> Today, the average American buys 68 new items of clothing per year.
> “You wonder, do people in America have so much money that they can just wear things once and then throw them away?”
I uh… I too would like to know. What scares me is that the use of whatever demographic is causing that average has to be way higher than the actual average, but this feels like it has to be bimodal.
And there are lots of these numbers in the news. The "average American" produces an obscene amount of food waste too, far beyond what I feel I actually produce, as best as I can estimate it.
Living with my girlfriend really opened my eyes to how many clothes women go through. She even tries to be responsible about it and sell items to second hand markets, but I still think it’s a bit crazy.
- Women’s fashion cycles much faster then men’s. Office wear is a bit more stable but anything aimed as social settings like weddings may only provide a few opportunities to wear it before it’s out of style. Men can reliably wear a suit for years, but most dresses get only one or two wears.
- Women’s clothes have a much narrower size range. I can gain/lose up to 20lbs and still be in a similar size range. 10lbs for a women means most of her wardrobe no longer fits. Most mens clothes come in 4, maybe 5 sizes. Most womens have at least 6, maybe 8 or even 10 subdivisions. Most sizes are even numbers, so you might find an 8 or a 10, but at smaller sizes you may find 3s and 5s.
- Womens cloths just seem to be flimsier. Delicate fabricates and stitching mean they tear easier. Jeans have high elastic content so they wear our faster. Leggings rip easily. Knits are harder to care for than fleece or sweats.
I’m not trying to justify it, but I think many men, especially those who frequent this forum, probably have closets full of clothes that are 5 or 10 years old. Guys can wear a shirt for years to the point it’s vintage. If a woman does that, she will very often get judged by her peers.
When I was still going through life as a man, I had two dozen white dress shirts (12 short, 12 long sleeved...), three pairs of pants, a suit and summer and a winter jacket. The shirts would still be fine after wearing and washing them a hundred times or more. I replaced them at a rate of four a year...
After coming out as trans, getting a new wardrobe was fun, but... It's been a year, and some dresses really fall apart after wearing them a dozen times. Some actually cannot be washed and will lose all shape immediately. And that dress might have cost 80 euros or more. I also got some white, short-sleeved shirts because, habit, and after a couple of washes, they are gone!
And what you say about sizes is spot-on, too. Of course my shape is changing, and compared to this time last year, I've lost a lot of weight. Pretty much nothing I bought early on still fits.
Would gothy-style, belt-heavy designs work well here? I imagine Victorian women didn't rotate clothes at the rate implied here. This seems just ... bad
My wife actually buys her clothes from places like Aloria or Celtic Web Merchant, where you can get good, solid cotton and linen dresses. These can keep going for many, many years. But the medieval style doesn't suit me. I want to show off my legs :P
(The first dress my wife gave me was one of those, a large, red early medieval style dress. It is incredibly solid, but it makes me feel like an extra from Handmaid's Tale.)
Guy running shorts often have draw strings, but I guess then the pants aren’t vacuum formed to your thighs, so that may still mot be what you want? Or… bunches up waistline fabric, bleh.
There's no benefit in producing robust clothing that can be washed and worn over many years if the populace at large is unwilling to pay for that robustness.
You'll just spend money to get provide a feature very few people actually care about and you'll hurt your competitiveness.
Much of the population was trained to be good little consumers and that's just what they are doing.
That’s not what I asked. I asked if gothy-style belt-heavy clothes would work to handle the vast array of bit of clothing might be obligated to handle, while still looking its intended style.
> Guys can wear a shirt for years to the point it’s vintage. If a woman does that, she will very often get judged by her peers.
I'm a man, in my early 40s, got recently lauded by a total stranger (younger kid, mid-20s I'd say) for wearing a 15-year old t-shirt which had become vintage in the meantime (an Emerica t-shirt, bought when I was in my mid-20s and when I thought that wearing skate clothing even though I wasn't doing any skating at all was cool). My feminine SO probably wouldn't have received the same reaction had she worn a 15-year old piece of clothing.
That said, there are some vintage clothes that women can also wear without being judged, but we're not talking about clothes that are worn on a regular basis, I'm talking about "that blouse my mom used to wear in the late 1980s and which is cool to wear in more hippy-ish environments from time to time".
> If a woman does that, she will very often get judged by her peers.
True. We all reach an age eventually where we care little for the opinions of our peers on such matters. Wisest are those who make that realisation earlier rather than later!
Basically any activity-appropriate clothing (per social, not practical, rules). In most cases I can’t be bothered figuring out what clothes to wear. I mean sure, a wedding or a funeral I know, but otherwise? A fancy restaurant? Lawyer meeting? Giving a talk? Who cares?
I go to board meetings in my normal clothes, and with my dog, and until my kid said something it didn’t even occur to me to do otherwise.
