How digitally tracking clothes consumption is taking off online
We have become accustomed to tracking our daily step count, sleep cycles and how much time we spend glued to our phone screens. Now the totting-up trend is coming for our wardrobes, too.
On social media, fashion fans are championing the idea of digitally tracking what they wear every day for the next 12 months to discover how much they wear every piece of clothing they own and in turn slow down consumption and save money.
Some are uploading daily mirror selfies to social media and listing each item they are wearing. Others are carrying out wardrobe inventories, creating detailed spreadsheets that break items down into cost per wear.
Apps that let users create their own virtual wardrobe by uploading photos of their existing clothing and accessories are also seeing a rise in use. A spokesperson for Whering says there has been a 34% year-on-year increase in uploads from users with more than 600,000 items submitted in the first four days of January alone.
The wardrobe-tracking trend is being led by sustainability advocates such as the writer Aja Barber. “It inspires me to wear my whole wardrobe,” she says. “It encourages me to try new ensembles and catalogue the journey and it also tells me how much I’m wearing certain items.”
Last week, Laura Reilly, the founder of the shopping newsletter Magasin, released a list of everything she bought in 2023 with an accompanying costper-use analysis. A Bottega Veneta bag originally bought for more than £1,000 worked out at about £14 a use while a black tank top from Gap averages at about 14p a wear.
On TikTok, a challenge called the “75-day hard style challenge” has gone viral with the hashtag amassing more than 390,000 views in its first five days. Coined by Mandy Lee, a New Yorkbased fashion analyst, it’s a fashion twist on a popular fitness challenge. However, instead of working out for 75 consecutive days, Lee has asked participants to document their look each day and not buy anything new.
These types of tracking trends mark a shift in consumer behaviour as many cohorts, including those aged 12 to 27, look for an alternative to fast fashion. These habits include shopping mindfully from secondhand shops rather than, say, showcasing shopping hauls from retailers such as Shein, which on average uploads a whopping 10,000 items to its site each day.
Instead, the tracking trend incorporates other sustainability challenges such as “no buy January” and “30 wears”, which suggests wearing a piece of clothing at least 30 times in order to justify its environmental impact.
For Hannah Rochell, the founder of slowette.com, a sustainable style website, who previously took part in a yearlong shopping ban, daily tracking is a way of ensuring old habits don’t reemerge. “It’s helping me understand the type of clothes I wear. I’m using it as a way to reset and remind myself that I already have enough clothes.”
Participants in Lee’s challenge range from teenagers to pensioners. “You