How frequently do we actually wear our garments before sending them to landfills? Everyone has been guilty of saying to themselves, "I have nothing to wear," while gazing at a closet stuffed with clothing.
However, if it's happening frequently, consider this: the number of times you wear your garments has a MASSIVE impact on the environment.

More clothing... worn fewer
Have you ever come upon a 1970s skirt or a pair of 1980s jeans? We did!
And the way they felt in our hands and the fact that they were still wearable after all these years immediately pleased us. Nothing compares to those delicate polyester items from rapid fashion retailers!

The impact of social media on rapid fashion
What follows is what altered how humans create and use clothing. Fast fashion has lowered its costs to match those of consumable everyday things by emphasizing affordability rather than employing environmentally friendly materials or providing equitable labor conditions (ugh!).

Additionally, these companies have been releasing new collections on a monthly or even weekly basis, encouraging customers to buy more in order to keep up with passing fashion trends and quell their #FOMO. As if that weren't terrible enough, companies that specialize in ultra-fast fashion, like SHEIN or Boohoo, have sped up and degraded the sector.

Clothes basically went from being sturdy to being throwaway! Another important factor was social media, where overconsumption is celebrated through influencer partnerships, TikTok hauls, and carefully curated feeds where you'll never see the same outfit twice. The outcome?

How frequently are garments worn before being thrown out?
If that weren't alarming enough, consider the fact that we now purchase 60% more clothing than we did in the year 2000. This results in absurdly large amounts of textile waste: 18.6 million tonnes of clothing are thrown away globally each year.

We wear how much of our clothing?
We typically only wear 10% of our wardrobes on a daily basis, says Lauren Bravo, author of How To Break Up With Fast Fashion.

How long do we keep our clothing on?
We no longer wear 60% of our clothing for more than a year; in contrast to those 80s jeans that endured for decades.