Italy’s fashion sector faces a reckoning as China’s fast fashion empire pushes another giant forward.
A sweeping intervention is underway in Italy’s fashion landscape. On Wednesday, leaders from Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, Confindustria Moda, and Altagamma gathered with Minister Adolfo Urso in Rome to map out a legislative counterstrike. Their target: the tidal wave of ultra-fast fashion imports undermining the local ecosystem and the opaque supply chains feeding luxury houses. Trade unions, excluded from that round, have publicly bristled at the exclusion. A broader fashion roundtable is set for November 17.
At the heart of the draft legislation — now before the Senate Committee — is a proposed expansion of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for textiles. Under the plan, both domestic and foreign manufacturers would face added levies and obligations tied to the end-of-life management of garments and textile waste. The aim is to internalize waste costs and dissuade volume dumping. Importantly, the draft applies equally to local producers, a move meant to forestall protectionist blowback.
“In the coming days, following today’s discussions with industry representatives, we will introduce a measure to address the phenomenon of ultra-fast fashion — an influx of low-cost foreign products that harms our manufacturers and puts consumers at risk,” Urso stated in a press note. At a summit earlier this week, he added, “issues are stemming from the ongoing war — and the broader trade war — in a world increasingly shaped by commercial retaliation measures.” According to the minister, Chinese overproduction is being diverted to European consumers via e-platforms that masquerade as Italian, offering extremely low prices at a moment when households are especially price sensitive.
Industry associations cheered the move. Carlo Capasa and Matteo Lunelli, heads of Camera Moda and Altagamma, issued a joint declaration warning that “the influx of extremely low-quality, low-cost products flooding the market” threatens both Italy’s economy and consumers. “These products fail to meet — or even acknowledge — any of the standards and requirements of legality, transparency and traceability that Italian companies uphold.…Italian firms are deeply committed to ensuring the highest-quality standards, full transparency in production processes, and strict compliance with the principles of legality,” they said.
Confindustria Moda’s Luca Sburlati applauded the swift governmental response and urged Brussels to roll out similar protections throughout the EU, emphasizing that EPR must be binding for non-EU producers “thereby enabling the recycling supply chain to truly take off.”
Capasa framed the regulatory push as defensive necessity. “We cannot accept being flooded with ultra-fast-fashion products that show no respect for either people or the environment. We’re facing an unfair form of competition. We fight many rightful battles to address issues within our own borders, yet I never hear anyone talk about what lies behind these exploitative products. There should be less criticism of the high-end products’ value chain, which is doing everything it can to clean up itself. The elephant in the room are the millions of parcels arriving in Europe untaxed, flooding our markets,” Capasa told WWD. He pointed to moves in France as inspiration, urging that import rules adhere to the same standards as domestic production.
Yet the legislative push comes amid a crisis of credibility for luxury fashion supply chains. Over the past two years, Italian courts have placed several major labels — including Loro Piana, Valentino, Dior, Armani, Tod’s, and Alviero Martini — under judicial oversight over sweatshop and subcontracting allegations. The scrutiny intensifies with a recent attempt by prosecutors to place Tod’s under judicial administration for alleged labor abuses. The defense of “lack of direct oversight” is increasingly untenable.
In July, an Italian court brought Loro Piana, a cashmere division of LVMH, under court control for one year, citing “culpable failure” to monitor supply chains outsourced through sham firms to Chinese workshops in Italy where workers endured pay far below legal minimums and extreme hours. Similar probes ensnared Dior, Valentino, Armani, and Alviero Martini, giving rise to a narrative that no brand — however prestigious — is immune.
With Tod’s, prosecutors point to complex subcontracting chains. In Milan and Marche, Tod’s allegedly hired firms without production capacity that in turn subcontracted to illicit Chinese factories. In Marche workshops, piece-rate wages translated into net wages as low as €2.75 per hour; monthly deductions for housing and food further depressed earnings. Tod’s insists it “complies with current legislation” and that it rigorously audits its suppliers.
The Loro Piana probe illustrated how even high-end brands rely on opaque, cost-driven outsourcing networks, in which undocumented workers toil in dire conditions. To observers, the new Italian push signals a tightening of the noose on brands that once evaded accountability through layers of separation.
Italy’s EPR ambitions reflect broader European momentum. Under the EU’s proposal, first movers are already preparing: by January 1, 2025, separate textile waste collection will be mandatory across member states. But in Italy, only about 20 percent of textile waste is currently collected and recaptured for reuse or recycling, according to the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA). The existing recycling infrastructure is minimal: as much as half of the collected stream is diverted to rags or padding, not closed-loop rebirth.
Under the draft decree, no minimum threshold will exempt smaller sellers: all those placing textiles on the Italian market — from brands to distance sellers — must comply. Importers and foreign sellers will need to prove traceability, contributing to the circular economy rather than dumping liabilities on Italian waste systems.
Still, ambiguities remain. Critics warn of potential saturation of Italy’s sorting infrastructure by imports, crowding out domestic textile waste collections. Others caution that heavy-handed implementation could cripple small artisans who cannot immediately absorb compliance costs. Italy’s success depends not only on legislation but on enforcement architecture — from consortia to certification bodies — and on harmonizing EPR rules across the EU to avoid loopholes.
One looming question: will regulation alone restore trust? Because despite tightening rules, perception is fraying. In August, Italy’s antitrust authority fined Shein €1 million for greenwashing, citing misleading claims about recyclability. In 2025, Italy’s antitrust regulator also fined Giorgio Armani €3.5 million for overstated ethical commitments juxtaposed with subcontractor violations.
For the nation built on sartorial heritage, the stakes are existential. One undermined narrative — of artisanry, provenance, integrity — could ricochet across global markets and diminish Italy’s cachet. “The high-end supply chain is very cohesive and considers itself a damaged party.…It is healthy, creative and efficient, though it does feature certain dissonances,” Capasa said.
Fashion’s churn is showing no sign of slowing. Even as Italy fortifies its borders against an influx of ultra-fast imports, China’s fashion challengers are pushing further into Western markets. Urban Revivo, the Guangzhou-based retailer often likened to Zara for its speed and scale, has reopened in London’s Westfield mall after a pandemic-era retreat and is now planning stores in Covent Garden and New York’s SoHo district.
“Our strategy is to use London and New York as the fulcrum of our globalisation to tap into overseas markets,” founder Li Mingguang told the Financial Times, noting that the brand’s move abroad mirrors its early Shanghai expansion. Urban Revivo, whose parent company Fashion Momentum Group oversees about 400 stores in China, now operates 23 international outposts with ambitions to reach five billion renminbi in overseas revenues by 2030 — still a fraction of Zara’s €28 billion in global sales last year.
The expansion underscores how fast-fashion growth is being redefined rather than restrained. As Shein and Temu face mounting scrutiny over environmental harm and labor practices, Urban Revivo’s bid for legitimacy rests on quality and localization. “In the past the term ‘fast fashion’ was synonymous with poor quality in China,” Li said. “So we prioritised quality.” Yet its business model remains a close echo of the Western giants it seeks to rival, adapting silhouettes and fits to regional markets while maintaining aggressive pricing.
The company’s move to explore manufacturing in Turkey, Morocco, and Vietnam signals a future in which production footprints stretch ever further, even as Europe tries to tighten its regulatory net. The result is a global fashion circuit spinning faster than ever — one that regulation alone may struggle to slow.
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