WHAT’S INSIDE Fall’s first crisp nights are upon us as what is known as the “season of conferences and meetings” shows little evidence of letting up. Our team has been to Antwerp, Rotterdam and Izmir of late, coming home with plenty of inspiring ideas in our heads. Highlights of our newsletter this month: ● Big brands seem to be forming coalitions, lots of coalitions ● A new “box” with observations from the world of social media, this one on the much critiqued John Galliano x Zara collection. ● Our project GFSU seeks ideas at any level of development from vocational training students in the Creative Solutions contest that offers cash prizes - pass this on!

WHAT’S INSIDE Top stories and what you’ll find in our newsletter this month: ● A wrap up of Avantex looks to a don’t miss anniversary in 2027 ● A contest for students and a Creathon for young people ● Some recent reports and current news

Europe's fashion sector knows AI matters. It just doesn't yet know how to use it. What 200+ textile and fashion professionals across six countries told us — and what we're building next. By Luca Leonardi – 20 Août 2026 Artificial intelligence is already reshaping how clothes are designed, made, and sold. But how ready is the fashion and textile sector to actually put it to work — and to do so in a way that serves sustainability rather than just speed? That is the question at the heart of TechStyle – AI-Driven Circular and Regenerative Fashion in VET Education , a project co-funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ programme (KA220-VET Cooperation Partnerships in Vocational Education and Training). TechStyle brings together partners from six countries to equip the textile and fashion workforce — with a particular focus on women — with the AI and digital skills needed for a more circular, sustainable industry. A milestone: our needs assessment is complete We're glad to share that TechStyle has just closed a foundational phase of the project. After an initial round of desk research, our consortium carried out primary research across all partner countries and is now finalizing its Consolidated Analysis of Needs Assessment Survey of AI Implementation in the Fashion and Textile Sector — the project's Initial Strategic Survey, intended as its strategic reference for training development and policy reflection. The purpose of this document is simple but essential: before designing any training, understand where the sector actually stands. It measures AI maturity, familiarity, and daily use; maps which operations along the value chain are already touched by AI and which are not; and — most importantly — surfaces the real skills gaps and training priorities of the people who will use these tools. How we did it, and who did it The research design was led by the Aegean Apparel Exporters' Association (EHKIB, Türkiye) , which developed the methodology and refined it together with all partners. It combined two complementary lenses: a quantitative survey of 203 participants , structured around three core target groups — textile workers, entrepreneurs and owners, and students — and distributed both online and offline; and 30 qualitative, semi-structured interviews with apparel workers, entrepreneurs, fashion experts, VET trainers, and industry representatives. The fieldwork ran from March to April 2026 and was analysed in May, with each partner conducting the research on the ground in France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Türkiye — giving the findings a genuinely pan-European base. The consortium brings together six organisations across these countries: CEDECS-TCBL, CFP Zanardelli, the Aegean Apparel Exporters' Association (EIB), TEXFOR, IRIS, and YET. The first key takeaway If one message rises above the rest, it is this: the sector is highly aware of AI's strategic importance, but that awareness has not yet translated into operational use. Almost half of participants report engaging with AI regularly — yet routine application is still concentrated almost entirely in fashion design and 3D visualization. The back-end operations where AI could make the biggest sustainability difference — material traceability, predictive maintenance, quality control — remain largely experimental. Behind that gap sits a clear cause: 40% of participants have received no AI training at all , and the technology has barely entered academic curricula. The appetite to close that gap, however, is striking. Professionals across all six countries told us they want practical, application-oriented training — and they want it in their own languages. What comes next These findings are not an endpoint; they are a brief. In the next phase (WP3), TechStyle will translate this evidence base into a concrete set of training modules built around what the sector actually asked for — from the foundations of AI and its ethical and regulatory framework, to hands-on tracks on forecasting, production, quality, traceability, and sustainable, circular design. We'll be sharing the full report and the emerging curriculum in the coming weeks. Follow along as we build AI skills for a more circular fashion industry.

