What a great article, I haven’t encountered term textile neocolonialism yet, but it does seem fitting for this behaviour. The method they used to track the clothes was interesting:

* We sewed AirTags into each of the 15 garments, hiding them in folds and pockets so that they weren’t visible at first glance. These devices allowed us to geolocate the pants, shirts and jackets thanks to a signal they emitted every time they got close to a phone. There was just one problem: the device would beep when this happened, revealing its presence. A technician from Greenpeace made our job easier by removing their capacity to beep and just like that, the AirTags became our silent allies*

Is this a known trick, can you just make all AirTags silent?