The global textile supply chain is more complex than ever, spanning cotton fields, chemical plants, mills and garment factories across multiple regions and regulations. For fashion brands, simply knowing a fabric “looks beautiful” or “has a good fit” is no longer enough; its safety, environmental performance and verified fibre content are under growing scrutiny from regulators, investors and consumers.

This is where textile certifications come in. Standards such as GOTS, OEKO-TEX, RCS and GRS are designed to test and document specific aspects of a fabric’s journey, from organic fibre integrity to chemical safety and recycled content. In this article, we offer textile certifications explained in practical terms for fashion teams: what each standard actually covers, how they differ, and how to use them as tools for traceability, compliance and credible product claims.

Textile Certifications Explained: Why GOTS, OEKO-TEX, RCS and GRS Matter Now

The global textile supply chain now spans organic cotton farms, petrochemical plants, spinning and knitting operations, dyehouses and garment factories across dozens of jurisdictions. As brands expand “sustainable materials” commitments, three pressures converge on sourcing and product teams:

• Regulators demanding more evidence for environmental and social claims;

• Investors and lenders scrutinising ESG performance and risk;

• Consumers increasingly sceptical of vague narratives

Textile standards sit at the intersection of these forces. The Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) has become the leading international processing standard for organic fibres, setting environmental and social requirements from the first processing step through to labelling. OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 is now one of the world’s most recognised labels for textiles tested for harmful substances, from yarn to finished product. The Recycled Claim Standard (RCS) and Global Recycled Standard (GRS), both developed by Textile Exchange, define criteria for third-party certification of recycled input and chain of custody.

What they have in common is structure: a published standard, a defined audit model, recognised certification bodies and documented rules for how claims may be used. For fashion brands, that structure turns a marketing claim into something that can be shown, checked and linked to specific products and suppliers.

What Textile Certifications Can and Cannot Do for Traceability and Risk

It helps to be precise about what a textile certification is. GOTS, OEKO-TEX, RCS and GRS each set out technical requirements on one or more of the following dimensions:

• Content: for example, percentage of organic or recycled fibre;

• Processing: environmental and social criteria in facilities;

• Chemical safety: restrictions on substances used or found in final products;

• Chain of custody: documented control of certified material through the supply chain.

The standard owner sets those requirements and accredits certification bodies that audit facilities and issue certificates.

What these certifications do not do is guarantee that a brand, a collection or even a factory is “sustainable” in any broad sense. They are time-bound, scope-bound confirmations of conformity with specific criteria. Certificates expire and must be renewed; scopes may cover some processes in a facility but not others. Subcontractors may sit outside the certified chain if they have not been brought into the programme.

For legal and ESG teams, the practical takeaway is simple: treat certifications as evidence points inside a wider traceability and risk framework, not as one-word answers to complex impact questions.

GOTS Certification Explained: What the Global Organic Textile Standard Really Covers

The Global Organic Textile Standard was created to define worldwide requirements for organic textiles that go beyond farming. Its stated aim is to ensure the “organic status of textiles, from harvesting of the raw materials, through environmentally and socially responsible manufacturing up to labelling.”

In practice, GOTS applies to products that contain a minimum of 70 percent certified organic natural fibre, with a higher tier for products containing at least 95 percent organic fibre. The agricultural side is handled by recognised organic farming standards; GOTS takes over from the first processing step, such as ginning or spinning, through knitting or weaving, wet processing and garment manufacturing.

The standard sets environmental criteria on inputs and processes, including bans or strict restrictions on certain hazardous chemicals and requirements for wastewater treatment in wet-processing units. It also embeds social criteria for certified facilities, aligned with key International Labour Organization principles.

Traceability under GOTS relies on a controlled chain of custody. Facilities are issued Scope Certificates that define which processes and product categories they are certified for. When certified material moves through the chain, it is accompanied by Transaction Certificates that link specific shipments or batches to that certified flow. GOTS and Textile Exchange have harmonised templates for these certificates to standardise information among different certification bodies.

For brands, GOTS is particularly useful when:

• Organic cotton or other organic fibres are central to a collection story;

• Stricter processing and chemistry requirements are part of risk management;

• Product-level organic claims must be backed with chain-of-custody evidence

The common mistake is to treat any use of organic fibre as synonymous with “GOTS” or to extrapolate from a few certified styles to an entire narrative. The standard only applies where certified facilities, valid certificates and documented product coverage are present.

OEKO-TEX: Safety, Chemical Compliance and Product Labelling

OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 addresses a different question: not where the fibre came from, but whether the finished product and its components have been tested for harmful substances. 

Products are classified into different product classes, with Class I reserved for babies and toddlers and therefore subject to the strictest limits. Independent test institutes analyse textiles and accessories against a catalogue of criteria that covers both regulated and non-regulated substances considered harmful to human health, and OEKO-TEX updates these criteria regularly in line with new scientific knowledge and regulatory changes.

The label can apply to everything from yarns and fabrics to finished garments and bedding. OEKO-TEX emphasises that items bearing the STANDARD 100 label have undergone testing for hundreds of substances and that its requirements at least meet, and often exceed, legal minimums such as those in the EU’s REACH regulation.

