great demand for high-value winter clothing and denim. Other potential products that have good demand in the country include non-leather footwear, home textiles, jute and jute products etc.

Fashion and textile production is returning to the US.

What once appeared to be a trend of bringing major manufacturing operations back to the United States, as a stopgap measure to mitigate complications arising from the pandemic economy, is now seen as a wise long term strategy guaranteeing operational viability, resiliency and value.

While high labor costs have long been used to justify offshore production, volatile supply chains, shipping complications and costs, tariffs, perceived sociopolitical instability, and other factors — including the proliferation of automation technologies that necessitate fewer laborers to operate in general — have made reshoring to North America a practical, profitable, and safer proposition.

The economics of bringing production closer to the end consumer — immediately delivery that negates the need for vast and vulnerable supply chains, the ability to react to demand in real time, the eco-friendly aspect of a streamlined process, and the mitigation of troublesome external factors in general — has become attractive.

Manufacturers prefer to base their businesses in the US, even in highly regulated and high-cost regions that would not appear to be logical production sites.One of the greatest attributes of localized, on-demand fashion and textile production models is that the strategy is entirely modular. It can be replicated to mitigate risk, foster operational agility and versatility, and deliver profitability anywhere.

Trousers and shorts were the dominant category in Australia’s total apparel imports during the first half of 2022.They had a 21 per cent share and were followed by jerseys with a 15 per cent share and shirts with a nine per cent share.

These three products together accounted for more than 45 per cent of total apparel imports by Australia. Import of other products were T-shirts (nine per cent), dresses (eight per cent), innerwear (eight per cent), jackets and blazers (five per cent), nightwear (two per cent), baby wear (two per cent) and socks (two per cent). The Australian clothing market is growing by fourper cent a year. The market's largest segment is women’s apparel.

Since 2014, the Australian clothing industry has faced numerous challenges. Cautious spending habits, increasing competition, and rising lease costs are all creating negative impacts on available revenue. When all segments of the clothing industry in Australia are combined, they are responsible for about 2,20,000 jobs. That figure includes modeling and styling employment.

Australia also exports textiles, most of which are unprocessed commodities. These items are then sold back to the industry from European luxury brands which are based in Italy, France, or Great Britain.

Ezio Garciamendez is Kontoor’s senior vice president, chief supply chain officer. He will have responsibility for all aspects of supply chain management including global operations, planning, manufacturing, sourcing, quality, customer service, distribution, logistics and master data governance. He will also oversee all components of the company’s supply chain strategy, including trade-related functions and operations.

He has a track record of innovation in the global supply chain industry and experience in rolling out advanced solutions across the most complex and multifaceted supply chains. He has more than 20 years of experience in the consumer-packaged goods industry. He has held various roles with increasing responsibility within Procter and Gamble by leading highly complex, multi-category, end-to-end global supply chain operations including manufacturing, distribution, procurement, planning, logistics, engineering, and technical services.

Kontoor Brands, an apparel company with a portfolio that includes the world’s most iconic consumer brands, Wrangler and Lee, designs, manufactures and distributes superior high-quality products that look good and fit right, giving people around the world the freedom and confidence to express them selves. This is a purpose-led organization focused on leveraging its global platform, strategic sourcing model and best-in-class supply chain to drive brand growth and deliver long-term value for its stakeholders.

During 2021-22 India’s exports of manmade fibers have grown 82 per cent and manmade fiber blended textiles rose 46 per cent compared to the previous year.

Exports of manmade fibre yarns 72 per cent, while manmade fiber fabrics 30 per cent and manmade fiber made-ups 28 per cent. However, the share of the value-added segments like fabrics and made-ups in total exports has gone down from 63 per cent to 56 per cent.

In the current financial year exports have been slightly stressed in the firstt quarter. However, an encouraging turnaround was seen from August 2022 exports. Further growth of exports of synthetic textiles seems likely. The PLI scheme has been introduced for manmade fiber textiles, the ATUF scheme is being continued and RoDTEP rates have been rationalized. Among the possible future measures are incorporation of more manmade fiber textiles in the PLI 2 scheme, extension of the interest equalization scheme for yarns, implementation of the fiberneutral policy, treatingmanmade fiber textiles at par with natural fibers and treating both merchant exporters and manufacturing exporters as one.

The pandemic paralyzed economies around the world for two years and caused a lasting damage on labor productivity and potential output.

