Spring is traditionally the season for a good clean – and maybe a clear out. Taking stock and having a bit of a declutter can freshen things up domestically.
One popular new way of doing this involves targeting your wardrobe by making digital inventories of your clothes – and then tracking what you wear. You note the price, brand and category of your garments (and shoes and bags) and then record how much use they get.
The idea is that having this information can then lead to better choices in the future, whether that’s saving money or having a more sustainable approach to fashion.
And better choices are needed. The clothing industry in Europe is ranked fourth in terms of its detrimental environmental impact after housing, transport and food.
Clothing is heavily underused, with the number of times a garment gets worn reportedly decreasing by 36% globally between 2000 and 2015. In the UK it has been estimated that 65% of women and 44% of men have clothing in their wardrobe which they are yet to wear, while one survey found that many women consider garments worn once or twice to be “old”.
So while brands compete with online services to offer ever increasing amounts of clothing to consume, amid popular tools to sell the clothes you no longer need, we wondered whether digital tracking could make your wardrobe more sustainable.
For our research, we worked with Save Your Wardrobe, an app designed to help people organise and categorise their clothes. We interviewed users to find out if digitising their wardrobes led to any noticeable changes.
From the start, we found consumers feeling anxious and dissatisfied with their clothing behaviours and wardrobe management. There was an aspiration to better understand what was in their wardrobes and how they used their garments.
One woman told us: “Personally I would feel happier if I felt like I was making really thoughtful decisions [about what clothes I buy] and they weren’t coming from a place of anxiety, or a place of feeling constantly like there is some new gap in my wardrobe that I have to fill.”
Another said: “I think a lot about reducing the eco footprint of my lifestyle. And I think clothing is one area where I get frustrated because I don’t feel like my values line up with my behaviour.”
She added: “I feel like we should just consume less, but then I can get anxious and stressed out and feel like I need something, and those two things are incompatible.”
