NWO KIC Research to help Fast-fashion it's behaviour problem

Fast-fashion has a behaviour problem. R³CIRCLE is here to solve it.

60% of Dutch residents say they care about sustainable fashion. Yet Dutch consumers spent €17 billion on clothing in 2022 alone, and wardrobes are full of garments that never get worn. That gap between intention and behaviour is precisely what R³CIRCLE was built to close.

R³CIRCLE, Refuse, Reuse, Rethink: multifaceted Consumer InteRvention strategies towards a CircuLar textile Economy. It is a six-year, €2.266.659 research programme funded by NWO (the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research). It brings together ten universities and universities of applied sciences, over 30 societal partners from retail, sport, finance, and government, and one piece of technology that threads through every single work package: the COSH! Digital Wardrobe.

What is R³CIRCLE actually researching?

The project targets three consumer behaviours with the highest environmental potential in the Dutch textile sector, organised around the circular R‑ladder:

Refuse: discouraging the purchase of cheap, fossil-fuel-based fast fashion garments, particularly among 15 – 40 year-olds who are environmentally motivated but behaviourally stuck.
Rethink: helping consumers and sports clubs reconsider how they acquire, use, and return synthetic sportswear. With 5.6 million Dutch citizens affiliated with a sports club, the lever here is enormous.
Reuse: helping people rediscover what’s already in their wardrobe. According to the Dutch National Wardrobe Study, around 15% of garments sit unworn (other research speaks of 78%), not because they’re worn out, but because they’ve lost emotional or social relevance.

Each behaviour gets its own Living Lab: a real-world testing environment where interventions are co-designed with consumers, retailers, municipalities, and sport clubs, then rigorously tested, evaluated, and scaled.

Why the COSH! Digital Wardrobe is central to this research

Behavioural research has a measurement problem. Most intervention studies rely on self-reported surveys, people saying what they intend to do, not what they actually do. R³CIRCLE changes that.

The COSH! Digital Wardrobe app is explicitly named in the project proposal as the experience sampling method (ESM) tool: a technique from cognitive psychology that captures behaviour in real time, in the context of daily life. Rather than asking participants “Did you wear something new last week?”, the COSH! technology enables researchers to track actual wardrobe usage, clothing acquisition events, and emotional attachment to garments over time.

This makes COSH!’s role fundamentally different from a communications partner. The Digital Wardrobe is research infrastructure: a validated, safe, data collection environment deployed across all three living labs, WP1 methodology development, and WP6 dissemination campaigns. It gives the consortium the ability to link consumer behaviour directly to environmental impact, in real time, at scale.

The partners making this happen

R³CIRCLE is a genuinely whole-of-society project. The academic consortium spans ten institutions including the University of Amsterdam, Wageningen University & Research, University of Twente, and seven universities of applied sciences. Societal partners range from Rabobank and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure & Water Management to Nike, KNVB, Bol.com, Milieu Centraal, and Zeeman.

COSH! sits within this ecosystem as a societal co-applicant — just like Circle Economy and True Price — meaning the platform’s technology and expertise are integral to the project’s scientific design, not simply its communication.

COSH! Digital Wardrobe as a European Research Technology Supplier

R³CIRCLE is an at-scale pilot project. Not just for circular fashion behaviour, but for COSH! as a research-grade technology provider.

Across Europe, universities, knowledge institutes, and research consortia working on sustainable consumption, circular economy, Digital Product Passports (DPPs), and behavioural science face the same challenge: they need validated digital tools to track real consumer behaviour with fashion and textile products. Most such tools don’t exist yet. COSH!’s Digital Wardrobe — in april 2026 tracking over 22 ton, 60,000 items from over 6,000 brands — is one of the few platforms in the world with both the product data infrastructure and the consumer-facing interface to do this.

