“Buy less and buy better” has become a common refrain in fashion’s sustainability movement. With that in mind, you may find yourself asking: how many clothes do I need, exactly?
If a recent report is anything to go by, it’s a lot less than you think. Researchers from Berlin’s Hot Or Cool Institute found that we should only be purchasing five new garments a year in order to stay in line with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) if nothing else changes. Since the average American currently buys 53 new items a year, that means that the vast majority of us would need to cut back on the number of clothes we purchase for our yearly wardrobes by at least 90%.
Conspicuous consumption
Shocking, right? Yes, but it’s advice worth considering—especially because most of us don’t even wear 50% of what we currently own. “It’s now normal to consume fashion [in a way] that’s really excessive and out of scale with what we need,” Luca Coscieme, the Hot Or Cool Institute’s research program manager and one of the report’s lead authors, tells Vogue, noting that the proliferation of fast fashion is largely to blame.
“We’re consuming more and more fashion at cheaper prices, and with a shorter [usage] time per item—and it doesn’t add up in terms of climate,” Lewis Akenji, managing director at the institute and the report’s fellow lead author, adds.
How many clothes do I need?
With this in mind, the researchers found that a “sufficient” wardrobe consists of 74 garments and 20 outfits total for those who live in a two-season climate, and 85 garments in total for those who live in a four-season climate. As an example, they’ve suggested that this modern capsule wardrobe could consist of an average of six outfits for work, three outfits for home wear, three outfits for sports, and two outfits for festive occasions, plus four outdoor jackets and pants or skirts.
Of course, the exact mix depends on a person’s individual lifestyle needs, but Akenji says the 74-85 garment recommendation is “a very generous allocation.” It is also way more than the number of clothes most previous generations possessed—an average French wardrobe during the 1960s, for example, consisted of just around 40 pieces—although times have admittedly moved on since then.
That said, the report’s authors suggest that if other action is taken by both brands and consumers, we could actually return to the consumption levels of 2010 and still be within fashion’s carbon budget for a 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit pathway. “We’re not really talking about going back to the Middle Ages,” Coscieme comments. “When we [talk about] these big reductions, it doesn’t mean that you have to [make do with] one or two T-shirts or whatever—it’s much more feasible.”
Buy second-hand
That’s a relief. But alongside reducing the amount of clothes we’re each purchasing anually, there are plenty of other behavioral changes we can make to reduce our fashion footprint without sacrificing personal style. Buying second-hand clothing, for example, can definitely help—but only if we’re purchasing second-hand items in lieu of purchasing new ones. “In most cases, second-hand is used to keep consuming excessively,” Coscieme says of current shopping habits. “When you buy a second-hand garment you still have all of the impacts associated with consumption; it still counts as a garment that you have to wash and eventually dispose of.”
Love what you have
On that note, taking care of the clothing we already own can also go a long way towards limiting the environmental impact. For example, washing clothes at 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) and skipping one in every three washes or hand-washing can drastically reduce our carbon footprint while also elongating the lifespan of our clothes.
The report also suggests that brushing up on old school skills like sewing and mending is a wise move, too—and might even come with the added benefit of shifting our beliefs and, ultimately, our behaviors. For example, the report suggests that better tending to our clothes could result in new avenues of self-expression to replace the ones we’ve come to associate with shopping: “The emotional aspects intrinsic to experiencing fashion could be filled by other practices such as modifying or mending one own’s clothes, using upcycled materials, and changing the attitude towards fashion aesthetics,” it states.
In other words, getting more creative with the ways we maintain, curate, and update our wardrobes might even lead to permanently changing our mindsets to believe that “new is not always the best choice.”
Waste not, want not
Aside from not buying anything new, wearing our clothes for more than just one or two seasons truly is one of the best things we can do. According to waste charity WRAP, extending the average life of a garment by even nine months can reduce an item’s carbon footprint by around 25 percent. And, ensuring we properly dispose of our clothes so they don’t end up in a landfill (by selling them or donating them) can also help reduce carbon emissions. Since recent reports from PIRG have found that “Americans throw out 17 million tons of clothing and textiles each year, and 65% of clothing is thrown out within 12 months of its purchase,” it’s easy to see how much of a difference making even a few small shifts could have.
Culture matters
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s shoppers in richer countries that are consuming more than their fair share of fashion. The Hot or Cold report found that Australia, Japan, the U.S., and the U.K. have the highest carbon footprint per capita when it comes to fashion consumption. Out of the G20 countries, India, Brazil, China, Turkey, and Indonesia have the lowest carbon footprint per capita. In fact, these countries are not currently meeting their “carbon budget”—the emissions per capita that would still be in line with the 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit limit, if fashion consumption were to be divided equally.
“Fashion shows how unequal society is—not just unequal in economic terms, but also in terms of contributions to greenhouse gas emissions per capita,” Akenji says. And, when you factor in that most of the world’s textile and clothing waste ends up in waste piles of these developing nations, the inequity becomes even clearer.
Collective change
Of course, consumer behavior is only part of the puzzle, especially because the majority of fashion’s carbon footprint comes from the actual production of clothes in the first place— according to some estimates, a whopping 100 billion new items are manufactured globally each year.
That said, we all have the power to vote with our dollars, and collective change really can help influence the industry at large. “We felt there was really a gap on what we can do as consumers and how to translate that into concrete action that we can do today,” Coscieme says. After all, knowledge is power—and staying informed on what we each can do (and not do) as individuals is the first step towards shifting beliefs, behaviors, and making positive collective change.
