Circular Fashion Index 2025: Circularity in Fashion Grows Slowly

More and more fashion brands are making progress in embracing circularity, but there is still a long way to go. Kearney's Circular Fashion Index 2025 – now in its fifth edition – offers an updated picture of the industry's progress and challenges, analyzing how brands around the world are integrating sustainable practices across the entire product lifecycle. In this article, we'll explore the most relevant data, geographies, and categories that are driving change, according to the report.

The Fifth Edition of the CFX: A Global Snapshot of Circularity in Fashion

On July 11, the American consulting firm Kearney published the fifth edition of its Circular Fashion Index (CFX). The 2025 edition analyzed 246 brands in 18 countries and five main product categories—fashion, sports, outdoor, underwear and lingerie, and footwear—measuring their circularity performance across seven dimensions that cover the entire product life cycle: from design to use, all the way to post-consumer management. The framework distinguishes between primary market initiatives, such as circular design, care instructions, and repair services, and secondary market levers, which include second-hand product offerings, rental models, and take-back or recycling programs.

The report's findings show us that most brands are still stuck in pilot phases when it comes to circularity. Only 19 out of 200 brands achieved a score above 5/10, while the global average score stood at 3.4 out of 10, a slight increase of 0.2 points compared to 2024. However, the pace of improvement is slowing: in the initial years of analysis, the increase was more marked, a sign that the "easier" actions had already been adopted, while now more complex interventions are necessary. The average remains at 3.2, highlighting that most companies are still in the initial or intermediate phase of implementing circularity in fashion.

Circularity in Fashion: A Two-Speed ​​Sector Between Leaders and Followers

The world of circular fashion moves at very different paces among companies. The global landscape shows a clear divide between a few leaders seeking to drive industry innovation and a vast majority that lags behind, with modest performance and slow progress toward more sustainable models.

According to the results of the Circular Fashion Index:

• Only 5 brands exceed the 7 score.

• Fewer than 20% of brands go beyond the 5 mark.

• Approximately 80% saw no increase compared to 2024.

Ultimately, only 3-5% of brands demonstrate “extensive” levels of implementation, highlighting a significant conversion gap in the scale of these practices.

Among the most notable names in the leader's circle are giants like Patagonia, which has been at the forefront of the outdoor sector for years with programs for repair, recycling, and the use of regenerated materials; Gucci, which is making transparency and traceability a true added value in the luxury industry, and Levi’s, which has long implemented upcycling and reuse initiatives for raw materials.

These brands maintain their advantage thanks to integrated initiatives on multiple fronts: the use of regenerated materials, take-back and resale programs, design geared towards durability, and transparency in supply chains. Conversely, most brands are still struggling to exit the pilot phase or to generalize the most virtuous initiatives. Many limit themselves to communication campaigns or capsule collections, failing to extend these pilot projects to the entire production chain or to profoundly modify their production and sales processes. This creates a clear gap that, according to the report, risks slowing down the transformation of the entire fashion industry.

Geographical and Category Differences in the Adoption of Circular Processes

The CFX 2025 highlights how progress in the field of circular fashion is highly uneven globally, influenced by cultural and regulatory factors and the specific characteristics of markets. This creates a complex mosaic, in which some areas and product segments are at the forefront, while others lag behind.

Geographic Overview

In Europe, the regulatory push, with Regulations such as the ESPR (Eco Design for Sustainable Products Regulation) and the introduction of the Digital Product Passport have encouraged many brands to invest more in circularity. Furthermore, European consumers are showing a greater sensitivity towards sustainable products, increasing demand for long-lasting, repairable, and recycled garments.

In the United States and Canada, however, progress is more fragmented and often linked to voluntary initiatives by individual brands rather than a stringent regulatory framework. Here, the market is more oriented towards innovative experimentation, but with difficulties on a larger scale.

The Asia-Pacific region presents a diverse picture: Japan stands out for its tradition of reuse and new green strategies, but many other countries in the region are still lagging behind, both due to a lack of infrastructure and a fashion culture more focused on rapid consumption.

Finally, in Latin America, the infrastructure challenges are more evident, but interest in circular economy models is growing, especially in large cities where startups and local projects are emerging that are trying to innovate the sector.

Most virtuous product categories

Not all product categories are equally advanced in the circular transition. Some segments stand out for the most notable improvements:

• Underwear (+0.3) – Innovation in recycled materials and low-impact dyeing processes.

• Luxury (+0.2) – Growing adoption of modular design, durability communication, and traceability.

• Outdoor (+0.2) – Focus on repair and resale of used items.

Luxury, in particular, is capitalizing on the attention to the quality and longevity of garments, transforming the narrative of circularity in fashion into an element of storytelling and brand positioning.

Obstacles and levers for scaling circularity in fashion

The report highlights that the main challenge remains scalability. Many circular projects remain confined to niche initiatives for several reasons:

• Limited infrastructure for recycling and remanufacturing materials.

• Economically unsustainable business models.

• Excessive focus on marketing-driven projects, without real integration into supply chains.

• Poor cross-functional collaboration: Circularity is often managed only by sustainability teams, without widespread ownership of product, design, and logistics.

Another critical area is the post-consumer market:

• 65% of brands offer repair services, but mostly in a limited form.

• Resale and rental are still marginal, especially outside the luxury segment.

Regulation, especially in Europe, represents an important lever for acceleration, but the real leap requires an approach in which circularity becomes corporate strategy and not just commitment reputational.

Focus – Zerow: An Italian Model of Integrated Circularity

While CFX 2025 highlights the difficulties of scaling circularity, there are those in Italy who are demonstrating that it is possible. Zerow, a Tuscan startup based in Scandicci, has developed a platform that connects companies, artisans, and designers to give new life to leather and fabric scraps from major luxury fashion houses.

Zerow represents a concrete example of how circularity can be integrated into the fashion supply chain. The platform specializes in the recovery and valorization of high-quality leather and fabric remnants from the fashion industry, thus responding to the growing need of brands to sustainably manage their excess materials.

The project is structured on two fronts:

• Digital, with an online marketplace and traceability technologies to certify the origin and impact of recovered deadstock materials;

• Physical, with Zerolab, a hub and creative laboratory for the recovery and transformation of deadstock leather.

Zerow not only offers a solution to reduce waste, but also becomes a strategic partner for major brands committed to the transition to a circular model, supporting them in managing their residuals in a circular, transparent, and traceable way.

At the same time, Zerow supports emerging designers and brands, offering them access to circular, recovered, and traceable raw materials. With transparency in material information, Zerow customers can be confident in the quality and provenance of the products they use.

The Zerow model integrates craftsmanship, innovation, and community, demonstrating how circularity in fashion can be scalable and replicable when approached in a systemic and cross-functional way.

Learn more about Zerow.