A handful of brands now promise clothes and shoes that return to the earth. The “soilpunk” vision is seductive, but between certification gaps, consumer confusion, and the hard limits of home composting, what does compostable fashion look like in practice, and where does the marketing end? Analyst and researcher Fru Bekefi digs into it in this report.
A garment returns to the garden—well, that’s the dream
Imagine standing in a garden holding your favourite garment, which has accompanied you through plenty of adventures. It’s sadly beyond repair now. But instead of sending it to landfill, you cut it into strips and add it to your home compost. Over time, it transforms into a nutrient-rich additive you use to tend your garden, where you watch your flowers and veg patch blossom.
It’s a comforting vision, isn’t it? A world apart from the eco-anxiety-inducing images of discarded fast fashion mountains piling up from Accra, Ghana to Chile’s Atacama Desert. And at a time when irreversible climate tipping points make hope and optimism seem in short supply, there’s a growing interest in composting. It resonates in both conceptual and material terms—an alchemical process that transforms waste into value. Recently, a handful of major brands have even released compostable collections.
At industry scale, compostable fashion remains a dream. Fossil-fuel fibres and synthetic blends dominate the material mix, and ultra fast fashion’s disposable mindset shows no sign of slowing. But on the fringes, a small group of designers, material innovators, and brand pilots are exploring so-called “soilpunk” circularity and asking whether the vision can hold up under scrutiny.
On the surface, compostable fashion seems straightforward, with the key aspects being 100% natural fibres (like organic cotton or hemp) and a new set of rituals at the end of a garment’s life. With the right infrastructure and consumer education, composting could offer an ancient solution to a thoroughly modern problem. But as several experts—and nearly a dozen consumers—told me in my reporting, compostability of natural fibres isn’t so simple. So what would the compostable dream look like in practice?
Compostable collections and the ‘soilpunk’ imagination
As a nature-based technology, compostability is fertile territory for the “soilpunk” imagination. The term soilpunk refers to a niche movement in art, design, and culture concerned with the health of the soil and regenerative agriculture practices. (It’s even inspired a cosy ecological restoration gaming sim called The Regreening.)
Soilpunk’s emergence coincides with a broader societal shift that sees composting evolve from a cumbersome chore into cultural currency. With separating food waste from other household trash now mandatory in New York and France, Town and Country magazine even declared that we might just be heading into the era of “status composting”. And as biodiversity loss and food insecurity fears intensify, so too does our appreciation for soil’s life-sustaining properties, celebrated through exhibitions, tarot decks, even music tracks.
Though hopeful visions and small steps forward are encouraging, legacy systems are stubbornly hard to shift. We’re seeing this unfold within the fashion industry, which is stuck in a limbo between conflicting interests: pursuing growth, pleasing consumers, and reducing environmental and social harms.
However, themes of circularity and regeneration remain front of mind as governments try to shift the burden of managing products’ end of life from taxpayers to businesses through legislation like the EU’s Extended Producer Responsibility.
The idea that your clothing can return to the earth is so irresistible. It's popular with brands for similar reasons.
Sarah Housley
It’s no wonder then that despite slow progress in material innovation, brands still serve up compostable collections to signal regenerative intent.
“Compostable fashion is having an extended moment because consumers have become aware of low rates of recycling, particularly for textiles,” points out design futurist and author Sarah Housley. “They’re seeking alternatives that still feel ecologically responsible, and the idea that your clothing can return to the earth is so irresistible. It’s popular with brands for similar reasons. While recycling requires daunting systemic change—which they can influence, but only to a certain extent—compostable designs may feel a little easier to crack.”
Take Under Armour and Unless Collective’s “regenerative sportswear collection”. Debuted during Milan Design Week in April 2025 with the tagline ‘Make Good Dirt’, the small pilot teased a near-future paradigm where overworn athletic kit can simply be buried in the backyard.
But for the time being, this process is trickier. “The conditions in home composting systems are highly variable, in terms of temperatures, moisture levels, and the microbes that are present. Without the right conditions, textiles may take a lot longer than expected to break down, and perhaps much longer than achieved under the test conditions,” says Becca Willcox, ratings analyst at Good On You. “The items won’t necessarily break down quickly if they are just left and forgotten about.”
Can it ever be more than just a greenwashed publicity stunt?
Is it all just greenwashing? Not exactly. But the shadow of performative corporate environmentalism does haunt this space. Seductive aesthetics and promises of convenience get people excited, but if the fantasy fails to live up to expectations or evolve from one-off collections into more mature propositions, they might grow sceptical.
“Compostable clothing lends itself to great visuals: brands have started to show their products buried and in different states of decomposition to really grab consumers’ attention and interest. But they’re still being used to give companies an innovation halo,” Housley cautions.
