Lindex and BASF bring textile-to-textile recycled polyamide to lingerie

Lindex is putting BASF’s loopamid into lingerie, and that is exactly the right place to test whether textile-to-textile nylon can survive fashion’s most exacting category. The first selected styles are slated for the beginning of 2027, a timeline that looks less like a victory lap and more like a stress test for a material that has to feel good against skin, hold its shape, and keep performing after repeated wear and wash.

BASF says loopamid is recycled polyamide 6 made entirely from textile waste, including both post-industrial and post-consumer feedstock. The bigger technical promise is what it can handle: the company says the process can take on hard-to-recycle polyamide streams, including blended textiles with elastane, while maintaining quality comparable to virgin polyamide 6 and allowing multiple recycling cycles. That matters in lingerie, where stretch and recovery are nonnegotiable and where a recycled yarn that pills, loses snap, or feels off on the body would fail fast.

The material is not still stuck in a lab. BASF started its first commercial loopamid plant in Shanghai in March 2025, with an annual capacity of 500 metric tons, and says the plant and products are certified to the Global Recycled Standard. That gives the partnership a different feel from the usual sustainability mood board: there is an industrial footprint, a supply chain, and an actual production line behind the pitch.

For Lindex, the move fits a longer push. The company says the collaboration builds on years of work on recycled materials and supports its goal of using 100 percent recycled or sustainably sourced materials across its assortment by the end of 2026. In its sustainability reporting, Lindex said it reached 78 percent sustainably sourced materials by the end of 2023, which makes lingerie a logical next frontier rather than a symbolic one. The brand has already signed a long-term agreement with Infinited Fiber Company for fibre made from 100 percent post-consumer textile waste, so loopamid is part of a wider circularity stack, not a one-off stunt.

That is why the 2027 launch reads as more than a distant pilot, even if it is still early. BASF and Inditex already put loopamid on the map in January 2024, when Zara introduced a jacket made entirely from the material and BASF positioned it as the first circular nylon apparel solution based on textile waste. Bringing it into lingerie now raises the bar. If loopamid can make it there, in pieces that live or die on handfeel and fit, it stops being a headline material and starts looking like supply-chain progress.