Category: Radar

The GBTA (Global Business Travel Association) Business Travel Index 2026, published on August 4, 2026 with Visa, forecasts global business travel spending of $1.71 trillion in 2026 — up 7.2% from 2025. Trip volume, over the same period, grows by just 1.3%, from 1.82 to 1.84 billion trips.

The gap between the two curves is the number worth reading closely. Spending is rising more than five times faster than volume: companies aren’t taking more trips, they’re paying more for each one. In the United States, the world’s largest market, domestic and international business travel spending climbs 6.7% to $423 billion. 2025 had already beaten forecasts: spending grew 8.4% to $1.59 trillion, ahead of the 6.6% predicted a year earlier. GBTA now places the $2 trillion milestone in 2031, a year later than previously estimated — growth, the report says, is slowing after the 2026 peak.

Edward Galvin, VP and Head of North America at Visa Commercial Solutions, sums up the shift in one line: as spending grows faster than volume, value concentrates on every single journey. Suzanne Neufang, GBTA’s CEO, adds an operational detail: companies haven’t stepped away from travel on principle, they’ve become more selective and more productivity-focused. The trip that stays on the calendar has to earn its place.

For anyone living this kind of trip — a morning meeting, a client office in the early afternoon, dinner and the airport by evening, all in the same day — the wardrobe follows the same logic as the corporate budget: fewer pieces, each one has to work harder. A layer that moves from an air-conditioned lounge to scorching tarmac without needing a change removes exactly the kind of friction a pricier trip can no longer afford to ignore. It isn’t about how much fits in the bag, but about reliability piece by piece: the jacket that doesn’t crease after eight hours, the layer that holds up for a second day without a wash, the piece that works as well under a blazer as it does on a plane.

The Business Travel Index isn’t about wardrobes. It describes a market paying more for every trip that actually matters — the same standard worth applying to what you wear when that trip is yours.

Download: Travel Capsule Planner — the essential edit for the trip that has to work the first time. https://worldofmerino.com/en-us/en-lead-magnet-travel-capsule/

On August 6, 2026, Italy’s Ministry of Health placed all 27 cities on its national heat bulletin under red alert at the same time, the first time this has happened this year. That same day in Austria, the thermometer at Bad Deutsch-Altenburg hit 41.2°C, a new national record according to GeoSphere Austria.

The heat wasn’t confined to health bulletins. Budapest recorded its warmest overnight low on record, at 28°C. In France’s Var department, wildfires burned more than 60 square kilometres of land. In Hungary, the Paks nuclear plant ran at around 10% of normal capacity because Danube water used for cooling was too warm to sustain full output. In the same region, Euronews reports, June brought 27% less rainfall than average in Austria, with some stretches of the Danube basin down to 50% of normal. According to the European Copernicus EFFIS system, 434,976 hectares have already burned across the EU since the start of 2026, well above the historical average.

This isn’t a one-off. Copernicus has already confirmed that June-July 2026 was the hottest two-month stretch ever recorded in Western Europe, with an average temperature of 21.62°C, 2.79 degrees above normal and past the previous record set in 2022. August is following the same trajectory, not breaking it. It is the fourth heatwave since May, says Lorenzo Giovannini, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Trento, quoted by Italian news agency ANSA: “We are well above the average of past years.” A fifth wave in August hasn’t been ruled out, with a scorching Ferragosto weekend expected and the first possible cooldown only from August 17.

For anyone splitting the day between an air-conditioned office and an outdoor commute, the problem is no longer occasional. It has become structural. A garment that absorbs and releases heat based on body temperature, without relying on artificial climate control, stops being a summer-wardrobe detail and becomes a performance variable across eight or nine working hours. It isn’t a weekend-only experience: it repeats every morning, from the subway commute to the first nine o’clock meeting.

Through August 17, new peaks near 40°C remain likely across central and lowland areas. Infrastructure, from Hungary’s power grid to industrial cooling systems, is running into the same limits the human body meets over the same hours.

→ Read more: The fabric research behind micron-è, on Merino University

Fortune reported on August 6, 2026 that H&M Pre-Loved closed 2025 with revenue of SEK 1,844 million, about $194.4 million: a 31% increase over the previous year.

The group’s resale program, running since 2021, now covers 24 online markets and physical stores in 11 countries. It accounted for 0.8% of group turnover in 2025, a small but steadily growing share.