That said, “incentive aesthetics” a concept developed by designer Oonagh O’Hagan that describes “speculative design as a way to look at more sustainable futures in luxury fashion”, does ignite the twin flames that motivate behaviour change: curiosity and desire. Some biodesigners are using incentive aesthetics to forge deeper connections with audiences who are curious about material development. This emerging field is pioneering soil-compatible solutions by working with living systems, including organisms like bacteria and algae.
If the fantasy fails to live up to expectations or evolve from one-off collections into more mature propositions, consumers might grow sceptical.
Take startup Cell Sense, founded by materials designer Aradhita Parasrampuria to tackle microplastic pollution and the impact of toxic dye on workers’ health. It’s known for compostable biodesigned embellishments. The company’s jade-like bioluminescent beads last 15 years yet decompose in kitchen compost within four weeks.
Although brands have myriad hurdles to overcome in their product development, offering audiences a behind-the-scenes peek into the process builds loyalty and engagement over time. Cell Sense’s recent collaboration with personal care company Dulcie (formerly known as Haeckels) is a great example of how this can be executed thoughtfully. With their durable yet compostable exfoliating face cloth framed as a limited edition experiment, people could purchase the item through Dulcie’s Citizen Subscription Box while learning about the biomineral-inspired design development on its blog and Instagram.
Limitations can also be transformed into unexpected sensory delights, as demonstrated by Stella McCartney’s S-Wave sneaker upgrade, which harnessed the emotional powers of scent. In collaboration with material science startup Balena, the brand turned the challenge of using non-toxic dyes into a multisensory opportunity. The shoes’ BioCir Flex soles use leftover cinnamon from the spice industry, giving them a comforting, earthy fragrance. The trainers aren’t a one-off prototype either, but the result of a multiyear project. Earlier 2022 versions of the S-wave were not fully circular due to relying on recycled TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) for the sole, so the collaboration marked a milestone in the brand’s ongoing R&D process.
What materials should we compost and, importantly, how?
“The most compostable fabrics are commonly known to be organic cotton, linen, kapok, hemp, organic bamboo, jute, wool and some man-made fabrics, like viscose and Lenzing Tencel,” Good On You’s Willcox explains.
Even then, if those fabrics have been dyed or chemically treated, they may no longer be compostable. And all those extra finishings on garments? Not so compostable. People seeking items that safely return to the Earth should know that garments with lots of functional and decorative trims like zippers and sequins won’t do the trick. Synthetic trims and even synthetic stitching must all be completely removed from a garment before it is composted.
The fact that something is compostable doesn’t make it automatically environmentally and ethically sound. “Composting isn’t always the solution with the lowest impact. You are completely destroying the fibre rather than extending the lifespan of clothing, while failing to cut the demand for new items. Composting is most suited for items that can’t be reused, such as underwear or socks.” Willcox continues.
And here it’s important to draw a distinction between “compostable” and “biodegradable”, which are not interchangeable terms. Composting means breaking down into organic matter within a set timeframe in either home or industrial conditions. Biodegradation can happen over an unspecified period, which is why the EU now prohibits the unvalidated use of the term, and member states including France and Belgium have banned it in marketing entirely. Even materials we tend to assume are environmentally benign can persist far longer than expected: a recent paper in iScience, co-authored by Fashion Revolution co-founder Carry Somers, found that cotton accounted for more than 70% of the 150-year fibre record in sediment from a UK lake long fed by textile mills.
It's important to draw a distinction: Compostable and biodegradable are not interchangeable terms.
“Biodegradation is not just about the material itself,” Asha Singhal, director of the Nature of Fashion Initiative at the Biomimicry Institute, told Vogue Business’s Sophie Benson. “It depends on the ecosystem around it, from temperature and moisture to the presence of the right microbes.” Which is to say: throwing a 100% cotton tee into the wrong environment doesn’t guarantee anything.
Compostability is also more suited to some categories than others. And footwear is a prime but complex candidate for this kind of innovative design: it is estimated that 90% of the 23.8 billion pairs of shoes produced annually end up in landfill or are incinerated. Meanwhile their construction, which includes glued layers of foam, rubber, mesh, and synthetic leather, makes them nearly impossible to recycle. Tackling this problem motivates the Closing the Footwear Loop initiative, launched this February by Fashion For Good to address the category’s circularity challenges in partnership with global brands like adidas, Zalando, Inditex, and Target. Finding ways to improve product recycling is a priority, but one of the project’s research streams explores bio-based polymers for soles to eventually phase out fossil fuel-derived materials. Stella McCartney’s S-Wave Sport trainers are a step ahead in this regard, and are a notable development because they’re designed to be durable and recyclable. Composting at an industrial composter through Balena’s global network is a last resort in the product’s life cycle.
