Ortadoğu'daki Savaş Kıyafetleri Daha Pahalı Hale Getiriyor

War In the Middle East is Making Clothes More Expensive

Mumbi Gitau and Arun Devnath

Sat, September 12, 2026 at 12:00 PM GMT+3 6 min read

(Bloomberg) -- Lunch break is over at Plummy Fashions on the outskirts of Dhaka, and the production line hums back to life. Workers return to their stations, inspecting seams and attaching tags to stacks of women's black T-shirts destined for Zara stores across Europe.

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A few steps away, another production hall is silent. Dozens of Juki sewing machines sit idle. Empty chairs line rows of white worktables. Nothing has moved here for three months.

"One of our buyers put polyester orders on hold, hoping prices would come down," Managing Director Fazlul Hoque said when Bloomberg visited the factory in June.

The dormant factory floor offers a glimpse into how the Iran war is reshaping the global apparel supply chain. Not only are energy and freight costs rising — which can add up quickly as garment production typically involves multiple countries and dozens of steps — the prices of raw materials are, too. The cost of polyester, which is derived from fossil fuels, has surged, and cotton has spiked amid supply concerns, fertilizer shortages and worries that a powerful El Niño could affect harvests later this year. To make the math work, manufacturers are rethinking production processes and retailers are weighing price hikes against thinner margins.

Consumers will likely begin feeling the impact in autumn. Because brands usually place orders as far as a year in advance, retailers warn that higher costs could really hit store shelves next spring and summer. That could further discourage shoppers already struggling with rising grocery and energy bills from opening their wallets, and put retailers at risk of wider losses.

For many in the apparel sector, the Iran war is simply the latest crisis to navigate. On top of the pandemic, global supply chain entanglements and US tariffs, "it's been a rollercoaster for a couple of years," said Jakob Dworsky, co-founder of Swedish minimalist clothing brand ASKET. "If you go all the way back to COVID, it feels like nothing has been really stable. We've had to adapt."

Before the conflict, polyester traded at roughly half the price of cotton. Then, surging crude markets drove prices in China of the synthetic fabric to a near four-year peak. Plummy, which supplies Inditex brands including Zara and Pull&Bear, saw polyester yarn prices jump by as much as a quarter within weeks of the war starting. Cotton prices, in turn, surged to a two-year high as buyers hunted for alternatives and supplies tightened. With this season's El Niño further threatening harvests, cotton futures recently hit their highest levels since March 2024.

"What's unusual in the current environment is that both major fibers are facing cost pressure at the same time," said Julian Hügl, a partner at McKinsey & Co. "That removes the usual ability for brands to substitute between fibers."

Kettelhack, a German fabric maker whose products largely use a blend of polyester and cotton, has seen its costs rise by between 5% and 8%, sales manager Jens Kampling said in an interview in Bremen.

The sharp price swings aren't only limited to fibers. "There's not a single input cost that hasn't gone up, whether it's polyester yarns, cotton yarns, dyes, chemicals, oil or gas," Mohit Jain, executive vice chairman of Indian textile producer Indo Count Industries said in an earnings call.

That's placing much of the burden on manufacturers.

Raw materials account for roughly 60% of the cost of a basic T-shirt, according to Hoque, the managing director at Plummy, while factory margins typically average just 2% to 3%. With demand still weak, the company is absorbing the extra expenses rather than passing them on.

"We have absolutely no leverage," Hoque said. "We don't grow cotton, we don't manufacture polyester chips, and petroleum isn't our product."

In Asia, manufacturing hubs are beginning to show signs of these strains. India, one of the world's largest apparel sourcing centers, accounts for about 4% of the global textile and clothing trade. Yet its ready-made garment exports fell 4.5% in July from a year earlier, extending a run of declines that left shipments down 10.5% in the first four months of the fiscal year. Bangladesh exports roughly $800 million in garments annually to the Middle East — and for now, that trade is almost entirely suspended.

While manufacturers have little choice but to deal with rising costs across the supply chain, brands have more options. They can squeeze suppliers on pricing, alternate products, or just raise their own prices.

Faced with elevated fabric and yarn costs, ASKET, the Swedish brand, opted to do the latter. "If we'd gone the other route to keep prices the same, we would've had to source somewhere else or degrade our quality," Dworsky said. "As an independent brand operating with slim margins, we can't simply absorb sustained cost increases."

Some manufacturers and consultants say that unless pressures ease, brands may soon be forced to explore other options, such as reducing fabric weights, simplifying designs, changing material blends or removing product features to offset higher production costs.

Even so, Hügl estimates price increases in basic apparel categories could eventually reach 10% to 20%, although it could take up to a year to see the full impact.

Inditex, the owner of Zara, said disruptions in the Middle East have pushed up its transport and input costs, with the impact expected to continue weighing on gross margins in the second half of the year. To blunt disruptions from the war, the company said it has adapted its transportation methods and sourcing, and leaned into a supply network spread across dozens of countries.

"It's a really competitive environment out there," said Jon Devine, chief economist at Cotton Incorporated. "So every cent matters. The consumer may not even notice a change in cotton prices, but retailers looking at their margins will because every cent can be helpful or hurtful to them."

For many of those retailers, the main concern is shoppers. They fear that climbing costs of living could leave customers with less money for discretionary spending. "The textile value chain depends very much on the good feeling of the consumer and how much cash they have available," said Fritz Grobien, president of the Bremen Cotton Exchange, an association of producers, processors and traders.

Manufacturers are closely watching commodity markets, freight routes and consumer spending patterns for signs of weakening demand. At Plummy, Hoque has already seen revenue fall, and doesn't expect things to change until the war winds down and prices start normalizing.

During tough economic times, he said, it's easy for consumers "to just skip buying a shirt and wear what they already have."

That leaves companies like his trapped between rising costs and buyers unwilling to pay more in a competitive field. The result has been greater pressure on already thin margins.

"Buyers don't care that raw material prices have gone up because they have endless options right now," Hoque said. "If I refuse to produce at a loss, someone else will step in."

--With assistance from Clara Hernanz Lizarraga and Maddie Parker.

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