OEKO-TEX Brand Guidelines: The 1992 Textile Label and Its Square-and-Circle Rebrand

A label built by testing laboratories.

OEKO-TEX was not started by a clothing brand or a campaign group. It was started by laboratories. English and German Wikipedia say the association was founded in March 1992 by the Austrian Textile Research Institute, now OETI, and the German Hohenstein Institute, and OEKO-TEX’s own history page names the same two founders. Hohenstein dated from 1946, when Otto Mecheels set it up.

The label itself has a slightly longer past. English Wikipedia, citing Melliand Textilberichte, says STANDARD 100 grew out of an earlier label developed by OETI in 1989. OEKO-TEX says it first presented STANDARD 100 at the Interstoff trade fair in April 1992 as a label for textiles tested for harmful substances.

The Swiss institute Testex joined next. OEKO-TEX’s history page dates to 1993 the first statute of the International Association for Research and Testing in the Field of Textile Ecology, signed by the three institute directors, Raimar Freitag of Testex, Wilhelm Herzog of the Austrian institute and Jürgen Mecheels of Hohenstein. Further institutes in Europe and Asia followed, and the word “Leather” later entered the association’s full name.

In 1995 the group opened its first Asian contact office through a Testex subsidiary and launched Standard 1000 for production sites, which added environmental and social questions to the product tests. OEKO-TEX says it passed 10,000 valid STANDARD 100 certificates within 12 months for the first time in November 2009, the 10,000th going to Anvil Knitwear of the USA for its dyed and printed cotton T-shirts.

The scheme also spoke directly to shoppers. A “Feel good with OEKO-TEX” campaign from 2001 used illustrated animals, and the 20th anniversary in 2012 brought a mascot called Texolotl. German Wikipedia reports surveys that put prompted awareness of the label at more than 46 percent in Germany in 2006 and at an average of 42 percent across 13 countries in 2012.

One mark, several meanings.

OEKO-TEX now describes a modular set of standards rather than one label. STANDARD 100 tests textiles for harmful substances, sorted into four product classes running from items for babies to furnishing materials such as curtains. LEATHER STANDARD, which English Wikipedia dates to 2017, applies the same logic to leather. STeP replaced Standard 1000 in 2013 and assesses production sites. MADE IN GREEN, launched in 2015, combines product testing with production checks, and its label can be traced by product ID or QR code.

Others followed. ECO PASSPORT covers chemicals used in textile production, RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS arrived in 2022 for due diligence in management systems, and ORGANIC COTTON came in 2023, the same year OEKO-TEX says it became an ISEAL Community Member. The 2025/26 annual report counts 60,495 certificates and labels, including 36,592 for STANDARD 100 and 20,427 for MADE IN GREEN. In August 2026 the company said about 40,000 manufacturers, brands and traders in more than 100 countries work with it.

Testing is done by a network. Asparagus Magazine reported in July 2025 that 17 institutes in Europe and Japan test the samples, using a “worst-case” method that picks the darkest dye and the heaviest finish in a range, and that certified products are re-tested each year. It also reported that the scheme is funded by the fees of certified companies and said that this raises a risk common to eco-logos: pressure to relax criteria.

The most persistent criticism concerns what the name suggests. Asparagus wrote that STANDARD 100 is largely concerned with the end product and does not check where raw materials were grown or processed, so it “might be a good marker of protecting human health” without being a mark of sustainability. Utopia, in an article from December 2018 updated in 2025, said the word “Oeko” can mislead shoppers into assuming ecological production, and reported Greenpeace’s complaint that the standard tests residues rather than production conditions. German Wikipedia adds the counter-argument that the label says plainly what it certifies: “tested for harmful substances.”

In January 2014, after Greenpeace published “A little story about the monsters in your closet” on substances found in children’s clothing, Innovation in Textiles reported the association’s reply: that clothing meeting STANDARD 100 posed no health risk to consumers, and that the standard covered all the parameters Greenpeace had tested. German Wikipedia says the consumer group Verbraucher Initiative gave the labels its second-best rating, with weak separation between makers and certifiers as its main objection.

