Texworld NYC Summer 2025 proved that sustainability and innovation is finally a close reality in the future of textiles, when we think of the bigger picture.
The exhibition floor at the Javits Center was gathered with next-generation materials and forward-thinking solutions for fashion.
The World Collective team was on site, taking in everything from forest-derived polyesters to biofabricated leathers, and joining conversations about how to scale these breakthroughs industry-wide.
In this article, we delve into Texworld’s Material Innovation Hub highlights and the insights from Textile Talks on collaborative sourcing, painting a full picture of an event where textile innovation meets scalable action. Keep reading!
Texworld’s Material Innovation Hub: Where Next-Gen Materials Shine
One of the most exciting spaces at Texworld 2025 was the Next-Gen Innovation Hub, a showcase dedicated to cutting-edge, sustainable textile solutions.
There, innovative businesses presented materials that have the potential to revolutionize the fundamental components of fashion. Among the notable innovations were:
UPM BioPolyester™ (UPM Biochemicals):
This is the first truly forest-derived, drop-in polyester resin engineered to perform like virgin PET but with a reduced carbon footprint. It’s made entirely from sustainably managed hardwood and softwood residues (FSC®- and PEFC™-certified), using wood waste rather than any food-based feedstock.
In an era of urgent climate action and circular design, UPM’s bio-based polyester represents a “zero-compromise” alternative to fossil-based polyester – delivering the same quality to fiber, film, and packaging manufacturers while cutting emissions.
Every kilogram of UPM BioPolyester is born from European forest biomass, ensuring no competition with food agriculture or land use.
INNOVERA™ (Modern Meadow):
A next-gen leather alternative that brings luxury and sustainability into perfect balance. Completely animal-free, INNOVERA is bio-designed to replicate the look and feel of collagen in leather. It’s crafted from a mix of plant-based proteins, biopolymers, and recycled rubber, resulting in a material with over 80% renewable carbon content.
Not only does it convincingly mimic leather’s aesthetics and haptics, it’s also lighter and twice as strong as traditional hide. Importantly, INNOVERA is engineered to slot into existing tannery processes – an effortlessly adaptable drop-in replacement that lets brands maintain quality and durability without the ethical and environmental downsides of animal leather.
“This is more than an alternative – it’s a new beginning. It’s the touch of a new dawn,” proclaims Modern Meadow’s team, emphasizing how one touch of INNOVERA can demonstrate its luxury feel.
ELEVATE (UNCAGED Innovations):
Another reinvention of leather, ELEVATE is a 100% bio-based material made from grain protein – with no plastic and no animal inputs whatsoever.
Designed to match the strength, durability, and rich look of premium leather, it leverages grain-derived proteins fused with other plant-based elements to mirror the collagen structure found in hides.
The result is a scalable, high-performance textile that mimics traditional leather’s texture and performance while being entirely animal-free.
UNCAGED highlights that ELEVATE is versatile enough for luxury handbags or high-wear sneakers alike, proving that ethics, performance, and creativity can coexist in modern materials.
By harnessing biotechnology, UNCAGED is redefining what’s possible – creating “breakthrough materials engineered for the demands of modern fashion” without the environmental cost of livestock or plastics.
Rheom Materials (formerly Bucha Bio):
A specialty bio-based material compounder on a mission to replace fossil plastics, Rheom caught attention with its pragmatic approach: “Change your impact, not your life.”
Founded in 2020 in a college dorm, the company now develops biopolymers derived from bacterial fermentation, minerals, and plant matter. Uniquely, Rheom formulates its materials to work with advanced melt extrusion techniques – essentially, they’ve made bio-based polymers that can plug into the existing plastics supply chain.
This means manufacturers can drop-in Rheom’s resins or sheet materials (like their Shorai™ and Benree™ products) on standard equipment, leveraging economies of scale without petrochemicals.
By designing biopolymers that mimic the utility of conventional plastics while eliminating carbon-intensive feedstocks, Rheom’s innovation hub display showed a clear path to swap out oil-based plastics in everything from accessories to trims.
It’s a vision of a fossil-free future for fashion that doesn’t require retooling entire factories – only rethinking the materials we feed into them.
