Durability in fashion: a cross-domain review of definitions, measurements approaches, and environmental implications

Durability in the fashion industry is increasingly recognised as a key lever for the circular economy transition, as it is associated with increased product lifetimes, decreased resource use, prevented waste generation, and reduced environmental impacts. Despite its growing relevance, durability remains a fragmented and partially operationalised concept across the domains that shape product standards, environmental assessment, and policymaking. This paper provides a cross-domain review of how durability is defined, measured, and linked to environmental impacts within the fashion sector, to clarify conceptual inconsistencies and identify pathways toward a more robust integration of durability into environmental assessments. The analysis spans four key domains: (i) Product Category Rules (PCRs), (ii) environmental labels, (iii) European policy frameworks, and (iv) academic literature on apparel and footwear. Results show that durability is predominantly addressed through isolated physical performance tests or minimum quality thresholds, while rarely being translated into explicit lifetime metrics. Environmental labels and PCRs mainly treat durability as a pass-or-fail requirement, without linking it to product lifetime or environmental performance. Within policy frameworks, durability emerges through progressively increasing levels of conceptualisation and operationalisation. Academic literature reflects similar fragmentation, with a prevalence of qualitative approaches and limited quantitative integration into life cycle assessment. Overall, the findings highlight a critical gap between the recognised environmental importance of durability and its practical operationalisation. The paper concludes by outlining key challenges and opportunities for harmonising durability concepts to support credible environmental assessment in the fashion sector. • Durability in fashion lacks consistent definitions and operational metrics across domains. • PCRs and eco-labels treat durability as pass–fail tests, rarely linked to product lifetime. • EU policies increasingly formalise durability, but quantitative lifetime links remain limited. • Academic studies emphasise durability–longevity links, mostly via qualitative approaches. • PEFCR uniquely operationalises durability to modulate lifetime and LCA result. • An approach is proposed to classify durability in fashion sector.