Benefits for your wallet as well as our planet
Love Island’s move to dress contestants in second-hand clothes may have given pre-loved fashion a new level of exposure, writes Fiona Evans.
The decision by the architects of Love Island to dress islanders in pre-loved items this season has thrown the spotlight on how we shop for clothes.
Announcing a new partnership with the online marketplace, eBay UK, earlier this year, the reality TV show also revealed that for the first time ever, the new villa would feature a shared wardrobe.
The collaboration comes after fresh research from eBay found that UK shoppers are becoming increasingly conscious of fast fashion.
A fifth of Brits admit that they buy more second-hand fashion compared to two years ago and reveal on average, that 16 percent of their wardrobes are made up of pre-loved clothes.
Many of us are guilty of allowing unworn clothes to fester - stuffed under the bed or at the back of a wardrobe.
Those discarded togs that seemed like such a great bargain at the time, now languishing in the space where garments go to die.
In the UK, more than 60 percent of householders have reported that they have unwanted clothes stored in their homes.
According to Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, the average person spends an average of £43.88 on clothes every month - that’s £526.50 per year.
The advent of fast fashion has brought its own collection of environmental woes, from the production process through to disposal.
According to Oxfam, 13 million items of clothing go to UK landfill every week.
Looking towards a more sustainable way of dressing could save you a fortune, as well as softening the environmental impact.
According to sustainable circular fashion brand, Rapanui, using your clothes for their total lifespan could save you thousands of pounds.
Using a calculation involving the number of fashion items you need during your adult life, the total saving is almost £27,000, not taking into account personal lifestyle impacts such as weight change, fluctuations in the cost of clothing over time and washing and care of clothing.
A capsule wardrobe is a minimalist approach to building a small collection of fashion items that can be used to create several different outfits with carefully selected pieces that will forever stay in style.
With an average of £526.50 spent per year on clothes, this multiplied by the current average length of adult life (63.2 years) is a whopping £33,274.80 spent on clothes during our lifetime, when according to Rapanui’s maths, we only need
£6,309.20 worth of clothes if we used them for their lifespan.
If we kept to this sustainable capsule wardrobe of 149 items, we could save a staggering £26,965.60.
The £33,274.80 spent on clothes during our lifetime equates to a total of 786 pieces of clothing, of which 637 pieces aren’t needed.
So what can we do to make sure our clothes can live out their lifespan?
“Always follow the wash care label on the individual pieces of clothing to make sure that you’re not causing any damage or shrinking items, making them unwearable,” says Rheanna Coleman, supply chain lead at Rapanui.
“Aside from specific steps we’d recommend a cool wash at 30 and hang drying products to ensure longevity and reduce the environmental impact of the washing process.”
Wearing the clothes you already have is the ideal but if you do need to replace wornout items, look out for brands that operate with a circular production process.
“In a circular process products are designed from the start to be remade,” said Mart DrakeKnight, cofounder of sustainable merch platform Teemill.
“That means materials flow back to the maker and the new product is made from the old product.
“It is different from recycling, or upcycling, where the material is turned into something different before it is then thrown away. Circular fashion is infinite because by design the material flows in a loop.
“Circularity means designing products that are made to be remade, creating an option for fashion to be more sustainable for the planet than ever before.”
To find out more about the importance of circular fashion, visit rapanuiclothing.com.