The Life Cycle of Clothes

Ever wonder where unsold clothes end up after a seasonal sale? Even Winners, the official Canadian couture dumping grounds, can’t always keep their goods season after season. So where does it all go? When you clean out your closet to make space for new clothes, you wrap them up in garbage bags and send them off to the needy organizations. But surely, our ratio of homeless people are far fewer than the volume of clothes that are donated each year. What happens to the clothes that aren’t used?

Believe it or not, most of it is repackaged, resold, and recycled. Often, these goods are sold at a fraction of the price. Luxury goods that aren’t sold in North America are shipped to Japan (the world’s largest luxury consumer). And what happens to the luxury goods that aren’t sold in Japan? Nobody knows…yet.

Clothes that aren’t sold in stores are either shipped to be sold at discount stores, think of Desert Hills in Las Vegas, resold and shipped to developing countries like Tanzania for a fraction of the retail price, or recycled as rags and insulation. Good quality slacks retailing for $60 will be sold for $5 in developing nations, many of these goods were made with severely underpaid workers who make $1 day and churn out thousands of garments each day.

The following article illustrates the situation more in detail, called “Waste Couture: Environmental Impact of the Clothing Industry” by Luz Claudio, published in Environmental Health Perspectives.

Unfortunately, shoppers today tend to go with the mentality of “you get what you pay for.” Shoppers know that when they buy cheap clothes, they expect cheap quality. The worst is that they don’t mind, because they’re “saving” money. And when these clothes turn to junk, they just go ahead and buy new clothes for cheap. In the long run though, we’re wasting more money buying cheap stuff than buying quality, durable clothing. We’re also afraid of being duped by high end brands, we no longer trust brands to be of quality and we only think that they’re after our money. The marketing industry has, in some ways, tarnished our perception of quality and price. I, myself, have been subject to this kind of “cheap is great” mentality as recently as two months ago. But after reading books and articles on the nature of fast fashion, it left a sour taste in my mouth.

So maybe there is a risk in buying high end pants which can possibly fall apart any second, but the alternative of cheap fashion isn’t a better solution. Not everyone can afford a tailor these days, or even find a good one for that matter, but spending to mend your clothes could be worth the effort, and most of all, it will prevent you from going out and buying clothes with a trend expiry date.

I have plans of turning my lining-torn, London Fog oversized peacoat into a form fitting one by getting it tailored at Boutique Mad-Ame. The exterior is still in good shape and so are the buttons and the lining could always be replaced. Sure I could be spending $300 to get it fixed, but at least I won’t worry about stuffing another coat in my closet or throwing it away. Plus it would be custom tailored to me, isn’t the best kind of luxury getting something tailored to your body? Think about it.