The figure fits a broader shift. ThredUp’s 2026 Resale Report puts the global secondhand apparel market at $393 billion by 2030. In the US, resale is on track to reach $78.8 billion by the end of the decade, growing nearly four times faster than overall clothing retail did last year.

Zara, Levi’s, Lululemon, REI and Patagonia have all launched or expanded in-house resale programs, often relying on platforms like Trove and Reflaunt. Patagonia opened Worn Wear in 2017, among the first retailers to do so. Eileen Fisher and Urban Outfitters, with its PS Vintage line, are following the same path.

Sofia Måhlén, H&M’s lead for circular business models, describes Pre-Loved as a structural part of the group’s strategy, not a side experiment. Shawn Grain Carter, a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, ties the revenue jump to brands running resale platforms directly, rather than leaving the category to third-party marketplaces.

For Neil Saunders of GlobalData Retail, the shift is no longer marginal: resale is growing at a pace the primary market can’t match. For brands, that creates a new constraint. A garment only enters the resale loop if it still holds its shape and value after months or years of wear.

Pricing context helps explain the push. According to the AlixPartners 2025 Consumer Sentiment Index, average entry-level apparel prices rose $17 in 2025 compared with 2024, an increase that makes the cost-per-wear math more relevant for shoppers.

It’s the same logic that guides shoppers who buy fewer, better-chosen pieces. Cost per wear matters more than sticker price. A garment that lasts five years costs less, in real terms, than five garments that last one season.

Brands don’t put it this way in press releases, but the math is the same one shoppers run before buying: it lasts longer, so it’s worth more later, too.

→ Read more: Capsule — 12 Pieces, 30 Days

Fortune reported on August 6, 2026 that H&M Pre-Loved closed 2025 with revenue of SEK 1,844 million, about $194.4 million: a 31% increase over the previous year.

The group’s resale program, running since 2021, now covers 24 online markets and physical stores in 11 countries. It accounted for 0.8% of group turnover in 2025, a small but steadily growing share.

The figure fits a broader shift. ThredUp’s 2026 Resale Report puts the global secondhand apparel market at $393 billion by 2030. In the US, resale is on track to reach $78.8 billion by the end of the decade, growing nearly four times faster than overall clothing retail did last year.

Zara, Levi’s, Lululemon, REI and Patagonia have all launched or expanded in-house resale programs, often relying on platforms like Trove and Reflaunt. Patagonia opened Worn Wear in 2017, among the first retailers to do so. Eileen Fisher and Urban Outfitters, with its PS Vintage line, are following the same path.

Sofia Måhlén, H&M’s lead for circular business models, describes Pre-Loved as a structural part of the group’s strategy, not a side experiment. Shawn Grain Carter, a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, ties the revenue jump to brands running resale platforms directly, rather than leaving the category to third-party marketplaces.

For Neil Saunders of GlobalData Retail, the shift is no longer marginal: resale is growing at a pace the primary market can’t match. For brands, that creates a new constraint. A garment only enters the resale loop if it still holds its shape and value after months or years of wear.

Pricing context helps explain the push. According to the AlixPartners 2025 Consumer Sentiment Index, average entry-level apparel prices rose $17 in 2025 compared with 2024, an increase that makes the cost-per-wear math more relevant for shoppers.

It’s the same logic that guides shoppers who buy fewer, better-chosen pieces. Cost per wear matters more than sticker price. A garment that lasts five years costs less, in real terms, than five garments that last one season.

Brands don’t put it this way in press releases, but the math is the same one shoppers run before buying: it lasts longer, so it’s worth more later, too.

→ Read more: Capsule — 12 Pieces, 30 Days

The 2026 Deloitte Travel Industry Outlook shows what looks like a contradiction: 68% of travel managers expect to increase 2026 budgets, with average spend up 23% over 2025. Yet the frequency of individual trips keeps falling: only 53% of frequent corporate travelers say they plan to travel three or more times a month, down from 63% a year earlier in the same Deloitte survey.

The money isn’t disappearing — it’s being reallocated. Companies are spending more on fewer, more selective trips. That’s the logic behind what several industry reports — Engine, Arrivia, SIXT business — call the “12-hour micro-trip”: the express trip built to close a decisive client meeting in a single day, no overnight stay, without disrupting the rest of the work week.

