Fashion has always understood the power of being seen, whether through the collection, the campaign, the designer, the runway or the label inside the garment.
Now the industry faces a very different kind of visibility, because brands will increasingly need to see all the way through their supply chains and hold the evidence to support what they find there.
Where did the fibre originate? Who grew or produced it? Who processed and spun it? Where did the yarn or fabric travel, who manufactured the finished garment, and what evidence supports the sustainability and provenance claims attached to it?
These questions once helped brands tell richer stories about their products. Increasingly, they will determine whether those products can enter important global markets at all.
I recently joined Ahron Young on Ticker to discuss Europe’s move towards greater product transparency, what this means for Australian fashion businesses and why brands need to start preparing now rather than waiting for regulation to force the issue.
You can listen to the interview here.
The shift matters because traceability will increasingly influence compliance, cost, consumer trust and, critically, market access.
For luxury, the implications run even deeper. Luxury has always spoken about craftsmanship, quality, heritage and provenance, yet the next chapter will require brands to substantiate those qualities throughout the supply chain rather than simply describe them at the point of sale.
Because true luxury does not begin on the shop floor. It begins at the source.
What is changing?
Europe is moving towards far greater transparency around the products that enter its market.
From 2027, textiles become a priority under the European Union’s Ecodesign framework, including the development of Digital Product Passports, which form part of a much broader movement towards giving regulators and consumers clearer information about what products contain, where their materials came from and what happened to them throughout their life cycle.
For fashion, this represents a significant change.
A brand may currently hold excellent information about its manufacturer while knowing considerably less about the origins of the fibre itself. That gap will become increasingly difficult to ignore as regulation moves further back through the supply chain.
The conversation around transparency began with an important question: who made my clothes?
That question helped change the industry by encouraging brands to examine factories, working conditions and manufacturing practices more carefully, but the next stage goes further.
Knowing who made the garment remains important, but brands increasingly need to know who produced the material, where it came from and whether they can prove it.
Why fashion does not already know
At first glance, it seems extraordinary that a business could sell a garment without knowing precisely where its primary material originated, but fashion supply chains can become extraordinarily fragmented.
Take a natural fibre such as wool.
A grower produces the fibre, which may then move through brokers or traders before reaching processors, spinners, mills and manufacturers. Each stage can take place in a different region or country, and every transaction creates another point where information can separate from the physical material.
The fibre continues its journey, but the evidence does not always travel with it.
By the time a finished garment reaches the brand, the business may know its immediate supplier extremely well while holding very little verified information about what happened several stages earlier.
Textile Exchange has highlighted the scale of this problem, reporting significant gaps in brands’ knowledge of fibre origin. Among reporting brands in its research, the country of origin remained unknown for 80 per cent of cotton and 75 per cent of polyester sourced.
That tells us something important about where the industry still lacks visibility. Fashion has made considerable progress in understanding final manufacturing, but knowledge often becomes weaker as we move further back towards the source.
Increasingly, that source matters.
Why traceability has become a commercial issue
It is tempting to place traceability within the sustainability department and treat it primarily as an environmental or ethical consideration, but that substantially understates its importance.
Traceability increasingly affects four fundamental areas of business: market access, compliance, cost and trust.
For Australian businesses selling into Europe, European regulation does not remain a distant policy issue. It becomes part of the commercial conditions attached to entering and remaining within that market.
Brands that already understand their supply chains will approach these changes from a position of strength, while those that do not may find themselves trying to reconstruct information across suppliers, countries and years of purchasing history as regulatory deadlines approach.
That process can become both difficult and expensive.
Claims present another area of risk. Words such as natural, sustainable, responsible, ethical, traceable and regenerative carry considerable commercial value, but they also create expectations that businesses must be able to substantiate.
A provenance claim without evidence creates exposure, and the same applies to sustainability language that sounds convincing but rests on little more than assumption.
The next stage of fashion transparency will therefore reward the businesses that can support their claims with evidence rather than those that simply tell the most compelling story.
Traceability is moving beyond marketing and becoming part of the commercial infrastructure of fashion.
Why fast fashion faces a particular challenge
Fast fashion has built much of its success on speed, scale and complex international supply chains, which becomes increasingly difficult to manage when regulators and customers expect greater visibility behind each product.
A business that constantly changes suppliers, fabrics, factories and sourcing markets has a far more complex task when it comes to retaining reliable product information across every stage.
This does not mean regulation alone will bring an end to fast fashion, nor does it mean large fashion businesses cannot adapt. It does, however, make opacity more difficult to sustain.
Speed and price will continue to matter, but brands will also need to consider how quickly and confidently they can prove what sits inside the products they bring to market.
That changes the commercial equation.
Where should brands begin?
The answer does not necessarily begin with an enormous technology investment.
It begins with understanding one product properly.
Choose a commercially important product and trace it back through every stage of its supply chain, starting with the materials it contains and establishing where each one originated.
For natural fibres, identify where someone grew or produced them, then follow those materials through processing, spinning, fabric or yarn production, dyeing, finishing and manufacturing.
At every stage, ask not only what you know but what evidence supports that knowledge.
There is an important distinction between knowing something and proving it.
