The first-ever NAT Gala, already dubbed the “Met Gala for nature”, at Climate Week NYC last week made one thing clear: glamour is finding a new purpose.
Icons like Billie Eilish, Jane Fonda, Harrison Ford, and Stella McCartney used the spotlight to call out a $711 billion funding gap for nature-positive initiatives, proving that style can be a force for climate action. Just days earlier, New York Fashion Week leaned into values-driven storytelling with sustainability at its core, while London Fashion Week committed to adopting Copenhagen’s sustainability standards by 2026.
What’s becoming evident is that sustainability is no longer the sideshow, it has claimed centre stage.
Yet, while global galas and fashion weeks are adapting, fashion schools have been slower to respond. And if we’re serious about circularity, the real work begins not on the runway, but in the classroom.
From linear to circular: Why India matters
Fashion still runs on a wasteful cycle: take, make, dispose. Less than 1% of textiles are recycled into new clothing, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. In other words, nearly every garment ultimately ends up as waste.
The alternative? A circular model where clothing is designed to last, repair, reuse and ultimately recycle. The reality is that nearly 80% of a garment’s environmental footprint is locked in at the design stage. Every decision on fabric, dye, cut and lifespan sets the path toward waste or sustainability.
For India, one of the world’s top textile producers, this is both a challenge and an opening. According to some estimates, the country generates 7.8 million tonnes of textile waste each year, which is nearly 8.5% of the global total. Much of it comes not from consumers but upstream: cutting waste, unsold stock, and imports with no second life.
Rethinking the classroom
That number feels even more jarring when you think of what India’s textile story used to be. For centuries, Indian fashion was grounded in sustainable practices. Handloom weaving used local fibres and vegetable dyes, consuming little energy and creating almost no waste. Garments like the sari embodied longevity and versatility as a single length of cloth worn in countless ways, repaired when needed, and often handed down across generations. In Bengal, kantha embroidery turned worn-out cloth into quilts of striking beauty, proving that reuse could be creative as well as practical.
In other words, India has long shown the world what circular fashion looks like. The tragedy is that modern industrial systems have replaced this ethos with cheap, disposable production on a massive scale. The opportunity now is to reconnect with those principles and bring them into today’s classrooms.
If design systems remain unchanged, the waste mountain will only grow. But if India’s fashion schools embed circularity at their core, the ripple effect could reshape global supply chains.
Curriculum models that treat sustainability as an elective are outdated. Lifecycle thinking should be as fundamental as sketching or draping. Students must leave school as fluent in environmental accounting as aesthetics.
Classrooms need to operate like labs and spaces where students test biodegradable fabrics, prototype zero-waste cuts, and design garments made to be taken apart and remade. In such settings, sustainability shifts from abstract principle to daily practice.
But education doesn’t happen in isolation. Brands and manufacturers must come to the table — to open their supply chains, fund projects, or simply share what the real-world constraints look like. At the same time, Universities need to publish research into scalable innovations like fiber recycling, low-impact dyeing, or blends with enduring value. Together, classrooms can become incubators of industry transformation.
Closing the loop
The result is a new kind of graduate: part designer, part changemaker. They see ethics and aesthetics as inseparable, and they know responsibility will define competitiveness. In a country like India, where textiles drive the economy but also generate waste, this talent pipeline could have global impact.
The NAT Gala 2025 showed how glamour can mobilise climate action. But glamour alone won’t close fashion’s loop. Education can.
If fashion weeks can hardwire sustainability into their schedules, and industry councils can raise the bar, then classrooms must do the same. The future of sustainable fashion will be shaped in studios and lecture halls, where every sketch is also a decision about the planet.
(The author is Dean – Interior & Fashion, Pearl Academy. Antonio Maurizio Grioli is an Italian designer whose attention to detail and innovative concepts has spotlighted his academic journey)
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Published – November 07, 2025 08:26 pm IST
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