BrightBio® (Brightplus)
Hailing from near the Arctic Circle in northern Finland, BrightBio is a next-generation bio-based textile coating that marries performance with circularity.
Developed by green-tech startup Brightplus, BrightBio is made from certified renewable raw materials – including non-edible biomass and even captured industrial CO₂ – and contains roughly 50% bio-based content by weight. It’s engineered for functional textiles and high-performance finishing, yet it’s completely free from water usage, PFAS, or any toxic chemicals in production.
In fact, BrightBio’s eco-friendly composition uses agricultural and industrial side-streams to minimize waste. Despite its renewable makeup, it doesn’t compromise on quality: BrightBio delivers durability and functionality comparable to conventional petroleum-based coatings.
Perhaps most impressively, it was designed for circularity – BrightBio coatings are compatible with both mechanical and chemical recycling processes for textiles, aligning with EU Green Deal principles and upcoming ecodesign regulations. (It’s already REACH compliant and OEKO-TEX® Standard 100 certified for safety.)
In short, BrightBio exemplifies “sustainable by design” – a coating that offers all the technical perks that brands need, without the environmental baggage.
Each of these innovations at Texworld’s Material Innovation Hub underscored a common theme: materials science is rapidly evolving to meet sustainability goals, and material pioneers are reimagining the building blocks of fashion. And thanks to platforms like Texworld, these trailblazers had a chance to connect with brands and buyers who are hungry for solutions that marry performance with purpose.
Textile Talks Spotlight: Collective Sourcing – Unlocking Next-Gen Scale
Innovative materials are only half the story – the other half is how to get them into mainstream use.
That’s why Texworld NYC 2025’s Textile Talks series opened up much-needed conversations around sustainability, scalability, and new sourcing models.
One standout panel discussion, “Collective Sourcing: Unlocking Next-Gen Scale,” brought together experts to tackle a critical question: as regenerative and circular materials move beyond pilot stage, how do we overcome barriers like high price points and large minimum order quantities that still prevent wider adoption?
Led by moderator Joshua Katcher (North American Hub Strategist at Canopy and a sustainable fashion advocate), the panel featured Jeanine Ballone (CEO & Founder of World Collective) and Arshiya Lal (Director of Corporate Development at Circ) – each bringing a unique perspective from their corner of the industry.
The premise was clear: even the smartest eco-material won’t make a dent in fashion’s footprint if small and mid-sized brands can’t afford or access it. The session introduced two complementary approaches for solving this gap between innovation and scale:
Crowdsourcing and pre-competitive collaborations – where brands join forces to aggregate demand for new materials, thereby achieving volume and cost targets that none could reach alone.
Digital platforms and marketplaces – where technology streamlines the matchmaking of sustainable material suppliers with interested buyers, and new tools help coordinate orders or share supply chain data to de-risk adoption.
Through real-world examples, the panel explored how these models are evolving and what they could mean for future sourcing strategies.
Circ’s Fiber Club: Collaboration to Scale Circular Textiles
Representing the buyers’ club approach, Arshiya Lal introduced the audience to Circ’s Fiber Club, a new initiative recently launched.
“For those who don’t know, around 300 million trees each year are cut down to produce textiles,” Arshiya reminded the crowd, referencing the enormous toll of conventional viscose and rayon production.
Our company’s objective is to stop using new virgin material when there is already so much waste in the world.
This bold vision – turning textile waste into new fibers to save forests – is exactly what Virginia-based startup Circ has been working on.
Arshiya described Circ’s patented recycling process, which uses a proprietary hydrothermal solution to break down poly-cotton garment waste into its raw components.
The technology can separate blended fabrics (like the ubiquitous cotton/poly T-shirt) and recover cellulosic pulp (to make new man-made cellulosic fiber, such as viscose or lyocell) plus polyester monomers that can be re-polymerized into brand new polyester.
In other words, Circ can take an old poly-cotton tee and turn it into two feedstocks for new textiles – creating a true closed loop for those hard-to-recycle blends.
To make this innovation tangible, moderator Joshua Katcher passed around a scarf to the audience. A flowing, silky accessory that felt just like any high-end viscose scarf.
