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The Future of Circular Fashion: Insights from the Quantifying Circularity Project

  • Written byDisha Deshpande
  • Published date 15 May 2025

The fashion industry is facing mounting pressure to embrace sustainability, yet achieving true circularity remains a significant challenge. With less than 1% of the industry currently operating in a circular model, the need for practical solutions has never been more urgent. Quantifying Circularity is an initiative seeking to tackle this issue by bridging the gap between academia, industry, and sustainability advocacy to advance the circular economy within the textiles sector.

Led by the University of the Arts London (UAL) in collaboration with the Circular Textiles Foundation (CTF) and Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) Textile 2030, the project brings together expertise from academic research, commercial recycling knowledge, and industry-wide strategy. The collaboration provided a platform where fashion brands could engage directly with experts from diverse backgrounds, gaining both the scientific assurance offered by UAL’s research and the hands-on commercial insight from industry specialists like Tim Cross, a leader in polyester recycling. Through a series of workshops, brands were equipped with knowledge, confidence, and practical tools to embed circularity into their business models. The project has positioned itself as a transformative force in driving the fashion industry toward a more sustainable future.

In this interview, Liv Barnes and Laetitia Forst share insights into the impact of the project and what’s next in the journey toward a more sustainable fashion future.

Can you tell us a bit about your roles and how you became involved in Quantifying Circularity?

Liv Barnes: I am the Research and Development Coordinator at the UAL Fashion Textiles Technology Institute. Before this project, we had worked with Project Plan B, a partner of the Circular Textiles Foundation, on a previous initiative funded by the Business of Fashion, Textiles, and Technology Partnership. That successful collaboration sparked discussions about what would come next, and that led to the creation of Quantifying Circularity.

Laetitia Forst: I’m a postdoctoral researcher at UAL. My background is in textile design and my research focuses on circularity for textile design. I've worked on several postdoctoral projects at UAL and joined the Quantifying Circularity team at its inception. My role was to support the development of circular design guidelines in fashion and structure the project around four key workshops. These workshops were about creating moments to support fashion designers in understanding how they could design or redesign products to fit in a circular economy.

Circular design plays a key role in sustainability. How did this project address that?

LF: Circular design involves several core principles that dictate how garments should be made to ensure they can be recycled efficiently. One of our major focuses was identifying contamination risks - what we call ‘disruptors’ - that can make recycling difficult. Since textile-to-textile recycling generally functions by fibre type, recycling technologies for different textiles have specific requirements. For example, certain levels of prints, trims, or zippers can create issues in processing.

Thanks to our relationship with the CTF - which works between brands and actual recyclers - we were able to develop guidelines that use the real-life requirements of a set of six different recyclers, representing different technology currently in use or development in Europe. One of the big novelties of the project was to be able to feed specific firsthand information from the recycler into the guidelines. What we did in the project is reference and standardise these requirements to create a set of recommendations for fashion designers to apply in all their products.

An image of sheets of paper and material.
Designing for Recyclability Workshop 2023, UAL | Photograph: Liv Barnes

How were the guidelines received by the industry?

LF: The industry response has been incredibly positive. One of the things that came through in the workshops is that some things that participants thought would be challenging about the process were demystified and they could see how these concrete guidelines we developed could be applied. Obviously, there are still challenges. One of the big challenges in this industry is the fact that the textile-to-textile recycling system is in its infancy, there is lots of challenges that companies face. We're trying to calibrate design to a tech savvy recycling system, which is still finding its feet. Technology needs to evolve, and the way that we design needs to needs to evolve. But that's the trajectory.

LB: Thebrands were relieved to have something tangible that simplified what had obviously been seen as quite overwhelming. What was brilliant about this collaboration is how invaluable it has been in demonstrating to brands that, in an ideal world, products should remain in circulation for as long as possible. And so, although circularity at scale is in its infancy, it's about doing the work now for long term gain and impact. That was very encouraging to brands - they were setting themselves up to be able to partake in long term circularity.

What’s next for the project? How will it continue to make an impact?

LF: We’re excited to share that a follow-up project, Scaling Circularity, has just received new funding. This initiative builds on what we learned during Quantifying Circularity and focuses on a key area we identified as needing more attention: quantifying the carbon savings linked to circular design.

During our initial research, we worked with WRAP to conduct a quantitative analysis of how much carbon could be saved if a brand fully integrated circular design principles across its range. This process turned out to be quite complex, so Scaling Circularity will develop a tool to help brands classify their inventory in terms of recyclability. This will allow them to input data into carbon calculation models more easily and track their sustainability impact more effectively.