The European Commission has put a number on a problem the textile industry has long sensed but rarely measured. In a market surveillance campaign run by its internal market directorate, DG GROW, inspectors tested 132 clothing items and found that 49 of them, 37%, carried labels that did not match the fibres actually used.
For scarves the failure rate reached 80%. For tops it was 54%. These are not clerical slips. They point to a textile traceability problem that sits underneath almost every sustainability claim the sector makes.
The campaign found three kinds of failure. Some garments listed the right fibres but the wrong percentages. Some contained cheaper fibres than the label declared. Some named fibres that were not there at all. The results were shared through the EU’s market surveillance information system, and corrective measures were still ongoing for two dozen of the products months later.
Read together, the findings describe a system in which the written record and the physical material have come apart. That gap is the real story, and it reaches well beyond a single mislabelled scarf.
Why labels keep failing the test
Mislabelling on this scale is structural. A modern garment passes through a long line of suppliers before it reaches a shelf: farm or recycled feedstock, spinner, weaver or knitter, dyer, finisher, garment maker. Material is blended and substituted at several points along that line, often far upstream where brands have the least visibility.
The label is the last entry in a chain of declarations. Each handoff is a chance for the paperwork to lose touch with what is physically in the box. Certificates and transaction documents record what was supposed to happen under the EU’s textile labelling rules. They cannot confirm what actually survived into the finished product.
Consider organic cotton. A brand commits to it, but the fibre moves through farms, ginners, spinners and dyers before it becomes a garment. At any of those stages, conventional cotton can be mixed in because it costs less. The paperwork still says organic. Only the material knows the truth, and the label is copied from the paperwork, not the material.
There is a clear economic driver. When a certified or premium fibre carries a price premium, the incentive to dilute or substitute it grows. Organic cotton, recycled content and animal fibres such as wool and cashmere are all exposed, because the cheaper alternative is difficult to detect once it has been spun into a blend. The EU was blunt about the effect: mislabelling of this kind is economically harmful and erodes consumer trust. It also penalises the honest manufacturers who are undercut by competitors willing to round their figures up.
The recycling problem hiding inside the label
For an industry under pressure to become circular, the timing is awkward. Textile recycling depends on knowing what is in a garment. Fibre-to-fibre recycling, the kind Europe wants to scale, needs clean and correctly identified material streams. A “100% cotton” item that turns out to be a cotton-polyester blend contaminates that stream or is rejected at sorting.
So inaccurate labels carry a second cost. They are a direct obstacle to circularity. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation is expected to set minimum recycled-content thresholds for textiles and tighten rules on durability and product data. None of that holds up if the starting point, the fibre composition itself, cannot be relied on.
Regulation is moving from claims to evidence
The wider direction is not in doubt. From September 2026, the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive bans vague or unsubstantiated environmental claims across the EU. A review of environmental claims in the sector found that more than half were potentially misleading. The Digital Product Passport will soon require structured data on composition, origin and recyclability for textiles sold in Europe.
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These measures share one assumption: that claims should rest on evidence rather than trust. The Digital Product Passport is a genuine step forward, but it is worth being precise about what it does. A passport is a digital record. It complements the physical label rather than replacing it, and it is only as reliable as the material data feeding it. If the underlying composition is wrong, a passport simply gives a false claim a cleaner interface.
What actually closes the gap
The honest conclusion from the EU’s numbers is uncomfortable for a sector that has spent years adding documentation. The answer is to check the material itself, rather than add another certificate or a longer audit.
Physical, fibre-level verification means testing a finished garment and confirming what it contains, instead of trusting the document that travelled alongside it. Forensic methods make that possible. At Haelixa we apply plant-based DNA markers to fibres at source, and throughout the supply chain: the marker stays in the material through spinning, dyeing and finishing, and a laboratory test can later confirm whether the claimed fibre is present.
We have used the approach across organic cotton, recycled fibres and cashmere. The specific technique matters less than the principle behind it: proof that lives in the material, not in the file.
This does not make certificates or digital systems redundant. It strengthens them. Certification and chain-of-custody data show the intended flow of material. Physical testing confirms what is actually there. Used together, they close the gap between the two, which is exactly where mislabelling takes hold.
The cost of doing nothing
A 37% failure rate is a warning, not a verdict. Brands that treat it as a one-off enforcement story will keep failing tests, absorbing returns and quietly eroding the trust their sustainability positioning depends on. As recycled-content rules and the Digital Product Passport arrive, the cost of unverifiable claims will shift from reputational to operational.
Those that move first towards physical evidence will hold a simpler advantage. When a regulator, a recycler or a customer asks what is really in the garment, they will be able to answer with proof. In a market where a third of labels are wrong, that ability is the foundation of any claim worth making.
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About Haelixa:
Founded in Switzerland in 2016 as a spin-off from ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Haelixa is a physical traceability company that uses patented DNA-based technology to verify product origin and authenticity in supply chains. Thanks to its intervention-resistant DNA markers, brands can scientifically validate claims related to recycling, quality, and material composition directly on the product itself. With proven adoption in textiles, precious metals, and gemstones, Haelixa is extending its technology into luxury anti-counterfeiting to redefine product authenticity.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of impakter.com — In the Cover Photo: Haelixa’s DNA technology used on cotton. Cover Photo Credit: Haelixa/Adrian Ehrbar Photography.