What isn’t clear by looking at the Stella McCartney website, however, is how customers should dispose of their used shoes once they can no longer wear them. Presumably, based on the clear return steps outlined regarding its Close the Loop parka (recyclable but not compostable), dropping it off at one of the brand’s stores is an option or sending it back by post. This small but relevant point highlights a significant barrier when it comes to ensuring compostable products actually deliver the benefit they’re supposed to. “There’s a huge amount of behaviour change for brands to engineer into place. For example, providing the envelope and label at point-of-purchase and then incentivising customers to return the product to them to dispose of professionally,” author Housley observes.
Models underwear from Kent, which operates fashion’s first take-back scheme for composting discarded garments into fertiliser.
This is something underwear brand Kent does especially well through its ‘Compost Club’, the fashion industry’s first take-back programme turning textile waste into fertiliser. The programme relaunches in summer 2026, when for $5, US-based KENT customers can again purchase a shipping label and a return kit. Once they cut up their washed briefs, they can drop them at any United States Postal Service location and receive a $10 credit towards future purchases. The used textiles are sent to a community composting organization in Southern California, where they are composted into nutrient-rich soil, diverting waste from landfill while supporting local food ecosystems.
Like footwear, underwear is also well-suited for composting. “It’s a really strong use case because this is an item that people replenish frequently, that can only have its lifetime of use extended a certain amount, and that has no resale value and very little reuse or recycling potential,” Housley explains.
But both Kent and Stella McCartney’s initiatives highlight the iterative challenge of pioneering infrastructure and service design at a meaningful scale. Without wider system change, individual brands need to engineer consumer behaviour change—incentivising consumers to return products, for instance—which runs against the grain of a convenience-driven fashion culture
The future of compostable fashion beyond the soilpunk dream
Right now, compostable clothing is still in its niche, experimental era, purchased by curious and committed early adopters seeking regenerative alternatives.
That said, when it comes to major social movements, research suggests that small, vocal minorities can catalyse significant change, since roughly a 25% tipping point is all it takes to shift norms, according to 2018 research from the University of Pennsylvania. Compostable fashion’s small but committed early adopters could be that minority—that is, if the underlying systems catch up.
Certification schemes for clothing that guarantee home composting are rare and not widespread.
Becca Willcox
But knowing whether a brand’s claims are verifiable is often hard, especially when it comes to clothing that is safe to dispose of at home. As Willcox points out: “Certification schemes for clothing that guarantee home composting are rare and not widespread.”
Over the past few months, I’ve been listening to a small group of consumers share how they think about compostable fashion. When asked which items they’d most want to be compostable, they converged almost unanimously on underwear, socks, tights, and shoes. But unsurprisingly, almost none of the 10 consumers I heard from had actually tried composting a garment. Their hesitations largely clustered around infrastructure (“Where would I compost it?”, “No suitable composting facilities” they told me) and durability (”How long will it last after washing?”).
Certifications could help in theory. OK compost HOME by TÜV AUSTRIA and Cradle to Cradle (C2C) certification can be useful indicators, but each has its limitations. TÜV’s certification, for instance, validates fibres rather than finished garments. And while some C2C-certified products guarantee compostability, the organisation itself acknowledges that textiles are currently “most likely” to end up being recycled into new products rather than composted.
There remains a huge composting literacy and infrastructure gap that needs to be tackled. “Explaining the difference between home compostable and industrially compostable is crucial,” Housley emphasises, “because people who haven’t gone to the effort of educating themselves will not see any difference between the two, and will think that any compostable item can go in their food waste bin when that’s not the case.”
Consumer sentiment and industry priorities will be forces to influence how this space develops. “It’s increasingly likely that people will perceive it as greenwashing if they don’t see compostable designs being scaled up quickly.” Housley suggests, adding: “textile-to-textile recycling is advancing and as that becomes more commercially viable for the fashion industry, it may take some of the spotlight away from alternative strategies [like compostable design].”
But, as we’ve seen, compostable propositions aren’t a cure-all, they’re best deployed in a targeted, intentional manner, complementing rather than replacing reuse and recycling. And they have enormous potential for specific apparel categories: helping to replace seductive but toxic embellishments, and transforming materials that are no longer fit for their original purpose into a valuable resource.
It’s this potential for metamorphosis that makes compostable design so exciting, asking us to imagine, what can an object or material become through decomposition? Perhaps in a regenerative fashion future we’ll be able to witness that unfold in our own gardens.
