texfash

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz sent shockwaves through global energy markets, but in Surat, India's manmade textile hub, the impact arrived not in boardrooms but in workers' kitchens. With LPG unavailable and alternatives prohibited by landlords, thousands of migrant textile workers have been forced to abandon their livelihoods and return home, triggering a production crisis that the industry is still struggling to contain.

Thirteen years after Rana Plaza killed more than a thousand garment workers in Savar, the disaster is still generating money. The question survivors are now asking is where it goes. Recently, the Rana Plaza Survivors Association turned its demands away from brands and factory owners and toward the institutions that built campaigns, funding streams and organisational visibility around their suffering—and that, in survivors' view, have not been required to account to them for how those funds were used.

Asia's largest mechanical textile recycling cluster has spent the better part of a decade acquiring the infrastructure of sustainability—treatment plants, cleaner fuels, international certifications. A detailed diagnostic study now offers the most granular environmental assessment of Panipat to date, and its findings complicate the progress narrative: pollution persists, residue management remains opaque, and technology adoption is deeply uneven across the cluster's enterprises.

Virtual fitting rooms promise easier clothing choices for people with physical disabilities, yet adaptation depends on more than technical access. Evidence from a large study shows that confidence, convenience, and enjoyment shape willingness to use these systems, reframing inclusive digital fashion as a question of experience, not novelty.

An under-utilised local natural resource — the seaweed from the Red Sea — is being developed for the first time into an innovative, fully traceable sustainable fabric by the Fashion Commission of Saudi Arabia in collaboration with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and fabric manufacturer Pyratex. Fiona Symes, Chief Operating Officer at KAUST Beacon Development (KBD), the consultancy arm at KAUST, shares details on the project.

In an era where authenticity is increasingly elusive, the ancient, hand-engineered craft of zari is caught in a deepening crisis. Pure zari, painstakingly wrought from silver, gold and copper in Surat’s shrinking cottage clusters, is now overshadowed by an ever-expanding tide of cheap metallic substitutes. As precious metal prices soar, purity wavers, and fakes flood the market, the last generation of real-zari makers confronts a future as fragile as the filaments they draw.

The single largest cotton trading company and a public sector undertaking under the Union Ministry of Textiles, the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI), established in 1970, undertakes price support and commercial purchase operations to safeguard the economic interest of farmers in the cotton growing regions and to ensure its smooth supply to the textile industry. A Q&A with its Chairman-Cum-Managing Director, Lalit Kumar Gupta.

His is a classic case of how an artisan from the grassroot level can rise to reach some of the most famed museums in the world. Not many know but he has, stitch by stitch, needle by needle, threaded his way into the cultural mosaic that this country is. His thread is his voice, his loom a battleground for respect. In conversation with Asif Shaikh.

Surat is built by people who arrived with little but resolve, turning hardship into high-growth enterprises. Their stories reveal a city that rewards speed, grit and practical intelligence—a place where partnerships form easily, risks are absorbed quickly and learning never stops. Here, ambition meets an ecosystem that converts effort into scale, making enterprise almost instinctive.

It’s a paradox wrapped in polyester. Surat—the city that spins out 60 million metres of manmade fabric every single day—stands on the verge of an industrial chokehold. With 700,000 looms running and ₹200 billion in turnover, India’s synthetic hub is built on imported muscle: machines, yarn, and know-how. Now, a compliance rule threatens to pull the plug on that ecosystem—testing whether the synthetic capital can truly stitch together scale, self-reliance, and sustainability before the loom slows down.