As the fashion industry faces down a relentless barrage of tariff threats, geopolitical turbulence and climate chaos, Claire Bergkamp, CEO of Textile Exchange, has some good news.

Speaking on the first day of the sustainability nonprofit’s annual meeting at the Vancouver Convention Center in Canada on Tuesday, the former Stella McCartney executive told a packed auditorium to take heart that “we are actually building on real progress.” Among companies reporting to Textile Exchange’s Materials Benchmark, for instance, the use of so-called preferred materials rose to 72 percent in 2025, up 4 percentage points from the year before, including 82 percent of cotton and 76 percent of polyester. By comparison, preferred materials made up 37 percent of global cotton production and 12 percent of global polyester production.

What this demonstrates, Bergkamp said, is that while change is still not happening at the scale it needs to, the “positive indicators of that progress” show that people are still “leaning in” and “taking steps” to ensure that sustainability remains a priority.

“We can sometimes feel very daunted by the size of the challenges ahead,” she said. “But what I want to remind us is that the people in this room are doing the work, and I want us to just keep doing the work.”

That’s not to downplay the difficulties to come, Bergkamp said. Global fiber production grew from 109 million tons in 2020 to 139 million tons in 2025, an “enormous increase” in just five years.

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