WHAT’S INSIDE We hope you had a bit of a break this summer to recharge your batteries! Here we are, in the lingering heat of August, preparing this newsletter for you and mentally preparing ourselves or the intense autumn ahead. Here’s what you’ll find inside: ● Avantex comes early this year, here’s the event schedule. ● What motivates you to keep an item of clothing? Tell your story on the Wardrobe Barometer! ● AI Act, 3D printed clothing and more.

Cedecs-TCBL joined the final day of METAMORPHOSIS – Dialogues About Change, the talk series Fashion Council Germany ran with Vogue Business and eBay.de during Berlin Fashion Week. The 4th of July session focused on Community, wrapping up a three-day program that had already covered Design and Technology & Innovation. Here’s what caught our attention in three sessions. Rethinking skills for fashion’s next generation Dr. Gemma Vallet - Vice Dean of Berlin School of Business and Innovation Bengisu Berispek - Researcher and Lecturer at Technische Universität Berlin Liza Sander - Future Strategist and Facilitator at Circular Society The panel on future skills opened with some numbers worth sitting with: Gen Z now makes up 24% of the global population, and fashion education alone reaches over 1.2 million students spread across more than 500 schools worldwide. The speakers agreed on one thing right away — curricula are overdue for a serious update. Systems thinking kept surfacing throughout the conversation. Students need to figure out who their stakeholders really are, understand where their work actually has impact, and get comfortable questioning or redesigning systems instead of simply operating inside them. AI literacy came up, too, though the panel framed it more as knowing where AI’s usefulness runs out, and human judgment needs to step in, since AI can never carry responsibility for the consequences of a decision. Context mattered a great deal to the group as well. Clothing was described as a political and sociological signal, so students need to learn to read that layer just as fluently as they read a trend forecast. Collaboration, critical thinking, and sound decision-making rounded things out — skills the panel sees as genuinely irreplaceable by automation. On teaching methods, the group pushed hard for workshop-based learning over traditional lectures. Their vision: send students into their own environments to do field research first, then let them build a concept from what they actually find, so they end up solving real problems rather than hypothetical ones. There was also a call to bring students into companies’ real decision-making processes early, so the data they learn to work with stays grounded in reality. One tension never really got resolved: technology keeps evolving faster than teaching methods can adapt, and AI-generated content risks flattening ideas into shallow fragments instead of deepening them. Resale is a strategy that needs to be embedded into the company’s core structure Muchaneta Ten-Napel - Founder of Shape Innovate Janis Kuenkler - Managing Director of Trove Carlo Bellmann - Strategic Partnership Lead Fashion of ebay.de Achille Mathot - Co-Founder & CEO of Trosort The resale panel took direct aim at a common misreading of the space — treating resale as a bolt-on revenue stream rather than something structural. The panellists argued that resale needs to be built into a company’s core investment plan and brand identity from day one. They offered a concrete fix, too: care labels could carry information that makes reselling an item much easier. The fear of cannibalising new sales came up openly. The consensus landed on this: some short-term overlap is real, but the long-term payoff for brand loyalty and material circularity makes it worthwhile. Digital Product Passports were seen as genuinely useful for traceability, though the panel was quick to note they won’t fix resale’s deeper structural gaps by themselves. One sharper observation stood out: fast fashion resale is still a downstream activity, managing waste afterwards rather than preventing the production problem further upstream. Because resale currently functions as an add-on to existing business models, scaling it stays difficult, and the panel left an open question hanging in the air — whether the real fix is a broader system change rather than a better resale program. Circularity needs a matching strategy Marie Bastian - CEO&Founder of World of Mesh Kim Berndt - AI Creator & Creative Technologist of WE:ART Antonia Pfeifer - Master graduate and Winner of FCG Istituto Maragoni Scholarship Schirin Negahbani - Creative Director & Technologist of Polygondressing A separate discussion named the gap most brands still face: sustainability goals and business strategy often run on separate tracks instead of one shared plan. The panel pointed to four drivers that need to move together for circularity to actually take hold — technology (AI and hardware), governance through clear sustainability KPIs, regulation at both the product and marketing level, and a genuine mindset shift across the whole organisation. Regulation itself got split into two worth distinguishing: rules imposed from outside, and strategic targets a company sets for itself, which need to stay realistic rather than aspirational. A new creative role is forming One idea that stuck with us: fashion may soon need a new kind of role, something like an “AI creative director.” It’s less about typing the right prompts and more about genuinely understanding how these AI systems work underneath. That way, even as production tools get more automated, the creative vision stays firmly in human hands. Cross-border trade came up as one way to give circular commerce a real push forward. But the conversation kept coming back to a familiar truth: the biggest obstacles are still human behaviour and disconnected value chains. No single piece of technology is going to untangle that on its own.