Arshiya smiled and explained that the scarf was made of Circ’s lyocell filament yarn, spun from dissolved textile waste instead of wood pulp.
The “oohs” and nods in the room made it clear: the proof was literally in people’s hands, illustrating the kind of material that could one day replace forest-derived rayon altogether.
But as Arshiya noted, having breakthrough tech is one thing; scaling it is another.
That’s where Fiber Club comes in. She outlined how Circ convened a coalition of brands and manufacturers – including fashion retailers like Everlane, Eileen Fisher, Bestseller, and Zalando, and suppliers like Birla Cellulose (India) and Arvind Limited – to jointly develop the first roadmap for scaling circular materials.
Launched in partnership with Fashion for Good and Canopy, Fiber Club is a pre-competitive buyers’ club designed to smooth the path from pilot to production for Circ’s recycled fibers.
Arshiya announced that over the next year, Fiber Club partners will be prototyping garments made with Circ’s lyocell and working through R&D kinks together. The ultimate goal? To prove out to the broader industry that when demand is aggregated, circular textiles can achieve competitive scale and economics.
Canopy’s Hot Button Report: Guiding Brands to Forest-Safe Fiber
On the other side of the discussion, Joshua Katcher brought in the perspective of NGOs and industry coalitions that are enabling the shift to sustainable sourcing.
He noted that many popular man-made cellulosic fibers (MMCF) like viscose, rayon, and modal have traditionally come at the expense of ancient and endangered forests. As Canopy’s founder has expressed:
It’s 2024; surely we are smarter than mowing down 1,000-year-old trees to make T-shirts.
Canopy works with over 1,000 brands and producers on solutions like sourcing Next-Gen alternatives (e.g. fibers made from recycled textiles or agricultural residues instead of wood pulp).
During the panel, Joshua highlighted Canopy’s 2024 Hot Button Report, a yearly sustainability scoreboard for MMCF producers.
This report uses a clever “shirt” rating system to grade viscose manufacturers on their raw material sourcing. Joshua explained the color-coded rankings to the audience:
🟢 Green shirts denote industry leaders with low risk sourcing (no ancient forests in their supply chain),
🟡 or 🟠 yellow/orange shirts indicate mid-level performance or some risk, and
🔴 red shirts flag companies with high-risk sourcing from vulnerable forests. (A few producers also receive striped or grey shirts if they are newly engaged or not yet assessed.)
The Hot Button ratings have become a key tool for brands to identify which fiber suppliers align with their sustainability goals – essentially shining a light on who is doing things right and who needs to improve.
The good news, Joshua reported, is that the industry is making progress. In the latest edition, 71% of the world’s MMCF producers earned positive ratings from Canopy (green or above), reflecting a new level of commitment to forest conservation.
Moreover, those top-rated producers now account for about 53% of global MMCF supply – meaning over half of all viscose, rayon, and lyocell being made today comes from low-risk supply chains.
Still, the report also shows there’s work to be done: a handful of manufacturers remain in the red, and rising demand for MMCF could strain progress if that growth isn’t met with Next-Gen feedstocks.
Joshua’s message was clear – brands must use their purchasing power to support the green-shirt suppliers and push laggards to change. Tools like the Hot Button Report make it easier to do so, enabling transparency and accountability in an otherwise opaque supply chain.
By sharing these insights, Joshua gave context to why innovations like Circ’s are so crucial. Every ton of recycled fiber made from textile waste is a ton of pulp that isn’t cut from a forest, and that connection resonated strongly.
World Collective: Bridging Innovation Gaps with Infrastructure
The digital platform perspective was brought by Jeanine Ballone, who leads World Collective – a new infrastructure-level solution aiming to transform sustainable textile sourcing.
Jeanine painted a picture of what frictionless access to innovations could look like. “World Collective isn’t just another sourcing directory,” she explained. Instead, it’s being built as a fully connected ecosystem to bridge the biggest gaps brands face when trying to source sustainable textiles.