A supplier may tell you that a wool fibre came from Australia, but can you verify that origin? A manufacturer may describe a material as certified, but which certification applies, who holds it and what transaction or product does it actually cover?
A business may describe a garment as traceable, but how far back does that traceability really extend?
The purpose of this exercise is not to expect perfection immediately. It is to establish visibility, expose the gaps and understand where better systems or stronger supplier relationships may be required.
Finding those gaps now gives a business options. Discovering them under regulatory pressure creates urgency.
Build an evidence chain, not simply a supplier list
One of the mistakes brands can make is to confuse knowing the names of their suppliers with having a traceable supply chain.
A supplier list tells you who you buy from, but an evidence chain connects the information to the material itself.
For each stage of the product journey, brands should understand what documentation exists, who owns it, how they retain it and whether they can connect it reliably to the finished product.
Depending on the material, this may include certificates, test results, transaction records, invoices, fibre origin documentation, manufacturing information and supplier declarations.
The precise documents will vary, but the principle remains the same.
The information needs to remain connected to the material as it moves.
Give someone responsibility for provenance
Traceability can easily fall between departments because sustainability assumes sourcing holds the information, sourcing assumes production has it, production assumes suppliers retain it and marketing receives a product story without necessarily knowing who verified the underlying claim.
That structure creates risk.
Someone within the business needs clear responsibility for the integrity of product information, even if that responsibility forms part of an existing role rather than requiring a new position.
The business should know who asks the questions, who examines the evidence, who identifies gaps and who approves the claims that eventually reach the customer.
Without ownership, traceability quickly becomes everybody’s responsibility and therefore nobody’s.
Start speaking to suppliers now
Brands should also begin conversations with suppliers before regulation makes those conversations urgent.
Ask what information suppliers already collect, how far back they can trace their materials, which certifications apply, what evidence they can share and where they themselves encounter gaps.
Some businesses may discover that their suppliers already hold far more information than they currently request, while others may uncover weaknesses that will take time to resolve.
Both outcomes create value because they provide greater visibility before the business faces external pressure.
Keep claims within the evidence
Perhaps one of the most important disciplines for fashion brands will be resisting the temptation to make a stronger claim than the evidence supports.
Marketing teams naturally want to tell the most powerful story possible, but provenance requires precision.
If you know the country of origin, say the country. If you know the property or farm, say so. If you know the spinner but not the grower, state what you know without embellishing what you do not.
Specificity builds trust, while exaggeration destroys it.
This matters particularly within luxury, where provenance has long contributed to perceived value. Words such as heritage, craftsmanship, natural, sustainable and traceable carry very little weight if the business cannot explain what sits behind them.
Why Australia should see an opportunity
Australia should not view this shift simply as another piece of European regulation.
We should recognise the commercial opportunity within it.
Australia produces some of the finest natural fibres in the world, and our wool industry has spent generations developing sophisticated systems for growing, classing, testing and trading fibre.
Superfine Australian Merino carries extraordinary intrinsic value before it ever reaches a designer or a fashion house.
The opportunity lies in ensuring that its provenance, quality and integrity survive the journey from the paddock through processing, spinning, manufacturing and retail.
If provenance disappears somewhere along that journey, part of the commercial value disappears with it.
That matters to growers, brands and ultimately to a country that produces premium natural materials for global markets.
As international markets demand greater proof of origin, Australia should find itself well placed to compete, but only if the information travels with the fibre.
What provenance looks like in practice
At Vanessa Bell, this principle sits at the heart of how I think about luxury.
Our current collection uses RWS certified Australian Merino sourced through our Italian mill partners. Tollegno 1900 and Lanecardate spin our yarn in Biella, while Maglificio Pini, a specialist family knitwear atelier in Forlì, crafts our garments. We hold the Woolmark Pure Merino licence, and Intertek independently tests the collection.
Our current garments do not contain wool grown at Emu Creek. Our own clip represents the next stage, and we are already working with our Italian partners towards that goal.
I state that distinction clearly because provenance only has value when it is specific.
It might make a more romantic story to collapse the distance between our sheep and the current collection, but it would not make the story accurate.
Luxury needs more than a beautiful narrative. It needs integrity behind it.
A new meaning of visibility
Fashion has traditionally thought about visibility at the front of the business, through who wore the garment, which editor photographed it, which retailer carried it, which designer created it and which label appeared inside it.
The next era asks brands to look in the opposite direction and understand what happened before the garment ever reached the shop floor.
That means looking through the manufacturer, the mill, the spinner and the processor until we reach the fibre and, ultimately, the source.
Brands that do this well will achieve more than regulatory readiness. They will understand their businesses more deeply, make stronger claims, identify risk earlier, build better relationships with suppliers and protect the integrity of the materials from which they create value.
Australian fashion businesses should not wait until regulation makes traceability urgent.
The sensible place to begin is with one product, traced carefully back to source, with every gap identified and every claim supported by evidence.
Because the next competitive advantage in fashion will not simply come from what the customer can see.
It will come from what the brand can prove, and for luxury that takes us back to where value has always begun.
At the source.
Thank you to Ahron Young and Ticker for the conversation.