I do remember buying a car years ago and my wife commenting, “At home [europe] they wouldn’t even let you in the door”. In the Vally they just want to do business.
> I do remember buying a car years ago and my wife commenting, “At home [europe] they wouldn’t even let you in the door”. In the Vally they just want to do business.
Doesn't match my experience. I assure you they'll happily sell you a car regardless of your attire over here.
I still have a fleece top from 30 years ago and I still have boots from 35 years ago. I have a jacket that is probably close to 50 or more years ago. I have 1 suit, and it's probably also 30 years or more (I seldom wear it, it's basically just for formal events).
But yeah, many many items in the 5-20 year range.. plenty of ties 20 years, plenty of tshirts for sure 15 or more years, etc.
It's crazy how many clothes women have. Multiple closets worth. I have no idea how they can afford to just keep buying.
> I have no idea how they can afford to just keep buying.
Clothes can be exceptionally cheap these days.
You might think a basic suit costs $250 and a top quality suit $2500 - but you can actually get a suit for $25 [1]. You too can afford a large wardrobe of clothes that probably won't last very long!
My wife spent the past two years not buying new clothes, or donating things to offset any essential purchases. She buys almost exclusively from used/vintage clothing stores and at one point had a very small wardrobe.
(I think the term is "capsule wardrobe"?)
But I guess this stuff varies an awful lot depending on your occupation, and activities. She works in the medical field so she never wears her own clothes at work, for example. I suspect if you get a uniform of some kind, like that, then you don't need to worry quite so much about fashion..
At the office several of my coworkers use a service in which they rent cloths. Kinda oike Netflix was for DVDs. You pick a few you like, they send them over and next month you send them back. All for a monthly fee.
Someone once told me the average piece of cloth only gers worn 7 times before being disposed of. Dont qoute me on that though :)
In a Bloomberg businessweek article this week on Rent The Runway the figure they give is that they rent the articles an average of 20 times before retiring them.
Maybe I live in different environment. I see women wearing yoga pants and tank tops at official environment, and cheap plastic dresses at evening. Men are expected to wear expensive suits, watches, leather shoes and splash cash all around.
My teenage daughter, whose fashion sense runs to the eclectic, gets basically all of her clothing second-hand online. She also wears a number of my old Hawaiian shirts that are still going strong after nearly 40 years of (admittedly occasional) use. So it is possible to source responsibly, but it helps if you don't set too much store by the judgements of the hoi polloi.
I can confirm, as a guy, I still wear 20 years old clothes. I only ever buy new ones when the older ones tear and I don't have anything else to replace them with already.
The answer is "yes". This is part of what makes America (and the rest of the world) so rich compared to the past. A while ago I was looking to buy a small knife for the kitchen and I found a whole pack of them. The average cost of each knife was 60 cents. The meal you prepare with that knife is going to cost more than the knife itself. That just blew me away. Imagine showing this kind of wealth to somebody from the medieval period.
Food waste is fine though. It's a side effect of food being incredibly abundant. It is the only realistic mechanism to fight hunger. You want food to be so cheap and so readily available that people are willing to easily write it off.
> Imagine showing this kind of wealth to somebody from the medieval period.
modern industrial production is mind bogglingly large scale. It required over 200 years of continuous investment (in aggregate) to achieve, however, so it was not cheap. And we reap that progress today.
Well the issue with that is overproduction and saturation of the soils its grown in, to the massive amount of nutrients going into the groundwater except for those things over production is good /s
What is your argument? The person you replied to explained why this is necessary while we don't have more sophisticated supply chains to prevent hunger. Would you prefer more people die of hunger to not saturate some grounds?
I'm curious what the source is as well. My growth these days amounts to growing wider and then thinner and I'm old enough to have clothes from both periods so there's no need to get more. So on one hand, 68 articles of is only imaginable if new socks are counted in the equation.
As someone with children, however, it actually seems low. Really young children will grow a couple sizes a year. Then you only cycle through an entire wardrobe (summer, fall, winter, spring, bathing suits etc) once every year or two. Eventually they get older but then there's activities, sports uniforms, girl scout uniforms, the latest sports star's jersey or ball cap, and otherwise start to care what they're wearing and want to be part of that decision making process.
So yes, while it's fun to paint Americans as waste engines who throw away clothes because they can't be bothered to wash them or wouldn't dare to be caught dead in something that's already been worn, I think the truth may be a little less sensational than that.
A lot of food waste happens in the supply chain before you ever get the chance to buy it which then gets attributed to the whole population.
I think there are quite a lot larger sources of waste than food or clothing in our economy where things could be engineered to last a lot longer and be more repairable but aren't so they will be purchased more often. (think heavy things: appliances, vehicles, tools, etc)
The most environmentally friendly thing I do is delaying replacing my totaled 12 year old car.
