We definitely don't need to change wardrobes entirely 2x per year, at great cost in externalities such as pollution from all the shipping. I'm sure you understood that this is the point.
You don't need any company to sell you yet another wardrobe full of clothes because the point is to consume less clothes, not more. take care of and appreciate your existing wardrobe. Switching style type of behavior is at the root of this expanded carbon footprint. Remember 85% of production ends up in the dump in a year. Unfathomable. Honestly the level of consumption right now is impossible given anything resembling normal consumption. It has little to do with cheap fashion or uniforms and everything with some people wanting to shop every weekend. Who has time for that anyways? If you still want to dress like Jobs then buy your black turtleneck wool sweater, but not five of them in one go. Don't throw anything away for it, either. After a while your bulging wardrobe will make you space conscious enough to very carefully consider any subsequent purchase.
> People owned fewer pieces of clothing overall, but everyone could still afford to be clothed.
Note that owning fewer pieces of clothing overall doesn't significantly affect your yearly cost of clothing, it just affects your initial cost to fill out your wardrobe.
What drives up yearly costs is that most new low-cost clothing doesn't last for many wears - it either wears out quickly due to being of relatively low quality, or is eventually donated/thrown out after languishing in a closet for years.
Your point was that, now, "it is socially unacceptable to wear the same thing for days in a row, even if you change your undergarments", ergo, society has upgraded (its expectations of acceptable wear), i.e., moved the "goal posts". That means, we solved the old problem of not putting people in rags, and have a new problem, of constantly new outfits. Absolute gain: clothing problem "solved", replaced with new "wardrobe problem". This is what progress looks like. We always find new, harder, problems. The fact that there is a problem distracts people from admitting we have solved some.
You're moving the goal posts in your rebuttal by adding environmental concerns.
Absolute poverty has been dropping dramatically as a fraction of the growing world population. Look at the trends, not the snapshot. Show some fricking gratitude for the world of plenty in which humanity exists.
> The depreciation issue is offset by the fact that you could get more usage out of a single outfit before it goes out of fashion if it was shared.
Remote sharing of clothes imposes latent constraints; being available "on demand" is a key part of the value. And the things for which not having the clothes immediately on-hand is most acceptable are the things for which personal tailoring/alterations are most likely to be desired.
When it comes to "fast fashion" that's all anyone can ask of you. The complaints are leveled at those who treat garments as literally disposable, worn just once or twice then tossed to make room for a new thing.
It's an entire ethos that fashion requires constant change. It's no longer seasonal, but weekly.
The depreciation issue is offset by the fact that you could get more usage out of a single outfit before it goes out of fashion if it was shared. People aren't wearing the same thing every day. Clothes sit unused in closets for weeks at a time while they are still in fashion.
I think that you're onto something there. I need to wear a suit three times a year. Most of my friends are the same way. We all have a suit in our respective closets, but it's just taking up space for most of the year. Now, we're different enough sizes that we couldn't all just share one suit, but, if you had a few thousand clients, you could certainly send a fitting suit to the fellow who needs it, when he needs it.
There's also a huge boon to be found in having branches in both hemispheres. Instead of spending December paying the land tax on a warehouse full of shorts, just rent them out in Australia. Then, come July, send out the shorts in the US and the sweaters down under.
I'm not sure about the environmental impact. On the one hand, you have quite a bit of carbon footprint from shipping the clothes all around. On the other hand, the company would have a strong economic incentive to maintain the clothes. I'm betting a lot of clothes that are currently thrown away could be saved with proper cleaning and sewing skills. I'm now imagining reading the company's blog having less posts on Redis integration and far more on their new way to remove grass stains.
Honestly, given the sizing issues, this probably makes more sense for men's clothes, but that avoids competition with 99dresses.
Dammit. I'm going to be thinking about this all night.
children also wear out clothing quicker than adults in my experience, this balances that transition from size to size a bit -- but are you proposing that one throws out their wardrobe when they change locations?
That seems incredibly wasteful to me, especially since clothing doesn't really take much packing room unless your wardrobe is huge or fragile -- and if you have a huge & fragile wardrobe then we get back down to the idea that one should live a bit more sparingly to reduce the need for recycling in the first place.
No, it isn't. Buy a few pieces of clothing that you like, wear them until the threads are paper thin, or it becomes unwearable. Its frugal, it saves money, and its good for the environment.
But, again, it's not a choice between no fashion and ultra fast fashion (sell 10% of stock and throw away the rest). We can make clothes that are more durable, more customizable, we can have regulate how fast should fast fashion be, and, of course, regulate how waste should be treated.
Btw, I bet if you throw all that waste in a chemical reactor with a hydrogen source you can revert it back to hydrocarbons. I'm not a chemical engineer and I might be wrong, of course.
Fashion often returns, and this doesn't apply only to apparel. Thanks for a history lesson, but I never claimed this is a wrong approach, just not the only reasonable one.
Fashion often returns, and this doesn't apply only to apparel. Thanks for a history lesson, but I never claimed this is a wrong approach, just not the only reasonable one.
That’s a choice of the retailer or manufacturer though. Whether it is sustainable is their problem. My wife buys 20 outfits and returns 19 of them. If the clothing manufacturer is really throwing them away then they are very wasteful.
Why is it necessary to buy clothes every 2 weeks and then throw them away after wearing them once?
Certain externalities (e.g. environmental destruction) are not priced into these products - so it's about time that these fast fashion companies are being stopped from exploiting loopholes.
Maybe this will encourage folks to use 2nd hand markets more, like Vinted or Deepop etc.
Your conclusion doesn't follow. People can be against fast fashions urge for people to constantly be cycling out their wardrobes with short-lived clothing while still supporting everything have what they need. I think that is the main argument - use what we need and no more, or at least reduce waste.
You'd never have to change clothes again. Wear one of these, and you can have your work uniform, change to your football team, go on failed dates, and so on. Fast fashion is not great for the planet, and you don't have to use space in your house for a bunch of clothes that are mostly not being worn.
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