Mainstream fashion doesn't have to be landfill fodder - if you choose your clothes wisely | Jess CartnerMorley
My favorite black pants came from Jigsaw almost five years ago. I can date them because I was going to the cinema to see the Frances McDormand film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which I remember because I left the bag that contained them under my seat at the cinema and I had to jump off the bus and run back - and Google tells me the movie was released in January 2018. I think they cost around £60.
I paid less than that for the ivory silk shirt I'm wearing with them today, which I bought at Marks & Spencer in 2016 in a collection curated by Alexa Chung. My leather belt is from Gap and may be older than either of my children, one of whom is in college.
There's nothing unusual about this outfit, except that we've come to consider high street clothing as a dump- pending. It's estimated that the average garment is worn only 10 times before being thrown away, according to the Pulse of the Fashion Industry report for 2018 by Global Fashion Agenda and Boston Consulting Group. Research by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation suggested that the average wear-to-disposal count was lowest in the United States, then China, followed by Europe, then the rest of the world. The exact numbers are, for obvious reasons, hard to pin down, but what is clear is that the number of times a piece is worn has fallen by around 36% over the last 15 years.
Such shocking statistics rightly highlight a pressing problem, but they don't tell the whole story. Telling only the stories of clothes that end up in the trash can create the impression that mainstream fashion is inevitably disposable. If we shrug our shoulders and accept...
My favorite black pants came from Jigsaw almost five years ago. I can date them because I was going to the cinema to see the Frances McDormand film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which I remember because I left the bag that contained them under my seat at the cinema and I had to jump off the bus and run back - and Google tells me the movie was released in January 2018. I think they cost around £60.
I paid less than that for the ivory silk shirt I'm wearing with them today, which I bought at Marks & Spencer in 2016 in a collection curated by Alexa Chung. My leather belt is from Gap and may be older than either of my children, one of whom is in college.
There's nothing unusual about this outfit, except that we've come to consider high street clothing as a dump- pending. It's estimated that the average garment is worn only 10 times before being thrown away, according to the Pulse of the Fashion Industry report for 2018 by Global Fashion Agenda and Boston Consulting Group. Research by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation suggested that the average wear-to-disposal count was lowest in the United States, then China, followed by Europe, then the rest of the world. The exact numbers are, for obvious reasons, hard to pin down, but what is clear is that the number of times a piece is worn has fallen by around 36% over the last 15 years.
Such shocking statistics rightly highlight a pressing problem, but they don't tell the whole story. Telling only the stories of clothes that end up in the trash can create the impression that mainstream fashion is inevitably disposable. If we shrug our shoulders and accept...
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