By the International Wool Textile Organisation
BRUSSELS – A garment can pass demanding strength tests and still be worn only a handful of times. It may fit badly, feel uncomfortable or no longer be considered ‘current’. Put another way, a strong fabric offers limited benefit if the garment made from it spends most of its life unworn.
Understanding this gap is essential if Europe’s textile policies are to deliver the environmental benefits they promise.
At the International Wool Textile Organisation, we believe the development of EU textile rules needs to give much greater weight to what happens to clothing in everyday life.
While physical testing provides useful evidence about a garment’s ability to withstand use, it cannot, on its own, establish how much use that garment will receive.
Extrinsic durability
Researchers describe these wider influences on continued use as “extrinsic durability.” The term, which has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, covers considerations all of us will be familiar with. These include whether clothing fits, whether people enjoy wearing it, how they value it and whether it remains relevant as their lives change.
The evidence to support the concept of extrinsic durability can be found in a review by researchers at Oslo Metropolitan University which drew together 17 studies of clothing disposal. Excluding other or unknown reasons, physical quality accounted for 37 per cent of disposal motivations, fit for 28 per cent and perceived value for 35 per cent.
These findings do not suggest that quality is unimportant, but they do show how much a policy based predominantly (or only) on physical performance would miss.
Nor should physical durability be reduced to tensile strength. Shrinkage, pilling and colour loss can all affect whether clothing remains wearable and valued. Testing needs to reflect the intended use of a garment, while recognising that even a well-designed laboratory assessment cannot reproduce the decisions people make about their wardrobes.
Regulatory change
Such considerations are increasingly important now that the EU is translating its textiles strategy into practical requirements. Under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, the Commission currently plans to adopt textile-specific rules in 2027, including requirements for Digital Product Passports.
The revised Waste Framework Directive also requires national extended producer responsibility schemes for textiles and footwear, with producer contributions linked to environmental performance. The choice of metrics around how clothing is used and disposed of will therefore begin to have serious commercial consequences.
For wool, there is a concern that disproportionate emphasis on strength could favour some synthetic fabrics while overlooking evidence of longer ownership and reuse. If this were to happen, it would run contrary to EU rhetoric around the growing use of synthetic fibres and fast fashion generally, which leads to increasing volumes of plastic textile waste.
A five-country wardrobe study found that wool and silk garments were among the oldest, and that wool garments were particularly likely to have been pre-owned.
Actual use
Yet years of ownership do not necessarily mean more wears, and fibre alone cannot explain longevity. These are issues that therefore require further exploration, and there is a strong case for assessing actual use carefully, rather than assuming that an abstract ‘ranking’ will predict it.
There are also questions about the environmental savings attributed to longer life. Keeping a garment longer does not automatically prevent another purchase. A 2025 review of product lifetime extension found that the assumed connections between longer lifetimes, lower demand and reduced production remain insufficiently tested. In short, adding more clothing to an already full wardrobe will not deliver the savings associated with avoiding new production.
Research is beginning to provide better ways of assessing these influences. The BOND programme, led by the Institut Français de la Mode and funded by DEFI, is examining consumers’ lasting attachment to clothing. The DEX project, whose first-stage findings were published by ADEME in June 2026, is also developing an assessment of the external factors influencing how often garments are worn.
Such work should inform policy, alongside evidence from waste audits and wardrobe studies. Assessments made before sale will always involve predictions. Examining discarded textiles can show their condition, composition and volume, but only by talking to their owners can researchers establish why they fell out of use.
As we have proposed previously, recording a reliable production date, potentially through a Digital Product Passport, would also help establish age, although it would still tell us little about frequency of wear.
Practical approach
A practical approach would combine proportionate physical tests with evidence about use, repair and disposal, and check whether the resulting incentives reduce waste and demand for new production. Manufacturers should be rewarded for improvements that make clothing useful for longer.
As Europe works towards its 2030 vision for textiles, the measure of success should be whether those improvements lead to garments being worn more and fewer resources being consumed.
The International Wool Textile Organisation represents the interests of the global wool trade. IWTO is a founding member of the Make The Label Count (MTLC) campaign, an international coalition of natural fibre organisations working to ensure that natural fibres receive fair treatment in EU sustainability policy. Reach out to us to get involved.
