I'm really into renewable X and sustainability, so this is something I'm personally interested in and I see so many people doing subscription based fashion.
I saw a few years ago an ad at H&M about their Loooop machine that they use to renew clothing. Could it be possible to make clothes shopping fun, fitted and tailored, and environmentally friendly? Could even leverage AI to come up with designs when there are various strand colors and textile types.
Now, I have no idea how the Loooop machine works or how exactly something like this _could_ work, but I don't think its impossible. However, I do know that I see a lot of people upset about fast fashion, and I personally go through a lot of socks and t shirts each year.
I have experience forecasting for retail planning for a big clothes retailer, but that's about the extent of my personal experience with this industry. (I'm a software engineer these days)
Could even be on demand- as seasons change, the used clothes can be sent in and "traded" for heavier socks, or maybe the undershirts are turned into neckwarmers and the undies into thermals. Turn 3 pairs of socks into a hat, or something else.
The Loooop machine feels like a greenwashing gimmick. Doing any work in the US must be more expensive than the total cash (not environmental) cost of manufacturing and shipping a new clothing item from Bangladesh or Viet Nam.
I mean, you could probably build a small business and fund it through a big retailer's philanthropy budget; that's not a bad idea. But I can't see any way to do it at meaningful (environment-changing) scale.
The most effective environmental strategy would be to have the Kardashians (or whoever) pivot to only shopping at Goodwill and tweeting about it. But that's not going to happen.