WHAT’S INSIDE You’d think we’d all be sliding into summer on a cool, wet banana but if your schedule is anything like ours, there’s plenty of work to be done for upcoming events in the Fall! Inside you’ll find: ● A super cascade funding opportunity we spotted for you ● A Berlin fashion week event (July 3) for the newborn ALADIN project, where we’ll hint at an upcoming funding opportunity ● Our fall events including Avantex, Ecosystex, and the Fabrix final conference  We’ll be back with an events update in late August. Have a great summer!

TCBL Association is proud to be a partner in BE CIRCULAR – Local circular economy practices starting from textile waste , an interregional project led by the Sartoria Sociale of the social cooperative Al Revés (Palermo) and supported by Fondazione CON IL SUD through its call for the circular economy in Southern Italy. The project brings together three social tailoring workshops — the Sartoria Sociale in Palermo (lead partner), the social tailoring of the Soleinsieme cooperative in Reggio Calabria, and the La Matrioska textile lab in Quartu Sant'Elena, Sardinia. Together they are building a local, transparent and ethical supply chain for textile reuse and upcycling, turning discarded clothing into social, environmental and employment opportunities.  At its heart, BE CIRCULAR creates training and work-inclusion pathways for people in vulnerable situations, including migrants, women in difficulty, homeless people and former prisoners. The project also responds to a pressing concern: the growing exposure of the used-clothing and textile-waste sector to organised crime, illegal trafficking, labour exploitation and irregular disposal. By keeping the supply chain local and traceable, BE CIRCULAR links environmental sustainability directly to legality and social justice.

WHAT’S INSIDE Top stories and what you’ll find in our newsletter this month: ● A New European Bauhaus Satellite event ● A book if you’re into wool (and the sheep that give it to us) ● Our news roundup of the latest in T&C including Italy’s new definition of “artisan”, recent studies on recycling and a request from DG Environment

Two questions ran through TCBL’s keynote at the TEX-DAN and Green-Tex final event in Budapest, 19–20 May 2026: has circular fashion really moved from pilots to practice and is the sector ready to act together? And can the way a project like TEX-DAN is conceived, run and concluded show how to operate? Why this matters Circularity in textiles and clothing is no longer a question of whether, but of how — and, increasingly, of together with whom . Europe now has an unprecedented regulatory framework pushing the sector toward durability, traceability and recyclability; the technologies exist and the market is moving. Yet most of the effort still happens in isolation: talented players, each doing excellent work, rarely in coordination. Closing that gap between individual excellence and systemic change is exactly what TEX-DAN set out to do in the Danube Region. The context: a project built as a method TEX-DAN is an EU project, co-funded under the Interreg Danube Region Programme, and the Budapest event was held to mark its conclusion. It brought together 14 partners and 6 associated partners across 11 Danube Region countries to help textile and fashion SMEs adopt sustainable technologies and embed circular-economy principles. TCBL Association — the Textile and Clothing Business Labs Association — took part as the project’s associate partner, invited by REGINNOVA NE (North-East Romania), itself a TCBL founding partner. What stands out is how it was done. TEX-DAN moved deliberately from analysis, to real-world Living-Lab pilots, to a mapping of 118 good practices, to stakeholder workshops in every country — and only then to its flagship TEX-DAN Strategy , a macro-regional framework of seven objectives and thirty measures. That Strategy now feeds eleven regional action plans, a Joint Action Plan and the new Danube Circular Textile Cluster . Conceived, run and concluded this way, the project is itself a working answer to the second question: a replicable model for how to operate ( Results ).