The fashion industry is heading into a new era where knowing your product is just as important as designing it. ESPR, DPPs, eco-scores… they may feel like big abstract concepts, but at the end of the day, they all rely on the same thing: clear, structured product data. And the good news is that once you understand where that data sits - style, BOM, or supplier - the whole picture becomes much easier to navigate.
It’s no secret that the amount of data we’re being asked to share keeps growing. Key accounts want it, legislation demands it, and soon we’ll be sending it straight to consumers through digital product passports. And while everyone is talking about the DPP right now, it’s only the surface. To understand what the DPP will actually become, we need to look at the data behind it.
We’re still waiting for the specific textile rules, but we already know enough from the ESPR workplan and the CIRPASS framework to start preparing. CIRPASS outlines fifteen focus areas, and once you translate them into fashion language, it becomes much clearer what data you actually need and where it belongs. That’s what we’ve done at Delogue: breaking it down into three levels that match how teams already work - style, BOM, and supplier. It gives a simple overview of what needs to be collected, how detailed it should be, and where it fits into the workflow. Suddenly compliance feels less overwhelming and much more like structured day-to-day work.
And while ESPR is on its way, France’s Eco-Score is already here. It’s the clearest preview of the kind of information needed for environmental impact calculations. Even if it’s not mandatory for everyone yet, it’s worth looking at now.
Some of the most important ESPR data points start right at style creation, the moment your collection starts to take shape. When we translate the CIRPASS focus areas into everyday fashion language, this level includes things like designing for repair, care instructions, new design principles, SKUs and barcodes, and eco-labels or certifications.
This is where the product’s whole “data identity” begins. Your material choices influence how easy the garment will be to care for, repair, or recycle later. Care instructions suddenly become more than wash symbols, they’re part of how you communicate durability and circularity. And your design principles matter too: whether you’re working with mono-materials, choosing trims carefully, or building your own guidelines for circular design. Certifications and eco-labels fit naturally here as well, since they’re tied to what the garment is made of, not just how it’s produced. And of course, every style gets its SKU, the tiny but crucial datapoint that ties everything together.
Style-level data is what shapes the customer experience later on. It decides how the product will be used, cared for, repaired, resold, or recycled. It’s the beginning of the digital product passport journey and the place where clear, structured data makes everything else downstream so much easier.
Now let’s move into the heart of it all: the Bill of Materials. If the style-level data is the story, the BOM is the recipe, and without the recipe, there’s nothing to calculate. This is where the most critical ESPR datapoints sit. In Delogue-language, that includes things like recycled content, extra components, detailed compositions, fiber breakdowns, weights, widths, usage, and even the specifics of your packaging.
And yes, this is where things can get tricky. A BOM stretches across suppliers, sub-suppliers, and sometimes even whole other tiers you don’t see every day. Which means getting it right depends heavily on solid supply chain management and good collaboration. But the payoff is worth it: the more complete and detailed your BOM is, the cleaner and more accurate your environmental impact calculations will be. Think of it like building a garment from scratch. You wouldn’t skip noting the zipper, the lining, the thread, the interfacing, or the polybag it arrives in, and the DPP works the same way. Every component counts. Every gram, every composition, every usage detail helps create a precise picture of what your product truly is.
In other words, this is the layer where transparency becomes tangible. When the BOM is strong, everything else becomes far easier, from impact calculations to compliance to customer communication.
And then we reach the part of the data puzzle that no brand can fill in alone: the supplier layer. This is where the information sits that you simply can’t guess, estimate, or dig out of old emails, because it lives with the people actually making your components.
While the BOM tells you what goes into your product, your supplier data tells you who made those parts, where they were produced, and how they were verified. It’s the details behind the details: the country of origin, the component manufacturer, their certifications, their audits, and the documentation that proves everything is legit. And this is truly where supply chain management shows its importance, because many of these datapoints sit across different tiers. Your fabric supplier may know the spinner, but not the farmer. So getting this right is really about building relationships and creating a setup where information can actually move back upstream.
In other words: the BOM tells you the recipe, but your suppliers tell you the origin story. And you need both if you want your product data to stand strong all the way from design sketches to DPP.
Every month, we host a webinar, often in collaboration with our IT solution partners and leading industry brands. The topics vary, but one thing remains the same: we aim to make the fashion industry’s challenges more manageable and share our take on practical, hands-on solutions.
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