Every year the fashion industry gets a new sustainability buzzword, and this year it’s “regenerative.” You’ve most likely seen it; earthy campaign visuals, words like “soil health” and “holistic practices” casually dropped into ad copy, and models standing in fields like they’re about to drop a folk album. Regenerative fashion is suddenly everywhere, and yet… no one seems to be explaining what it actually means. Because all that comes to my mind is, clothes that can grow into more clothes. Rip your shirt? Don't worry it'll grow another sleeve. Kind of vibe.
Ask ten people in fashion what regenerative means and you’ll probably get ten different answers. Some think it’s just organic cotton. Others think it’s some sort of advanced recycling system. And some brands are using it like it’s the evolved form of sustainable, like sustainable but sexier. But most of them have no clue. Me included.
At its core, regeneration is a science thing. It’s rooted in land-based practices that restore ecosystems, think rebuilding soil biodiversity, restoring water cycles, rotating crops properly, and not just extracting from the Earth but actually giving back to it. That’s how it started. On farms. With food. Now, fashion’s latched on, but it’s moving a bit… off script.
Because here’s the thing: true regenerative fashion is supposed to start at the fibre level. It’s about how the raw material: cotton, wool, hemp, etc. Are grown or raised. Not just doing “less harm,” but improving the land they come from. But suddenly we’ve got brands calling polyester “regenerative” because it was recycled twice, or calling a capsule collection “regenerative” because they partnered with a startup that planted ten trees. Make it make sense.
And to be honest, it’s giving rebranded greenwashing. We’ve barely got standard definitions for sustainable, and now brands are skipping straight to regenerative like we’re all meant to just trust them. But who’s checking the science? Who’s defining the terms? If a T-shirt is “regenerative,” does that mean every part of the supply chain was regenerative, or just the cotton? What about the dyeing, the stitching, the factory conditions? It’s all feeling a bit like sustainability theatre with a new script.
This wouldn’t matter so much if the industry wasn’t trying to trademark the word into oblivion. There are already patents being filed for “regenerative denim,” ad campaigns rolling out for “regenerative fashion capsules,” and some brands low-key trying to own the term without doing the deeper work. Meanwhile, farmers, Indigenous communities, and soil scientists, as in, the people who actually know what regenerative practices look like, are being sidelined from the conversation entirely.
And of course, no one’s talking about scale. Most of the “regenerative” fashion projects out there right now are tiny pilot schemes, like five acres of cotton grown using better practices in India or Peru. But brands are marketing these micro projects like they’ve overhauled their entire supply chain. A regenerated lie, if you will.
So here’s the question: if no one can define regenerative fashion properly, how do we hold anyone accountable? And why do we use it?
For us as emerging creatives, this is the moment to get clued up. Don’t get swept up in the language. Ask questions. Read the receipts. If a brand says they’re regenerative, ask how. Ask where. Ask who’s involved. And ask if the land, the people, and the ecosystems actually benefit or if it’s just another cute marketing word slapped on for clicks. Because if regeneration becomes just another fashion trend, we lose the plot. Again.