Alongside the short trip sits the opposite phenomenon. 84% of corporate travelers surveyed by Engine say they want to add leisure time to their next business trip, and the global bleisure market — work plus vacation in the same journey — is worth $762 billion in 2025, with projections above $2.2 trillion by 2034.

Companies are no longer just tolerating the overlap between work and vacation: they’re formalizing it. One company in five, according to data aggregated by Navan and Arrivia, now explicitly encourages employees to extend business trips for personal reasons. Marriott reports business stays running 20% longer than in previous years. The phenomenon isn’t only American: SIXT business flags the same dynamic in European markets, where the selection criterion is shifting from ticket price to itinerary flexibility.

For whoever is planning the trip, the practical consequence concerns the suitcase before the ticket. The single carry-on, already the majority choice among frequent travelers per the same Deloitte report, leaves little room for backup: every piece needs to cover more occasions, from the meeting to the flight to the last-minute drink, without a change dictated only by context.

The two trajectories are only opposite in appearance. They converge on one shared practical problem: the wardrobe has to hold up across two different registers with the same luggage. A twelve-hour day between airport, client and return flight calls for garments that don’t crease under the blazer and that absorb the swings between air-conditioned interiors and outdoor heat. A trip that stretches a few extra days for the weekend calls for the opposite: garments worn longer without washing, without losing shape or picking up odor.

The garment that solves both cases doesn’t change between the nine o’clock meeting and Saturday’s aperitivo. What changes is the luggage, not its contents.

→ Discover the Travel Capsule Planner: 5 pieces, 10 days, zero stress

On 8 July 2026, Barcelona’s Fabra Observatory recorded 40.5°C, the highest temperature in more than a century of data. The next day, the UK Met Office confirmed the eighth day of 2026 above 34°C at Wisley, Surrey — a new all-time record, surpassing the seven days reached in both 2020 and 1976.

Mainland Europe tells the same story. In late June, Germany hit a provisional national record of 41.7°C. The World Weather Attribution research group called the heatwave the most intense ever recorded in the region studied, adding it was virtually impossible to explain without accounting for climate change. In England, June 2026 is already the warmest since records began in 1884.

The Met Office also flagged an ongoing “marine heat wave” in the North Sea, with surface water temperatures reaching 18°C off the southeast English coast, an unusually high reading for early July — a warming that isn’t limited to the air, but also affects the coastal waters that usually help cool it down in the evening.

The figure that changes the picture for office workers isn’t about the streets — it’s about homes. According to the International Energy Agency, only 20% of European households have air conditioning, even as unit sales have grown 30% over the past five years. The typical day becomes a disjointed sequence: a scorching pavement, an overheated train carriage, an office where the air conditioning exists but falls short, or doesn’t exist at all.

Companies have responded unevenly, and mostly on their own initiative rather than following any single new policy. Some offices relaxed the dress code and let the jacket go; others only shifted meeting times to the cooler morning hours. Neither solves the underlying issue: the fabric against the skin stays the same from the morning commute to the air-conditioned meeting room to the walk home in the hottest hour of the day.

The body moves through several microclimates in a few hours. What matters isn’t simply the lightest garment — it’s the one that absorbs body moisture as the temperature rises and releases it as it falls, without turning damp or stiff. It’s the same principle that carries a twelve-hour travel day, applied to a summer that has stopped being predictable.

The 8 July record doesn’t close the sequence. With a summer that has already passed the peaks of 2020 and matched those of 1976, the challenge isn’t the absolute heat anymore — it’s dressing for how much it swings, day after day.

The fabric research behind micron-è → on Merino University

From 19 July 2026, European textile companies with more than 250 employees, €50 million in turnover, or €25 million in total assets will no longer be allowed to destroy unsold clothing and accessories. The rule comes from the European Commission’s ESPR (Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation), in force since 2024 and now operative for large companies.

The measure comes with precise numbers. The Commission estimates that 4-9% of unsold textiles in Europe are destroyed every year before ever being worn, with an estimated impact of 5.6 million tonnes of CO2 — close to Sweden’s total net emissions in 2021. From February 2027, companies will also have to report, category by category, how much of their discarded stock is reused, recycled, recovered, or disposed of.

For deliberate buyers, the shift reads clearly without any technical background. Overproduction itself does not disappear: it moves upstream, where planning volumes poorly becomes more expensive and discounted flash collections lose their margin. The expected result is a closer match between list price and a garment’s real value.

