Swiss Fair Trade announces 23 nominees for Fair Fashion Award

(CONNECT) Swiss Fair Trade has nominated a total of 23 established and emerging textile companies, organizations and projects for the Fair Fashion Award 2026. In line with this year’s focus on the topic of fair work, each of the nominees demonstrates a different way of taking responsibility for the people who make our clothes.

The jury will select the finalists for the final on October 21 from this longlist. The winners in both categories stand to bank prize money of 20,000 Swiss francs each, in addition to consulting services from industry experts worth 3,000 Swiss francs.

The companies nominated in the “Established” category include GREIFF (Bamberg in Germany), which combines top quality workwear with fairness and sustainability, L-SHOP Team (Dättwil in the canton of Aargau) with its products made from Fairtrade Certified Cotton, Mammut (Seon in the canton of Aargau) and the naturaline alliance from Coop (Basel), Remei (Rotkreuz in the canton of Zug) and its bioRe Foundationv, which places a particular emphasis on human rights throughout global supply chains, Odlo (Hünenberg in the canton of Zug) for its transparent wage structure in relation to its base layer production activities and VAUDE (Sarnen in the canton of Obwalden) on account of its intensive commitment to fair working conditions across the entire supply chain.

Up for a Fair Trade Award in the “Emerging” category are textile companies such as Maya Seyferth (Zurich, Tbilisi), Moya Kala (Sarnen, Bulgaria), POPLIN PROJECT (Zurich, West Africa) and Rework (Bern, India, Thailand), which all base their production activities either wholly or partially abroad, but manage to exert a direct influence on local working conditions and wages, strengthen businesses in the region and ensure a fair income for those involved. For each of its products, Nikin (Aarau in the canton of Aargau) plants a tree in a reforestation project, while Round Rivers (Zurich) manufactures swimwear and winter jackets from PET waste that it removes from the Limmat river.

Stephanie Bircher (based in La Tour-de-Peilz in the canton of Vaud) collaborates with social enterprises for individual production steps of its natural, zero-waste textile printing process, while WE ARE ZRCL (Schwyz) prioritizes Swiss value creation for its circular streetwear and explicitly defines fair working conditions as part of its mission. Both are nominated in the “Emerging” category, in addition to the following: This is sheep (Lenzerheide in the canton of Graubünden), Tarzan (Basel), Storyfabrics (Zurich), Solk (Zug), Social Fabric (Zurich), Neutral (Copenhagen in Denmark), Majik Noir (Vevey in the canton of Vaud), Finkhof (Bad Wurzach in Germany) and Carpasus (Zurich). ce/mm