Why we must cut our new clothing purchases by 75%

If you favour human and environmental wellbeing over the ever-growing consumption of throwaway fast fashion, switching to a smaller wardrobe may be your only option.

Regardless of how tempting it is to buy into the flurry of new aesthetics, cores, and microtrends that flood our feeds, there’s no ignoring the catastrophic impact it’s having on our already suffering Earth.

While dressing up is a sure-fire way to boost our moods and a form of self-expression that more and more of us are enjoying post-lockdown, it’s becoming difficult to do so without feeling guilty.

This is because, as is common knowledge in the age of eco-anxiety and damning IPCC reports, the ever-growing consumption of throwaway fast fashion is wreaking havoc on our environment.

It certainly doesn’t help that we’re exposed to its affordability, convenience, and accessibility whenever we open social media and are bombarded with targeted ads. With the right amount of willpower, however, we can find a way out of this mess.

It might just involve getting better at working with what we have to hand.

If you favour the wellbeing of both people and planet over following whatever #ootd you’ve been pining over, switching to a smaller wardrobe may be your only option.

Of course, this is not to disregard the plethora of small lifestyle changes we can adopt on a daily basis that’ll – hopefully – make a lot of difference in the long run, but for now our style-focused sustainability efforts simply aren’t cutting it.

Need I remind you that if we don’t act soon the industry could use a quarter of the world’s remaining global carbon budget to keep warming under 2°C by 2050?

Or that over the past 15 years garment production has doubled as the length of time we actually wear these items has fallen by nearly 40%?