Compression Denim is designed to give women varying levels of support, so they can feel their most confident and sexy at all times.With comfort levels unique to the individual wearer, the collection is designed to give customers the freedom to choose how much they shape their figure.

The Light Compression jean holds in and smooths out the physique. The Super Compression jean enables the wearer to control how much they want to sculpt their waistline with adjustable front buttons. The Mega Compression jean snatches silhouettes with a built-in corset with hook-and-eye closures.

The collection will be available in a variety of Good American’s best-selling silhouettes including the Good Classic, Good Legs, Good Waist, Good Curve Straight, Good Icon, Good Classic Boot, and Good Legs Flare.

With this latest collection, Good American, launched in 2016, is taking another step towards making denim and the fashion industry atlarge even more inclusive. Figure-enhancing skinny jeans were central to Good American’s launch. It now offers a full wardrobe of women’s denim fits spanning bootcut, loose, flare and relaxed fits. In 2020, it introduced Always Fits, a skinny fit, high-rise jean available in five size categories with 100 percent stretchability.

Cisutac is a new European consortium that aims at identifying and eliminating the bottlenecks that hinder circularity in the apparel sector.

Cisutac will start work on technological, industry-specific and socio-economic issues relating to sustainable fashion, concentrating on three areas: repairing, disassembling products and sorting used items to identify those that are recyclable and reusable, with an emphasis on fiber-to-fiber recycling, and circular design. Pilot projects will be carried out in each of these areas. Cisutac will evaluate the creation of semi-automated workstations, assess infrastructure and material flows, and encourage the gradual digitalisation of waste sorting operations. Cisutac also aims to raise awareness, among consumers and the industry as a whole, about circularity issues related to clothes.

Euratex, Inditex, Decathlon and Lenzing are among members of Cisutac. Euratex, the European apparel and textile confederation, will facilitate the circular economy transition, liaise with other projects and initiatives, support the development of training and education material, including master classes, raise awareness in Europe of the environmental impact of textiles and provide input for policy, standardisation and certification to facilitate the transition to the circular economy.

The fashion industry is replacing the take-make-dispose model, which is worn out, with a circular economy for fashion in which clothes are kept at their highest value and designed from the outset to never end up as waste.

Turkish textile and raw materials exports to Morocco increased 30 per cent between January 2022 and August 2022. This is in spite of the fact that Morocco has imposed tariffs on Turkish imports. Turkish textile products, alongside Chinese brands, have flooded the Moroccan fashion sector. The Moroccan textile industry is gradually losing ground to them, particularly in the urban hubs. Morocco had the highest increase in the quantity of imported textiles and raw materials among Turkey’s top export destinations. The others are Italy, Germany, the US, Spain, and France.

The lack of funding as well as limited growth prospects for small and medium-sized Moroccan businesses in the sector represent additional challenges to the development of the local textile industry. Morocco fears for the sustainability of local shops in the light of the Turkish discount store Bim which has rapidly expanded in Morocco over the past few years.

There is a feeling in Morocco that the Morocco-Turkey Free Trade Agreement signed in 2004 has brought more economic benefits to Turkey. So there is a discussion in Morocco of the impact of the free flow of competitive Turkish products to the domestic market.

The Turkish textile and raw materials sector marked seven per cent year-on-year growth by the end of August 2022.

India’s cotton production for 2022 to 2023 will be 15 per cent higher than it was the previous year.

Among the helpful factors are an eight per cent rise in sowing area, favorable weather and good crop conditions. Uncertainty regarding the weather conditions for the cotton crop reduced towards the end of September.

In the first fortnight of the current month, there were concerns about the crop due to forecasts of heavy rains in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Some parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat received sporadic rains in the last week of September but there was no excessive rainfall which could have threatened the crop. North India also witnessed rainfall when the crop was ready for picking. But except for a minor impact in small parts of Haryana, north India faced no major losses. Last year, north India’s cotton crop was severely damaged from diseases like pink ball worm caused by the late monsoon rains. Crop yield reduced in Gujarat and Maharashtra too.

This year, no threats have been predicted for the crop so far. Arrivals in north India comprising Punjab, Haryana, upper Rajasthan and lower Rajasthan are increasing continuously.New cotton prices have witnessed a steep fall in north India despite the late arrivals and a prolonged scarcity before the new crop.