This opens a clear opportunity for COSH! to become a supplier of technology and data services in:

EU Horizon Europe research programmes on sustainable fashion, circular economy, and ESPR/DPP compliance
National research councils across Belgium, Germany, France, and the Netherlands are commissioning consumer behaviour studies
University research groups in fashion management, consumer psychology, and sustainability sciences are seeking Experience Sampling Method tools and wardrobe data sets. The difference with other wardrobe studies is that through the Digital Wardrobe app, we eliminate biased questions. In contrast to post-hoc behavioural questions, e.g. how many clothing items did you purchase in the past 6 months, which are prone to bias and error, ESM tracks behaviour in real life through the Digital Wardrobe app.
EU-funded projects on Digital Product Passports that need consumer-facing interfaces to test how transparency or care and repair information changes purchasing behaviour
Smart city and regional transition programmes partnering with fashion districts, textile clusters, or municipality-led circular fashion initiatives

COSH! has already built the credentials: R³CIRCLE joins previous EU collaborations including Reflow, EU DigiCirc BioEconomy, and Social Tides. Niki De Schryver, COSH! CEO, brings 22 years of fashion industry experience to the consortium alongside expertise in ESPR, DPP legislation, and systemic change — a combination that is increasingly rare and increasingly sought after across European research consortia.

Conclusion: Research That Moves Markets

The clothing industry will not change through good intentions alone. It will change when researchers, retailers, policymakers, and consumers work together on interventions that are co-designed, evidence-based, and built to scale.

R³CIRCLE is that kind of project. And COSH!’s participation in it is not a side project. It is a strategic signal about where sustainable fashion technology is going: into the labs, into the legislation, and into the everyday lives of consumers across Europe.

Are you a university, research institute, or European project consortium looking for validated fashion behaviour technology? Reach out to explore how COSH! Digital Wardrobe can support your research design.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the R³CIRCLE research project?

R³CIRCLE is a six-year, €2.266.659 Dutch research programme funded by NWO, studying how behavioural interventions can drive circular textile consumption. It targets three high-impact consumer behaviours: refusing fast fashion, rethinking sportswear, and reusing wardrobe contents through co-designed living labs across the Netherlands.

Q: What role does COSH! play in R³CIRCLE?

COSH! is a societal co-applicant, contributing and receiving budget for running its Digital Wardrobe technology as the primary experience sampling and consumer behaviour monitoring tool across all three living labs. The platform enables real-time, in-context tracking of clothing usage and acquisition. COSH! is thus providing the research consortium with behavioural data that goes far beyond self-reported surveys. Participants to the project will be able to select that their data is shared with the researchers. Not all data is automatically shared.

Q: Can COSH! Digital Wardrobe technology be used in other European research programmes?

Yes. The Digital Wardrobe is an already a validated consumer-facing platform in April 2026. It was initially established by a collaboration between The Acquired and COSH! and has previously received funding in Belgium from VLAIO Circulair Supply Chains in 2024 – 2025; and Flanders Circular covering 2025 ‑2026 ahead of the NWO KIC funding. In May 2026 it’s already tracking over 60,000 products from 6,000 brands in 500 municipalities. It is actively positioned as a technology supplier for EU Horizon Europe projects, university research groups, and national research councils working on sustainable fashion, circular economy transitions, and Digital Product Passport (DPP) implementation.

Q: How does circular fashion behaviour research connect to EU legislation?

The EU’s ESPR regulation and the upcoming mandatory Digital Product Passports (DPPs) for textiles will require brands and retailers to disclose full product sustainability data. Research like R³CIRCLE helps identify how consumers respond to that transparency, which types of information change behaviour, which do not, and how to design disclosure tools that actually drive circular consumption.

Q: Which partners are involved in R³CIRCLE?

The consortium includes ten academic institutions (led by the University of Amsterdam and Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences), and over 30 societal partners including COSH!, Circle Economy, True Price, Rabobank, the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure & Water Management, Nike, KNVB, NOC*NSF, Bol.com, Milieu Centraal, Mumster, and Fibershed NL.

Niki

Founder of COSH!