The Circular Fashion Economy in 2025: Regulation, Resale, and the Rise of Garment Redesign
By Paula Alarcon Torres
15 January 2026
What is the circular fashion economy?
The circular economy keeps materials in use for as long as possible. Applied to fashion, it encompasses repair, resale, rental, upcycling, recycling, and redesign. The linear model — produce, sell, discard — generates 92 million tons of textile waste per year and contributes around 10% of global carbon emissions.
EU regulation is accelerating the shift
The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, in force since July 2024, establishes a framework for durability, repairability, and recyclability — with textiles among the first product groups in scope and measures to phase out the destruction of unsold textiles. Extended Producer Responsibility shifts end-of-life costs onto the brands that produce. For EU brands, circularity is moving from positioning choice toward compliance requirement.
The resale sprint: numbers and limits
The secondhand market grew 15% in 2024 and is projected to reach $367 billion by 2029. Per the BoF–McKinsey State of Fashion 2026, 43% of consumers who discover a brand through resale later buy at full price. But resale operates at scale only for standardised goods — it cannot address the garment too personal or too worn to transfer.
Redesign as the most direct form of circularity
Redesign is circular by design, not by extension. It requires no aggregation, authentication, or resale infrastructure: it works on a single garment, for a single person. No new extraction, no new production. And no overproduction, no unsold inventory, no write-off — every piece corresponds to a real commission. This is made-to-order in its purest form.
Where Menabòh sits
Menabòh runs no resale or rental, holds no inventory, produces no seasonal collections. It takes what already exists and gives it a longer, more meaningful life. The circularity is not a marketing claim — it is the entire structure of the service.
Menabòh is a creative atelier rooted in Italian craft. We redesign the garments you already own into one-of-one pieces made entirely for you.