What you need to know about the "clean dressing" trend Sustainable fashion is now more focused on the consumer than on the planet

Fashion marketing revolves entirely around buzzwords. While these keywords once emerged from companies emphasizing the main quality of their flagship products to attract consumers, brands now only need to scroll through TikTok or Instagram to figure out which words to print on their packaging. After years and years of greenwashing, the practice of excessively using terms like «sustainable,» “natural,» «zero impact» in advertising even when unverified, fashion brands and “green” luxury houses seem to have abandoned their love for the Planet to devote themselves entirely to personal wellness.

The greatest paradox of the wellness industry lies precisely in this trend: the clean girl aesthetic, ruled by slicked-back hair with gel, pastel-colored water bottles, leggings, and tiny pilates tops, has brought athleisure to the peak of success, even though it is one of the most harmful categories of clothing for both skin and the environment. Forever chemicals, synthetic chemicals often found in technical fabrics, are called that because they do not easily degrade, depositing microplastics in the environment as well as in the human body.

This has created a new market gap for sustainable brands that can no longer capture consumers’ attention: plastic-free fashion.

What does "clean dressing" actually mean?

In 2026, the clean girl aesthetic means something completely different from before — Hailey Bieber and her followers seem to have realized that you can do pilates and face masks until exhaustion, but spending the day wrapped in synthetic fabrics could cause health damage comparable to that of eating fast food.

Speaking with PR professionals, brand managers, and communication agents, Shayeza Walid writes in BoF that the issue is convincing more and more brands that once relied mainly on sustainability to sell. With 84% of American consumers considering wellness one of the top priorities in their daily lives, Walid comments, «sustainable brands are rethinking how they communicate value in this context, foregrounding attributes consumers can immediately understand, like breathability, softness or products free of chemicals.»

This seems to be the main attraction point of the clean or healthy dressing trend (which sounds more like a salad seasoning more than anything): concern for the Planet is now perceived as too great a commitment for a single consumer - who at best can refuse a plastic straw while billionaires and big tech companies drain the rest of environmental resources in the same timeframe. Personal wellness, on the other hand, is a much more accessible matter that brings immediate benefits.

And even though using organic materials does not directly correspond to sustainable production, considering the energy waste of supply chains for resources such as linen, silk, and cotton, if clean dressing is enough for sustainable fashion brands to attract new customers, they won’t hesitate to embrace it. «We eat organic, why don’t we wear it?», reads the copy of the above-mentioned post by Stella McCartney.

The war on polyester

On TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, a simple search for the keyword “polyester” brings up hundreds of posts criticizing the material. Users claim that wearing synthetic clothing could produce negative effects on the body, both superficially, causing skin imperfections, and hormonally, even potentially affecting fertility rates. But just as the internet contains dozens of studies demonstrating the damage caused by the material to the human body, there are just as many studies denying the severity of those effects.

One of the main reasons consumers are paying more attention to the composition of their clothes could be the increase in clothing prices, driven by tariffs in America, the rising cost of raw materials, and the complications faced by the supply chain due to global political conflicts. Faced with expensive receipts, consumers are beginning to demand more: greater transparency, greater quality. The first material to come under customer scrutiny - the most popular as well as the easiest to identify on a label - is polyester.

But articles such as Fashion's Complicated Poly-Relationship by Vogue Business perfectly explain why polyester should not be demonized: while it is true that it has always been the preferred material of fast fashion companies and that it is a synthetic fiber made from plastic, it is also one of the most durable, water-resistant, and elastic fabrics on the market. This makes it, in some respects, more sustainable than an organic fiber destined to decompose or fray after the first wash.

Kyle Macneill, author of the Vogue Business article, points out that Issey Miyake uses a «premium» type of polyester for the Pleats Please collection, sourced from luxury Japanese manufacturers. Despite the existence of different types, a strong stigma has now solidified around the material, whether it involves recycled fiber or the use of a small percentage of the material to guarantee a garment’s elasticity or waterproof qualities.

It’s incredible how much a buzzword, like the now passé «green», can rewrite the fate of an entire fabric. Now it’s the turn of clean dressing and plastic-free, but perhaps, one day not too far away, polyester could steal back the throne: all it takes is a good PR strategy and a couple of influencers.