NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK / ACCESS Newswire / January 21, 2026 / For decades, luxury operated on an unspoken agreement: heritage implied authenticity, and reputation stood in for proof. A label, a logo, a legacy-these were enough to signal quality, origin, and value. That system held when supply chains were shorter, ownership was linear, and products rarely lived beyond their first transaction.

That world no longer exists.

Today's fashion and luxury ecosystem is global, fragmented, and circular. Materials move across borders, change hands multiple times, and re-enter the market through resale, reuse, and recycling. In that environment, trust that cannot be verified becomes fragile. According to findings highlighted in The State of Fashion 2025, excess inventory, stock-outs, and supply-chain volatility are no longer operational anomalies-they are symptoms of a system that lacks durable visibility.

This is the problem SMX PLC is addressing by shifting luxury brands away from reputation-based confidence and toward material-level certainty.

When Trust Becomes a Risk Factor

In fashion, trust is now tested constantly-and by parties who were never part of the original transaction.

Regulators require auditable proof of sourcing and composition. Insurers demand documentation that holds up over time. Resale platforms must authenticate goods long after they've left the brand's control. Each of these checkpoints exposes the same weakness: claims that rely on records, certificates, or brand assurances often detach from the product itself.

The State of Fashion 2025 underscores how inventory imbalances and discounting pressure stem from this opacity. When brands cannot precisely identify what materials they have, where products came from, or how they can be reused or redeployed, decision-making slows and risk compounds.

What once functioned as brand equity begins to behave like exposure.

Why Trust Doesn't Travel Anymore

Reputation does not move cleanly across borders, platforms, or ownership changes.

Luxury goods now circulate through resale marketplaces, cross-border commerce, and secondary ownership cycles where logos matter less than proof. Over time, documentation fragments. Certifications expire. Records live in databases while products move independently.

Even authentic items can lose value simply because verification is difficult. Each transaction requires trust to be rebuilt from scratch, introducing friction, delay, and doubt. Without a persistent link between a product and its history, brands lose control over how credibility is carried forward.

In a market built on longevity, that disconnect is costly.

Why Denim Reveals the Cracks

Seen through this lens, SMX's planned expansion into denim and recycled denim in early 2026 is not a category experiment-it's a stress test.

Denim operates at enormous scale, cutting across price points, geographies, and demographics while still anchoring premium brand identity. Billions of units move annually through global supply chains. Minor inefficiencies multiply quickly. Traceability gaps widen fast.

At the same time, pressure to increase recycled content is rising sharply. Yet recycled denim often loses definitional clarity once fibers are blended, processed, or traded. By the time fabric reaches finished garments, origin and composition frequently rely on estimates rather than verifiable data.

By extending cotton-based material identity into denim, SMX introduces persistence where the category typically loses it. Embedded identity allows denim-virgin or recycled-to carry verifiable information about origin, composition, and transformation across its entire lifecycle, even through complex manufacturing and reuse pathways.

The implications go beyond authentication. Offcuts, unsold inventory, and end-of-life garments can be identified accurately and redeployed intentionally. Materials that once became opaque liabilities gain the ability to re-enter supply chains as auditable inputs. Waste becomes traceable. Inventory becomes classifiable. Circularity becomes measurable.

In a category defined by volume, durability, and cultural relevance, denim exposes whether proof can survive scale.

Making Verification Inherent, Not Interpretive

Addressing excess inventory and volatile demand requires more than better forecasting. It requires evidence that travels with the product itself.

By embedding identity directly into materials, SMX makes verification intrinsic rather than dependent on external records or explanations. Products carry their own proof through manufacturing, distribution, resale, and recycling. Trust shifts from assumption to confirmation.

When identity is anchored at the material level, verification can occur anywhere the product appears-regardless of who owns it or how much time has passed. That continuity reduces friction across resale, insurance, and regulatory environments.

For luxury brands navigating extended product lifecycles and tightening compliance standards, this represents a structural shift. Trust stops being something that erodes over distance and time. It becomes durable, transferable, and defensible.

In an industry where excess stock and supply-chain misalignment have revealed the limits of legacy trust, evidence is no longer optional. It is the new foundation of value.

Contact: Jeremy Murphy/ jeremy@360bespoke.com

SOURCE: SMX (Security Matters) Public Limited