I think individual action like not buying a new car doesn't really save much in the production process (it saves only on the consumption side, like less gas being used in driving).
A car's required raw material is not going to be mined less because a few people decides not to buy a car - the iron ore and plastics are all going to have been mined at scale (thus, the marginal cost of a few more kgs of material is not a lot). The assembly/production line is going to run, costing energy and thus emissions. The car not purchased is going to sit in the lot - waiting for the next buyer.
only if a lot of people collectively drop their demand for a car would any real effect occur.
You are assuming car companies always run their assembly lines at maximum capacity regardless of demand and you are wrong. Companies absolutely cut production regularly and have forever, not just in extraordinary circumstances.
An example from 2017, long before pandemic complications:
Some of my female relatives truly believe that no outfit should be worn twice, even for men. A piece might be worn a few times with different things, but never the same thing twice.
They have even criticized me for wearing the same tie two says in a row or not refreshing my t-shirt colours regularly. And I should have two suits in case I go to a two day event.
Much of the men's style stuff I see is about trying to find high-quality, neutral articles that can be worn over and over again, and in different contexts. They talk about things like "cost per wear" and "capsule wardrobes" and the like.
I couldn't imagine throwing out some of my favorite pants, shirts, or jackets until they were beyond repair.
Yeah, seems insane to me. When I find a piece I like I often buy it in multiple colors. Best of both worlds: Same great clothing and still some variation.
I do try to use a few more colours, but black is my default "I can't be bothered to think about clothes today" colour... But absolutely for buying identical sets. I'm never ever again just buying one of something when I find something I really like, because I hate shopping for clothes, so whenever I decide I like something I go back and buy several more.
I don’t believe that the average American buys 68 pieces of clothing a year. I’d like them to share the source of that. The author doesn’t offer one that I saw.
TBC, I think wearing something 3-4 times and discarding it is horrible.
They don't seem to have a source. Not linked anyways. Sources might be listed at the end of the book.
ETA: Ah, they have the "source" in "notes." They are quoting a CEO of a retailer, so I guess they wouldn't ask sources. You would need to "fact-check" the CEO. ;)
I suppose you could just skip over all parts of the book which talks about numbers, because it's too much work to track those down to see if they are legit.
> According to Jennifer Hyman, the C.E.O. of Rent the Runway, I am not alone. “Every woman has the feeling of opening up her closet and seeing the dozens of dead dresses that she’s worn only once,” she told me recently. Each year, as Hyman is fond of pointing out, the average American buys sixty-eight items of clothing, eighty per cent of which are seldom worn; twenty per cent of what the $2.4-trillion global fashion industry generates is thrown away.
> According to Jennifer Hyman, the C.E.O. of Rent the Runway, I am not alone. “Every woman has the feeling of opening up her closet and seeing the dozens of dead dresses that she’s worn only once,” she told me recently. Each year, as Hyman is fond of pointing out, the average American buys sixty-eight items of clothing, eighty per cent of which are seldom worn; twenty per cent of what the $2.4-trillion global fashion industry generates is thrown away.
So its probably a made up statistic so they can justify their business model of renting clothes.
On the other hand, if this number also includes socks, underwear, rain wear, winter wear, sports clothing, swim clothing, etc., it might be less absurd. And don't get me started on clothing for young children, of course.
Still, when you say "68 items of clothing", most people think pants, blouses, dresses, costumes, and the like. But that's the fun with statistics :-(
I imagine they are counting everything, e.g. counting each sock as a separate item of clothing. Otherwise, there is no way the AVERAGE is 68 items per year.
Where I live, if you enter a random mall, perhaps 1/2 to 2/3rds of the shops sell clothing. And they live somehow and obviously attract enough customers - a cursory look will prove that they aren't empty.
There must be people who buy three or four pieces of clothing every week for years.
I recognized that ecommerce makes life "easier" and can make people shopping addiction. I can tell it's amazon. It's so easy to buy , it's so easy to return thing I don't like, it's so easy to find cheap things...
There is a voice inside my mind, "hey you can buy this doesn't cost much and let's save up later." Well I'm not an addiction but that voice actually came up in my mind, and I spent a bulk of $
I can't tell you what I bought. The good news is that I still use some clothes I bought 3 or 4 years ago. I feel guilty but I know they have been my best friends...
Kids grow out of clothing quickly and would shift the average number of new items up, but even then, I have trouble believing that it would shift it up by that much? Are they counting each socks individually too?
> “You wonder, do people in America have so much money that they can just wear things once and then throw them away?”
I uh… I too would like to know. What scares me is that the use of whatever demographic is causing that average has to be way higher than the actual average, but this feels like it has to be bimodal.
And there are lots of these numbers in the news. The "average American" produces an obscene amount of food waste too, far beyond what I feel I actually produce, as best as I can estimate it.