Marks, numbers and rules.

A certification mark does a different job from a company logo. It does not sell one maker’s goods; it sits on other companies’ packs, often in a corner, and asks shoppers to trust a set of rules they will rarely read. That makes these schemes unusual design subjects. The visible part is tiny, while the system behind it fills manuals, licence contracts and audit reports.

The manuals are often public, and they are unusually exact. The FAIRTRADE Mark Guidelines set a clear space, a size guide from posters down to labels and hang tags, and a minimum printed width. The Rainforest Alliance’s seal guidelines set a minimum size so that a QR code still scans, and forbid printing the seal across a fold. Fairtrade gives legibility as its reason and the Rainforest Alliance gives scanning, and in both cases the same mark has to work on a large pack, a label or a hang tag, printed by many different companies.

Around the mark sit smaller pieces of evidence. Schemes may ask for a claim beside the mark, a licence or producer number on the pack, or a web address that leads back to the standard. Fairtrade’s guidelines, for example, call for a producer FLO ID or a national reference code in some cases. Behind them sit audits and certificates: the Rainforest Alliance says only those who meet a standard after an audit may display its seal.

This group of guides looks at how these schemes present themselves: who founded them, who owns the mark, what each scheme says it certifies, and what its logo rules ask of the brands that use it. Where critics have challenged a scheme, the guide says so, and what the mark means is given in the scheme’s own terms.

A square, a circle and a rule book.

The identity has been rebuilt twice in a decade. In May 2016, in a release carried by Textile World, the association announced a new brand architecture that put an umbrella logo and the claim “Confidence in Textiles” ahead of its individual products, and textile network reported a new STANDARD 100 label from that autumn. German Wikipedia says that claim replaced the slogan “Textiles Vertrauen” used since the start.

The second change came on 2 November 2022. OEKO-TEX said it had worked with the branding agency Schwitzke ID on a logo “based on a geometric square and an organic circle,” meant to reflect a scientific approach and the nature it aims to protect, with a stylised form recalling leaves, drops or textile loops beside the wordmark. The palette was cut to a new OEKO-TEX Green with black and white, with a related set of colours for product communication, and product logos were placed below the umbrella brand. Textile Technology reported the change that month. Older labels could run until the end of 2024, a transition OEKO-TEX said was chosen with sustainability in mind. Its later rebrand site also speaks of warm brand colours and lively imagery.

The rules are explicit. OEKO-TEX’s Labelling Guide, which it calls a binding part of the standards, separates logos from labels. The umbrella logo and product logos are for off-product use only and must never appear on tags, hangtags or packaging; labels are what go on goods, and every label needs a QR code or a label or certificate number. Advertising with a product logo requires the physical product to carry its valid label, with the number and the institute. Claims outside the pre-approved wording need sign-off, which OEKO-TEX says takes about a week, and misuse may lead to corrective measures or certificate withdrawal. The 2025/26 annual report says the umbrella logo is registered as a certification mark in most jurisdictions.

The latest change is legal rather than visual. On 19 August 2026, ahead of EU rules on sustainability labels taking effect that September, OEKO-TEX announced a reorganisation that converted its GmbH into OEKO-TEX AG in Zurich, with a board as the top body, an independence statute and an anonymous reporting system. The company says the aim is a clear separation of standard setting from conformity assessment. Its independence statute names the shareholders as Testex and Hohenstein Laboratories.

For a design guide, OEKO-TEX shows how a certification scheme turns a logo into a system of permissions, in which the number on the label matters as much as the shape above it. Compare bluesign, another textile scheme, and Leaping Bunny, a mark that The Guardian listed alongside it in a 2008 guide to ethical labels. For this guide we use a deep green, near-black, undyed cotton and a warm clay with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep OEKO-TEX’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.