How food got its label

The Nutrition Facts panel became mandatory in the United States in 1994, following the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990. Before that, most packaged food offered no standardized breakdown at all. Brands could make vague claims about health benefits. Ingredients could be grouped under catch-all terms. Consumers had almost no way to compare products on a nutritional basis.

The change didn't happen overnight. It took public pressure, scientific research linking diet to disease, and eventually enough regulatory will to standardize what had to be disclosed and how. The food industry resisted. Then the label became normal. Now, shoppers use it without thinking.

Cosmetics followed a similar path. The ingredient declaration — that dense paragraph of INCI names on the back of your moisturizer — became a federal requirement in the United States in 1975, after the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act was extended to cover personal care products. Same story: consumer advocacy, evidence that what goes on skin matters, eventual standardization.

Both categories fought the same battle. Both now have something consumers can read.

Where textiles are

Check the tag on your sheets.

Fiber content. Country of origin. A washing symbol or two.

That's it. No dye disclosure. No finishing chemicals. No processing aids. No way to know, from the label alone, what you're actually sleeping in.

This isn't a regulatory loophole that slipped through unnoticed. It's a gap that has simply never been closed. Certifications like GOTS and OEKO-TEX exist and do real work restricting certain chemical classes, verifying organic fiber content, auditing supply chains. But they weren't designed to give consumers plain-language ingredient disclosure the way a food label does. They confirm that standards were met. They don't tell you what was used.

Peter Gorse, an industrial designer and textile researcher at Cranfield University in the UK, noticed this gap and tried to visualize what closing it might look like. During the COVID pandemic, he developed what he called the Garment Facts label, a direct adaptation of the Nutrition Facts format applied to clothing, including metrics like the weight of synthetic chemicals per 100g of fiber, supply chain distance, and energy sources used in manufacturing. The concept circulated widely online, was covered by Vogue Business, and was nominated for the Global Change Awards for 2025. It resonated not because it was technically sophisticated, but because the format was immediately familiar.

The reaction was telling. Consumers didn't need to be explained the concept of ingredient disclosure. They already lived with it in every other product category. The surprise was that textiles didn't already have it.

What we built — and why

AIZOME consulted with Peter Gorse how to use his framework as the starting point for something more specific: a label designed not just to describe environmental impact, but to answer the question our customers actually ask.

What is touching my skin? And can I trust what you're telling me about it?

The result is the Textile Health Facts label, a voluntary transparency framework modeled directly on the FDA Nutrition Facts panel. Here is what it discloses:

The label also connects to Seed-to-Sheet™, AIZOME's full supply chain traceability framework from cotton origin in Söke Valley, Turkey, to plant dye production in Lucknow, India, to processing and manufacturing in Gaomi, China, to certification and verification in Zurich, Switzerland.

The work was later reviewed by Alden Wicker, author of To Dye For, whose writing helped bring textile chemistry and human exposure into mainstream discussion.

Why this matters more than a logo

There's a meaningful difference between a brand claiming something and a label disclosing something.

That's what the Nutrition Facts panel did for food. Not just informing, it changed the terms of the conversation between brands and consumers. Sodium levels dropped across the industry, not because companies suddenly cared, but because shoppers could see the number.

Textile Health Facts is a voluntary framework. No regulation requires it. AIZOME built it because our founders come from healthcare manufacturing, environments where traceability is not a feature but a requirement and because what touches your skin for eight or more hours every night seemed worth holding to the same standard of transparency.

The label won't change the textile industry on its own. But it's one answer to a question that has gone unasked for too long.