NEWS
Inside the Industry
The Kingpins Hong Kong Pop-Up brought together a mix of denim trade professionals and consumers who turned out for the Nov. 21–22 run of the second-annual event which is organized by the jeans supply-chain sourcing event and global denim platform. Held at DX Design Hub in Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po district, Kingpins Hong Kong featured 24 exhibitors, including denim mills, fiber producers, garment manufacturers, chemical suppliers and textile-machinery makers. The pop-up show ran concurrently with The Fashion Union, an eight-day event celebrating “the beauty of workwear,” presented and organized by the Hong Kong Design Institute and supported by the Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency, part of Hong Kong Fashion Fest, which is presented by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Texworld returns to the Javits Center Jan. 21–23 for the next edition of its New York show. The biannual Texworld New York event is one of the largest textile and apparel-sourcing trade shows in the U.S. because of the people it brings together from across the globe. This January, Texworld New York will work together with Material Exchange to highlight three trends for the Spring/Summer 2026 season that will offer brands insights into the direction fashion is going as well as provide inspiration for designers to create their own lines and the fabrics they need to do it. The three key trends are Whimsical Wit, expressing imagination and ambition; Engineered Expression, made from innovative fabrics; and Muted Modernism, which includes seamless knits and plush piles.
JOOR, the digital fashion-wholesale-management ecosystem, that has processed over $100 billion in wholesale transaction volume, has released “JOOR’s 2025 Wholesale Trends,” a data-driven report outlining its 2025 predictions for the global fashion sector. Key themes include the rise of independent retailers, DTC brands accelerating into wholesale, integrated systems providing the best value, a luxury-goods realignment, and the growth of brand-management companies. More than 14,000 brands and 650,000 curated fashion buyers across 150 countries connect and conduct business on the JOOR platform, where they get exclusive access to a vast wealth of real-time wholesale transaction data. JOOR is headquartered in New York, with offices in Paris, Milan and Los Angeles. To view the entire report and learn more about JOOR, visit resources.joor.com.
Panda Biotech is busy speeding along with the largest hemp processing facility in the U.S., which opened in June in Wichita Falls, Texas, in an old General Motors factory. The main manufacturing gin is seven football fields long and is used to separate the tough outer bark of the hemp plant, which is used to make fibers from the inner woody core. Most of the world’s hemp is made in China, but Wrangler has its sights set on working with Panda Biotech as a source for the fiber. Last year Wrangler’s parent company, Kontoor Brands, set global design standards that require lower-impact materials for the 141 million products produced annually by its brands, which also include Lee and Rock & Republic. Dhruv Agarwal, vice president at Kontoor Brands, recently said he wants to help make hemp become a viable part of the American fashion industry.