For sourcing teams, this is important for two main reasons. First, STANDARD 100 offers a structured way to reduce chemical risk in high-exposure categories such as babywear, underwear and workwear. Second, certificate numbers and product classes can be verified against OEKO-TEX databases or directly with the issuing institute, providing an additional control when onboarding or assessing suppliers.

It is important, however, not to treat OEKO-TEX the same as fibre certifications. An OEKO-TEX label does not say whether the cotton is organic or the polyester recycled; it says the product has been tested for harmful substances against defined thresholds.

RCS vs GRS: Recycled Textile Certifications for Polyester, Nylon and Other Fibres

As recycled polyester and recycled nylon move from niche capsules into mainstream programmes, brands increasingly rely on Recycled Claim Standard (RCS) and Global Recycled Standard (GRS) to underpin their claims.

Both standards are managed by Textile Exchange and, as the organisation explains, they are international, voluntary standards that set requirements for third-party certification of recycled input and chain of custody, with a shared goal of increasing the use of recycled materials.

RCS is essentially a content claim standard. It verifies that a product contains a stated percentage of recycled material and that this material has been tracked through a certified chain of custody. GRS builds on the same chain-of-custody framework but adds other layers: it is described as a “full product standard” that sets requirements not only on recycled content and chain of custody, but also on social and environmental practices and chemical restrictions in processing facilities.

In other words, RCS focuses on confirming that recycled content is present and properly documented, GRS asks how that content is being processed and under what conditions. For many brands, this makes GRS the default choice for core fabrications in collections heavily marketed around recycled narratives, while RCS may still be used for specific components or lower-risk applications.

How to Verify Textile Certificates from Suppliers: A Practical Narrative

For teams who are not auditors by training, certificates may sound like administrative clutter. In reality, a small set of checks goes a long way.

When a supplier sends a GOTS, OEKO-TEX, RCS or GRS certificate, the first step is simply to slow down and read it against your order. Does the standard name and version match what your internal guidelines require? Which GRS version do you expect?

Next, check the certified entity. The legal name and address on the document should correspond to the actual facility handling your order. It is not uncommon to find certificates for a parent company or a different plant being used to reassure buyers about production elsewhere.

The scope section is where the technical coverage is defined: which processes (spinning, weaving, dyeing, printing, cut-make-trim, trading) and which product categories are included. A GOTS or GRS certificate limited to yarn spinning will not cover a garment factory using those yarns unless the garment factory is also certified under the same standard.

The next step is validity. Certificates have an issue date and an expiry date; brands need them to remain valid during the bulk production window for the styles in question. In many internal audits, a surprising number of certificates turn out to have lapsed quietly during long development cycles.

Finally, link the certificate to the actual product or material. For content standards, that usually means requesting transaction certificates for the bulk order, not just a generic facility scope. For OEKO-TEX, it may mean checking that the product class and article description on the certificate align with the category you are sourcing.

Red flags include expired documents, certificates for unrelated product types, suppliers who send logos but not underlying certificates and any reluctance to allow verification with the standard owner or certification body. In an industry where Digital Product Passports are likely to require traceable links between product identifiers and underlying evidence, these controls are part of everyday operations rather than “special tasks.”

Textile Certifications, Traceability and Digital Product Passports

The EU’s ESPR and associated DPP framework mark a shift in how product information will be handled in major markets. Under this regulation, products will carry a digital “passport” containing structured data on composition, durability, reparability, and, for priority sectors such as textiles, likely elements of environmental and chemical information.

Textile certifications are not a complete answer to these requirements, but they are a logical starting point. GOTS certificates already contain information about organic fibre content, processing sites and social criteria. OEKO-TEX certificates carry product classes and testing scopes that can underpin chemical-safety fields. RCS and GRS documentation links recycled content claims to chain-of-custody flows and processing sites.

The strategy for brands is learning how to move this information out of PDFs and email attachments and into systems that can feed DPPs, regulatory filings and internal analytics.

Platforms and ecosystems built explicitly for material sourcing and supplier collaboration can help by centralising certificates, standardising data fields and connecting them to specific SKUs and collections. This allows designers, buyers, compliance teams and marketers to work from the same underlying dataset when they brief suppliers, assess risk, write product copy or prepare for regulatory deadlines.

Using Textile Certifications to Build a Credible Sourcing Strategy

GOTS, OEKO-TEX, RCS and GRS are often described as “badges,” but they function more like technical tools. Each answers a specific question:

• Is this textile made from certified organic fibre and processed under defined environmental and social criteria?

• Has this product been tested for harmful substances to a recognised benchmark?

• Is this recycled content verifiably recycled and tracked through a certified chain of custody, and under what process conditions?

For fashion brands navigating a more regulated, data-driven decade, the priority is less about adding more logos and more about using the existing ones with precision. That means knowing what each standard can reliably say, where its scope ends and how its documentation can feed into a broader system of traceability, risk assessment and product information.

Brands that make that shift early will be prepared as Digital Product Passports mature over the years, as green-claims enforcement becomes more assertive and as investors and customers learn to read the standards behind it.

Inside World Collective, every fabric is connected to real suppliers and the standards they work with, from GOTS and OEKO-TEX to RCS and GRS, with documentation and product all together in a single digital ecosystem.

If you are ready to build your next collections on certified, traceable materials feel free to explore World Collective and connect with suppliers whose fabrics already meet these standards.