Exemptions stay narrow: health and hygiene concerns, damage that makes a product unusable, intellectual property infringement, or cases where destruction is demonstrably the more sustainable option. Outside those cases, unsold stock has to find a second life: discounted resale, donation, recycling.

Comparing materials, end-of-life data remains a useful marker of what happens once a garment leaves the market anyway. A 90-day marine biodegradation trial by AgResearch measured high biodegradation for wool, both untreated and machine-washable, against minimal or no biodegradation for polyester, nylon, and polypropylene. It is one reason natural fibres carry less exposure to the increasingly discussed problem of microfibres shed into the environment.

The 250-employee threshold covers most large-scale European production; medium-sized companies follow from 2030. In the meantime, unsold stock managed under law — rather than burned or landfilled — becomes a verifiable, public data point.

The practical effect on everyday wardrobes touches discount cycles. Less unsold stock to clear quickly means fewer flash collections designed to be emptied at half price within weeks. Garments built to last — solid construction, materials that hold up to repeated washing — sit outside that fast-clearance logic, because their value does not depend on the season’s turnover.

→ Read more: The Guide to Natural Fibre Traceability — what to look for when a garment claims to last.

ANSA Economia PMI reported on April 23, 2026 the operational plan of Italy’s National Social Tailoring Network for the recovery of the 8,700 tonnes of Italian wool that go to landfill each year. The network was founded in Termoli on January 25, 2025 and opened its working laboratory in Isernia in February 2026 under the programme «100% Lana Italica — reweaving the threads of a story». The initiative coordinates with Progetto Lana SrL of Prato and with the EU project Marlaine.

In Italy, coarse wool from sheep shearing is classified as ABP — Animal By-Product Category 3 under EU Regulation 1069/2009. The same category as industrial keratin and animal food scraps. By law it must be disposed of: landfill, incineration, controlled dispersion. The modern industrial system no longer uses it.

Yet this same fibre clothed an entire peninsula for eight centuries. It is coarser than the Merino used for apparel, but it shares the same keratin chemistry, the same moisture absorption, the same biodegradability.

The numbers speak for themselves. 8,700 tonnes a year correspond to roughly 15 million square metres of potential textile. Blankets, felts, fabric for artisan apparel, building insulation, agricultural fertilisers (Rinnovabili confirms the last one). The point is not saving the planet — it is that there is a supply chain the system stopped seeing.

Prato’s textile district has repositioned. Cerved Monitor projects +1.7% growth for Made in Italy sectors in 2026, driven by export and sustainability. Il Sole 24 Ore called 2026 the year of recovery for Italian textile. Marlaine, an EU programme funded in March 2026, has recognised Prato as the technical lead for innovative applications of waste wool.

For anyone buying an Italian garment, the difference between a supply chain that recovers material and one that imports it already cut is measurable. It does not show on the label. It shows on where the hands that worked the garment actually live.

→ Read more: Daily-Wear Guide — which weight for your city

FashionUnited reports in November 2025 that five houses occupying the same cultural shelf — Zegna, Loro Piana, Uniqlo U, Arc’teryx, COS — share an operational choice: lightweight Merino lines no longer belong to seasonal collections. They have entered the permanent catalogues. The data is confirmed by Textile World in its December 2025 report and echoed by Regen-Tech Fashion in the all-season 2026 analysis.

The signal is structural, not promotional. For decades fine wool kept a calendar: October to April. The transition consolidating in 2026 moves Merino into a different category, the category of materials that cross the year without looking out of place in July or December.

The wardrobe consequence is direct. A category that until 2023 was put away in the warm months now stays within reach. No closet rotation. No light-versus-heavy choice the night before a trip. The garment continues.

Anyone building a wardrobe around months of wear, rather than seasons of rotation, was already expecting this shift. A piece that works twelve months a year occupies the slot of two pieces that work six months each. The math is simpler.

Loro Piana has catalogued its lightweight Merino under «Year-Round» for two seasons now. Performance houses — Arc’teryx, On, Patagonia — have followed the same path from a different starting point. The destination is similar: Merino not as a single-season fibre, but as the material of a method.

For anyone building a capsule that doesn’t empty out every six months, Merino’s transition toward all four seasons is not market news. It is a material aligning with a behaviour some wardrobes had already adopted.

→ Read more: Wardrobe Essentials — Minimalist Edition