Interviews

Sustainability credentials and AI capabilities are increasingly shaping how textile buyers evaluate suppliers, yet the gap between exhibition-floor claims and commercial application remains significant. Intertextile Shenzhen 2026 drew over 20,000 visits from 74 countries and regions. Wilmet Shea, General Manager of Messe Frankfurt (HK) Ltd, assesses which innovations translated into tangible business outcomes and where the industry's direction is shifting.

Sustainability efforts in fashion have largely focused on optimising an existing linear model: cleaner dyes, better sorting, more efficient factories. Asha Singhal, Director, Nature of Fashion at the Biomimicry Institute, argues this approach overlooked a structural absence rather than a technical shortfall. Pilots run by the programme in the Netherlands, Germany and Ghana tested whether biological decomposition could process textile waste current recycling infrastructure cannot.

Clients who built relationships with personal stylists have started asking a question consumer resale apps cannot answer: what happens to clothing once it leaves the wardrobe. Stéphanie Crespin, Founder and Chief Executive of Reflaunt, has answered with Folio, a private resale system that lets stylists manage client wardrobes, earn commission and protect discretion others did not offer.

Premium retail in India is no longer defined by a narrow set of traditional luxury buyers, as a younger, more globally connected consumer base reshapes demand across categories. Pushpa Bector, Group Executive Director, DLF Retail and Whole-time Director, DCCDL, discusses how this expanding aspiration is reshaping leasing strategy, brand curation and the long-term positioning of premium retail destinations.

The textile industry has spent years producing pilot-scale sustainability successes that rarely translate into supply chain-wide adoption. The constraint is purchasing behaviour, not available technology. Eva Baumann, Chief Executive Officer of CHT Group, draws on CHT's foundation-owned structure and portfolio depth to make a case that is less about ambition than about where industrial reality and procurement logic continue to diverge.

Europe’s textile fair circuit is crowded, and buyers are weighing travel, time and sourcing returns more carefully as sourcing budgets face sharper scrutiny. For Serhan Pul, Managing Director of B Group US and organiser of Intertex Portugal, the answer lies in efficiency, relevance, buyer qualification and Portugal’s manufacturing strengths rather than scale alone today.

Across Latin America, cotton sectors are navigating a modernisation wave that is producing sharply unequal results. The technologies exist; so does the research capacity. What remains fragile is the institutional scaffolding that translates both into farm-level change. Dr Marcelo Paytas, Director at INTA – Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria, has spent years working at that fault line, and his diagnosis is precise.

Latin American cotton operates across a wide spectrum, yet rarely as a coherent regional bloc. Argentina exemplifies this tension: a significant cotton producer whose structural fragmentation mirrors the wider regional condition. José Luis Spontón, researcher at INTA's Reconquista Experimental Research Station (EEA Reconquista), examines what is holding the sector back and what associative models from Brazil and Paraguay suggest about the path forward.

The pressures reshaping cotton cultivation across Latin America are real, but they do not fall evenly. Scale, technology access and market proximity determine which producers absorb disruption and which do not. Nelson Dias Suassuna, senior researcher at Embrapa, draws a clear line between the sector's two operating realities and the distinct futures each one faces.

Yarn suppliers are being pulled into earlier, more technical conversations as fashion, sportswear and advanced textiles demand stronger proof of performance, traceability and end-use value. Nicola Carletti, Marketing Manager at MIC S.p.A., explains how the Italian sewing thread specialist is widening its material base without abandoning industrial discipline, from Himalayan nettle to wearable robotics projects.