Apparel News: The Central Components of Building a Sustainable Brand

Dorothy Crouch, Contributing Writer | Friday, September 18, 2026

Fashion has many sustainability challenges that span from the concept to the retail floor. From industry professionals to the shoppers who buy the clothes, everyone who contributes to the fashion business has an opinion regarding sustainability—and its level of importance.

The apparel industry has seen its fair share of dubious claims disguised in greenwashing as progress, but there has also been great advancement. For every rollback of environmental protections in one area of the world, promising ecological wins arise in other regions, fortifying protections and holding the industry accountable from the farm to the consumer.

Although at times progress can seem to move slowly, industry professionals across the value chain are working according to authentic sustainable guidelines rather than simply selling a marketing story.

California Apparel News asked fashion insiders: What are the core elements that brands and designers must focus on when building and growing their sustainability initiatives in the current fashion-business climate?

MeiLin Wan

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, GenuTrace

The core elements come down to three things.

First, verify origin before production, not after. Too many programs rely on paper trails and supplier attestations that can be incomplete or, in some cases, fabricated. Forensic testing methods like stable-isotope analysis can confirm the geographic origin of raw materials such as cotton at the molecular level, well before a garment ever reaches a shelf.

Second, treat traceability as a design input, not a compliance afterthought. Brands that build verification into sourcing decisions upfront rather than bolting it on after a claim is made end up with initiatives that are both more credible and more efficient to defend.

Third, be precise about what you’re actually claiming. Origin verification tells you where a material came from geographically. It doesn’t speak to labor conditions or full bill-of-materials composition and brands that blur that distinction, exposing themselves to real reputational risk.