The Albany Gazette - SMX Is Building a Verifiable Identity Layer for Fashion, From Cotton Fields to Luxury Resale

NEW YORK CITY, NY / ACCESS Newswire / October 5, 2026 / Fashion has always been built on identity. A label identifies the designer. A tag identifies the size and composition. A certificate may identify where a material came from or how it was produced.

SMX (Security Matters) PLC (NASDAQ:SMX) is working at a different level: giving the material itself an identity.

Across cotton, recycled fibers, denim, finished textiles and luxury goods, SMX has spent the past year expanding the application of its molecular marking and digital traceability technology throughout the fashion supply chain. The work addresses a basic challenge confronting the industry: how to maintain verifiable information about a material after it leaves its original source and moves through processing, manufacturing, sale, resale and recycling.

SMX embeds invisible molecular markers directly into materials. Those markers can be detected later and connected to secure digital records through the company's Digital Material Passport Platform, allowing information including origin, composition, recycled content, chain of custody and authenticity to remain associated with the physical material.

For fashion, that creates the potential for continuity from fiber to finished product and beyond.

Starting With Cotton

In December 2025, SMX announced results from an industrial cotton pilot that demonstrated its markers could remain detectable through mechanical recycling, fiber mixing, carding, yarn spinning, fabric formation and the finished textile.

The pilot demonstrated a method for verifying both material origin and recycled cotton content after the cotton had undergone multiple stages of industrial transformation.

SMX subsequently expanded those cotton-based capabilities into denim and recycled-denim applications in January 2026. Because denim can incorporate virgin fibers, recycled fibers and blended materials while undergoing extensive processing, maintaining information about what is actually contained in finished fabric can be difficult.

Material-level identity provides a way for that information to remain connected to the fiber as it moves through the manufacturing process.

SMX also announced an initiative with TruCotton® in January focused on full-chain verification of U.S.-grown cotton. The initiative is evaluating the application of SMX molecular identity to cotton while maintaining detectability through handling, transformation and manufacturing and linking the physical cotton to digital records for origin verification and product authentication.

The objective is straightforward: allow cotton marketed as originating in the United States to carry evidence of that origin beyond the farm gate and through the supply chain.

Following the Fiber Through Manufacturing

SMX's work with the Centre Européen des Textiles Innovants (CETI) extends the same concept across textile and fiber manufacturing.

In April, SMX and CETI reported work involving physical-digital traceability in fibers and nonwoven materials. CETI has conducted independent validation and post-processing detection designed to determine whether molecular identity remains detectable after industrial transformation.

The system combines molecular markers embedded in materials, reader technology used to detect those markers and a secure digital platform connecting the physical identity with associated data.

That architecture addresses an important issue for textile traceability: digital information is most useful when there is a reliable connection between the digital record and the physical material it describes.

Connecting Fashion to a Digital Material Passport

In May, SMX launched its Digital Material Passport Platform, extending the physical identity embedded in materials into a digital environment.

The platform is designed to connect physical materials and products with records covering origin, composition, chain of custody, recycled content, authentication and lifecycle movement.

For fashion, the potential applications extend across manufacturing, retail, resale, repair and recycling.

A cotton fiber can begin with information about its origin. A recycled fiber can carry information about its recycled content. A finished textile can remain connected to information accumulated during manufacturing. And when a garment or accessory eventually enters a secondary market or recycling stream, its underlying material identity can still be detected.

Instead of creating a new record each time a product changes hands, persistent identity is designed to allow information to travel with the material.

From Textiles to Luxury Authentication

The same technology also has applications at the other end of fashion: luxury goods.

SMX has expanded its material-authentication approach to materials used across luxury products, including textiles, leather and precious metals.

Luxury authentication has traditionally relied on external indicators such as labels, serial numbers, receipts, certificates, packaging, databases and expert inspection. SMX's approach adds another layer by placing an invisible identity within the material itself.

That distinction becomes particularly relevant once a luxury product leaves its original retail environment.

Handbags, garments, watches, jewelry and other luxury goods increasingly move through resale marketplaces, repair networks, insurers, collectors and multiple owners. Documentation can become separated from an item over time. A material-level identifier provides another means of connecting the physical product to information associated with its origin and history.

SMX's Digital Material Passport can connect that molecular identity with a digital record, creating a physical-to-digital link that can remain associated with the product through subsequent transactions.

Identity Beyond the First Sale

The same infrastructure can continue to have a role when fashion products reach the end of their initial useful life.

Textiles can be sorted, recovered, mechanically recycled and returned to manufacturing. Cotton can become recycled cotton. Denim can become feedstock for another textile. Unsold inventory and manufacturing offcuts can potentially become inputs rather than waste.

But recycling creates another verification problem: once materials are shredded, blended or reprocessed, determining their origin and composition becomes increasingly difficult.

SMX's work in cotton demonstrated that its molecular markers can remain detectable through recycling and subsequent manufacturing stages. That creates a mechanism for connecting recycled material with information about what it was before and what it becomes next.

The result is an identity system designed not simply for the first product, but for the material across multiple potential lives.

From U.S.-grown cotton to recycled denim, from industrial textile production to luxury authentication, SMX is applying the same underlying architecture across fashion: embed identity in the physical material, connect that identity to a digital record, and preserve the connection as the material moves.

For an industry built around labels, SMX is putting the identifier somewhere more fundamental.

Inside the material itself.

ABOUT SMX (SECURITY MATTERS) PLC

SMX (Security Matters) PLC (NASDAQ:SMX) develops molecular traceability and material authentication technologies designed to strengthen supply-chain transparency and integrity across global industries. Its platform embeds invisible molecular markers directly into physical materials, including solids, liquids and gases, allowing them to carry a persistent identity that can be detected and verified throughout their lifecycle.

Contact: Billy White / [email protected]

SOURCE: SMX (Security Matters) Public Limited

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(D.Sanchez--TAG)