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Fashion

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Fashion

How to Judge a Garment in Sixty Seconds, Before You Pay for It

Price tells you almost nothing about how long a piece of clothing will last. Fabric weight, seam tension and fibre length tell you a great deal, and all three can be checked while you are standing in the shop.

Aug 22, 2026/4 min read

Fabric swatches in graded colours with pinked edges

Fashion

Luxury Is Growing in Euros and Shrinking in People, and It Has Lost Sixty Million Customers Since 2022

Bain and Altagamma expect personal luxury goods to reach as much as 373 billion euros in 2026. The same research shows the customer base falling from 400 million to 340 million. Both numbers describe the same strategy.

Aug 22, 2026/3 min read

A mannequin in a jacket seen through a shop window, with the street reflected in the glass

Fashion

Loose Beats Light, and Wool Is Not the Enemy: What Actually Works at Forty Five Degrees

Most hot weather dressing advice is written for a European summer and fails here. The variables that matter in Gulf heat are fit, weave and how a fabric handles sweat, and they do not line up with the usual natural versus synthetic argument.

Aug 21, 2026/3 min read

A loosely woven linen shirt folded on a pale surface

Fashion

The Slim Suit Is Finally Over, and What Replaced It Asks More of the Wearer Than of the Tailor

Menswear has spent two years moving from ultra-slim to relaxed but refined, and the shift is harder than it sounds. A narrow suit hides its faults on the hanger. A generous one does not.

Aug 21, 2026/3 min read

A softly structured navy wool jacket on a tailors workbench beside shears

Fashion

Fifteen Million Garments a Week Arrive in Ghana, and Forty Per Cent of the Country's Clothing Imports Become Waste

The donation bin is the end of the story for the person using it and the beginning of a long one for everybody else. What happens next is a functioning trade, a genuine livelihood, and a waste problem nobody exports a solution for.

Aug 20, 2026/4 min read

Densely packed secondhand clothing stalls in an open air market

Fashion

A Medium Can Vary by Twelve Centimetres Between Brands, Which Is Why Half of Everything Comes Back

There is no universal clothing size standard. Each brand sets its own charts, fit models and grading rules, and the result is a return rate that fashion e-commerce has simply priced in rather than fixed.

Aug 20, 2026/3 min read

Identical grey jumpers on a rail, each a visibly different width

Fashion

Fifty Nine Per Cent of What the World Wears Is Polyester, and Eighty Eight Per Cent of That Is Fossil Fuel

Global fibre production hit 132 million tonnes in 2024. Recycled fibres remain under eight per cent of it, and the recycled polyester share actually fell. The wardrobe is a petrochemical product and the labels rarely say so.

Aug 20, 2026/3 min read

Spools of synthetic yarn on a textile mill machine

Fashion

The Gulf Lost Up to a Quarter of Its Luxury Shoppers. The Brands Responded by Moving Further Upmarket

Bain puts the shrinkage in the Gulf's luxury customer base at 15 to 25 per cent in early 2026 while the Americas surged. The industry's answer to losing aspirational buyers has been to stop trying to keep them.

Aug 18, 2026/5 min read

A luxury boutique frontage in a Gulf shopping mall

Fashion

Fashion Brands Spent Years Fighting Resale. Now They Want to Run It

Secondhand is a 393 billion dollar market and roughly a tenth of all money spent on clothing. Zara, H&M, Levi's and others are building their own platforms to capture a trade they used to ignore.

Aug 17, 2026/3 min read

A rail of secondhand clothing in a shop interior

Fashion

Nobody Can Agree How Big Modest Fashion Is, and That Is the Story

One widely cited figure puts the category at 86 billion dollars. Another puts it at 254 billion. The gap is not a rounding error, it is a disagreement about what modest fashion actually is.

Aug 16, 2026/3 min read

A sculptural drape of matte black fabric lit to show its texture

Fashion

New York Opens Fashion Month With a Debut and Closes It With Thom Browne

Seventy shows across six days, spring collections shown in autumn, and a designer taking over a house whose founder's name is still on the door. The September calendar is set.

Aug 16, 2026/2 min read

A lit empty runway with the audience seated on either side before a show