What we're striving for is collective action, bringing everyone under one big tent. No one sets out to buy harmful materials; the real challenge is that they often don't know what those haterials truly contain. - Jeanine Ballone
While many existing platforms stop at search and discovery, World Collective is focused on building the tools and infrastructure that make sourcing easier end-to-end, especially for smaller brands often shut out of the innovation game.
Jeanine highlighted a few upcoming features and pilot programs that had the Texworld audience buzzing:
Digital Product Passports (DPP) & Traceability:
In partnership with supply-chain data specialist Kinset, World Collective has launched a pilot to integrate digital product passports for textiles.
These DPPs are essentially digital files carrying verified information about a fabric’s entire journey – from raw material origin (farm or feedstock) to processing and certifications.
By embedding traceability at the product level, brands and suppliers can ensure transparency and compliance (anticipating regulations like the EU’s upcoming DPP requirements). Jeanine mentioned that World Collective is offering a few initial DPP pilots free of charge to help suppliers get on board with this future-ready system.
Ultimately, this kind of traceability infrastructure means no more blind spots – a brand could scan a material and instantly see its fiber content breakdown, where it was milled, its carbon footprint, and so on, adding new trust and accountability to sustainable sourcing.
Demand Aggregation Program:
To tackle the perennial issue of high minimum order quantities (MOQs), World Collective is rolling out a crowdsourced sourcing initiative.
This program will allow multiple independent brands to collectively pre-order a sustainable material from a supplier, essentially pooling their demand to meet the supplier’s MOQ.
By aggregating demand in a pre-competitive way (not unlike Circ’s buyers club approach), even small fashion labels will be able to access cutting-edge textiles that previously required huge orders.
This model reduces risk for suppliers too, since they get a more secure combined order. The goal is to shift cost structures and open the door for next-gen materials at scales accessible to SMEs – leveling the playing field so sustainability isn’t just a luxury for the giants.
Drawing on his experience as a fashion entrepreneur (he founded the pioneering vegan menswear brand Brave GentleMan), Joshua Katcher chimed in to emphasize how game-changing such access could be for independent designers.
As someone who owned a small brand, having access to materials like Circ’s – and having a platform like World Collective to find those materials – that didn’t really exist at the time. I’m really excited about what the potential is moving forward.
His comment underscored a key point: lack of access has long been a bottleneck for sustainability. Many innovative materials never make it into wide use because emerging designers (who bring so much creativity to the industry) simply can’t get their hands on them or can’t meet the order requirements.
If platforms like World Collective can unlock that access, the pace of sustainable innovation in fashion could accelerate dramatically.
Jeanine added that World Collective is already fostering partnerships to bring more next-gen solutions onto the platform. For example, Circ’s recycled fibers are in the process of being onboarded to World Collective’s ecosystem, a partnership that both teams are excited to finalize.
This kind of collaboration – an innovator like Circ teaming up with a sourcing hub like World Collective – exemplifies the ecosystem approach that’s needed. It means that very soon, any brand using the World Collective platform will be able to source Circ’s tree-free lyocell or other circular materials seamlessly, alongside other sustainable textiles, and even opt into aggregated orders or traceability features for those materials.
It’s a glimpse of a future where finding and using revolutionary materials is as easy as a few clicks – no insider connections or massive budgets required.
From Innovation to Implementation: The Power of Partnership
At Texworld 2025, we saw the seeds of a new sourcing reality. One where regenerative materials won’t languish in R&D labs due to lack of demand, and where brands won’t shy away from sustainable options due to logistical hurdles.
Instead, through collaboration and smart infrastructure, those materials can find a market and achieve scale. World Collective’s partnership with Circ is one such seed – bridging a cutting-edge recycler with an aggregator that can funnel its products to many brands.
There will need to be many more partnerships like this across the industry, but the momentum is building.
As we move forward, initiatives like those highlighted throughout the article – whether a fiber recycling club or a collaborative sourcing platform – give hope that the old barriers can be dismantled.
By uniting bold design with responsible innovation, and by turning competition into coalition when it comes to saving our planet’s resources, the textile industry just might weave a new future that’s as sustainable as it is stylish.
Written by Maria Eugênia Lima, Junior Digital Content & Social Media Producer at World Collective
