Market Update: August 2026

At Vegan Fashion Repository, we keep our ears firmly on the ground, collecting and curating news and insights most relevant to the vegan fashion industry—particularly in material innovation, circularity, accountable sustainability, and consumer behaviour—at the end of every month.

Here’re the highlights of August 2026:

The August edit might be a tad shorter, as parts of the fashion industry have joined the rest of human population in taking a few days off before fashion month kicks off — but there were still some serious highlights.

Let’s start from the end. Yesterday, on 30 August 2026, yours truly held its first IRL event, Open Day: Polish Material Innovations, highlighting Poland’s emerging material innovation scene. The event showcased a leather alternative made from chocolate and walnut husks by Nutico™, locally sown, harvested and woven hemp fabric by Kombinat Konopny, and brands that have been experimenting with and developing their production around plant-based materials since their inception, including Estimon, Bohema Clothing and Blumi. Two newcomers are already shaking up the scene: S.Appeal, with lingerie and loungewear made from a silk alternative derived from rose petals, and Paweł Tumilowicz, who is reinventing natural latex as wearable art.

The event was held under the patronage of the Międzynarodowa Szkoła Kostiumografii i Projektowania Ubioru (MSKPU) as main patron and Fashion Revolution Polska as honorary patron, with the Play Sustain Foundation joining us as our very special guest.

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us yesterday! We’ll be sharing a video report very soon.

Copenhagen Fashion Week celebrates the 20th anniversary

Now, winding back to the very first day of August. Copenhagen Fashion Week (CPHFW) has become a much-anticipated prelude to fashion month — and perhaps one we particularly look forward to, as the sustainability standards set by CPHFW continue to attract followers around the world. To mark CPHFW’s 20th anniversary, a number of events and projects were unveiled, including an AI-powered sustainability requirements screening system developed together with Renoon. The plan is eventually for other fashion weeks and councils that have adopted the CPHFW Sustainability Requirements framework, including London, Berlin and Amsterdam, to use the system as well.

CPHFW’s SS27 edition took place from 3–7 August, and the highlight for us was Collina Strada inaugurating the International Guest Slot. The brand, founded by Hillary Taymour, is not only vegan but also used exclusively deadstock materials for its SS27 collection. As usual, there were also brands that, while not entirely vegan, regularly work with plant-based and vegan options, including CPHFW regular OperaSPORT and Skall Studio, which styled its SS27 runway with the vegan BIRKENSTOCK Arizona. CPHFW

On 3–5 August, the 67th edition of CIFF (Copenhagen International Fashion Fair) took place, bringing together more than 1,000 brands, including those known for largely avoiding animal-derived fibres or incorporating plant-based alternatives, such as Rains, Dedicated, ARKK Copenhagen and Holdit. CIFF

Material Innovations News

South Korea is developing its first vegan leather made from melon waste. Chilgok County has begun upcycling melon waste into a leather alternative and has partnered with HLK, a vegan fashion brand, to produce prototype card wallets, business card holders and bags. The material currently contains approximately 10% melon waste. Moving forward, the Agricultural Technology Center reportedly plans to increase the melon content to 22% and expand its use into industrial applications such as automotive interiors, with the aim of accelerating commercialisation. Plant Based News

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have created a self-repairing living textile from the fungus Cordyceps militaris, capable of regrowing damaged areas when supplied with fresh fungal material. The fabrication process begins in liquid culture, where Cordyceps militaris is grown into small spherical pellets. These are then washed and transferred into moulds, where the hyphae from neighbouring pellets intertwine and consolidate into a continuous, self-supporting sheet. No conventional fabric, polymer mesh or external scaffold is used at any stage: the fungal architecture holds itself together. The research was published in Science Advances. MycoStories

Congratulations to Ponda, producer of BioPuff, a plant-based textile insulation made from bulrush grown on regenerated wetlands. The Bristol biomaterials start-up, formerly known as Saltyco, has raised more than £1.4 million from 213 investors through crowdfunding platform Republic Europe. Shares were priced at £12.54 each for a 15.8% equity stake, and the campaign is due to close soon. Ponda has worked with Stella McCartney and fashion brands including Sheep Inc., Ahluwalia and Berghaus. Its four founders met while studying at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. DealRoom

Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a recyclable elastic yarn designed to match the strength and stretch of conventional spandex-based materials. The work could address one of the biggest technical barriers facing textile-to-textile recycling: the non-recyclability of elastane. The yarn is made entirely from polyethylene-family materials and can be melted down and spun back into fibres without first separating its components. In testing, the MIT team repeatedly melted and re-spun the polyethylene yarn and found that, after 10 recycling cycles, its mechanical performance remained comparable with the original material. The underlying research, published in ACS Materials Letters, also found that the yarns could exceed the mechanical performance of commercial PET-spandex yarns. MIT News

Cotton News

Quite a bit of cotton-related news this month.

The United States has added 43 Chinese companies, including major cotton and textile businesses, to its Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List. The additions include major cotton and textile operators such as Shandong Weiqiao Pioneering Group, arguably the world’s largest cotton textile enterprise, with six million spindles and annual yarn production capacity of approximately 720,000 tonnes, and Henan Tongzhou Cotton Industry, which produces more than 450,000 tonnes of cotton and cotton yarn annually. Apparel Insider

Meanwhile, LVMH has set a target of helping to regenerate 5 million hectares of natural habitats by 2030. In 2025, 4.3 million hectares had already been preserved, restored or regenerated, including 72,000 hectares through regenerative agriculture practices. The target forms part of the group’s LIFE 360 environmental strategy. LVMH

Investing in something that does anything to address the very high impact of growing cotton to meet ever-increasing demand is crucial. According to a new report from the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC), global cotton trade is forecast to rise steadily over the next three seasons, reaching approximately 10.3 million tonnes by 2028/29. Apparel Insider, ICAC

Cotton is a thirsty crop, and its supply chain remains notoriously opaque. More circular, low-impact efforts to reuse or extend the life of cotton fibres already in circulation remain difficult to make commercially viable. Dutch circular denim brand MUD Jeans has been declared bankrupt after filing for insolvency, with chief executive Dion Vijgeboom blaming a burden of historic debt. The company pioneered recycled-cotton denim, garment take-back and its well-known “Lease A Jeans” model, but was ultimately unable to establish a financially sustainable path forward. WWD

Resale & Circularity News

Following its purchase of Depop on 30 July, eBay released its Q2 2026 results, reporting revenue of $3.1 billion and cross merchandise volume (GMV) reached $22.4 billion, both up 15% on an as-reported basis and 14% on an FX-neutral basis. The company also returned $448 million to shareholders in Q2, including $310 million in share repurchases and $138 million in cash dividends. Business is good. eBay

Oxfam has become the first national charity to launch a clothes rental service. Ahead of its Second-Hand September campaign, Oxfam is piloting an online clothes rental scheme from 3 August 2026 — the first time a national charity has offered rental alongside its retail shops. Standout pieces available at launch include a Balenciaga blue-and-white spotted dress, a Stella McCartney yellow tailored jacket and a Dolce & Gabbana strapless black dress. Prices start at £22 for 14 days. The items are drawn from donated stock — vintage finds, well-made one-offs and pieces too distinctive for the regular rail — then cleaned and prepared for hire, sent to customers and returned for someone else to hire next. Charity Retail

Last but not least, Kering is considering a direct move into the second-hand luxury market as the group looks for new ways to reconnect with customers and gain greater control over the resale of products from its brands. The potential initiative could cover labels including Gucci, Balenciaga and Saint Laurent. No launch has been confirmed, and the proposal remains under consideration. Business Quarter, Kering

August releases

• The New Dress Detective by Ingrid E. Mida (Bloomsbury)

New reports

• Economic viability of chemical recycling by European Commission’s Joint Research Centre
• From Shedding to Solutions: A Global Assessment of Microfiber Emissions and Reduction Opportunities in Textile Production by Earth Action
• The Annual Report 2025 by Textile Exchange
• Carbon footprint of monomer recycling for mixed synthetic textiles – a grave-to-gate analysis by Challenge Lab at Chalmers University of Technology