“We don’t value our clothing anymore,” Kestrel Jenkins, founder and producer of the Conscious Chatter podcast told Taylor Bryant for an article in Nylon. “Fast fashion has helped us build up a more intense addiction to buying clothing and, at the same time, it’s helped us really elevate the throwaway culture.”
The article notes that in 2015, British charity Barnardo’s surveyed 1,500 women over the age of 16 and found that the majority of fashion purchases are only worn seven times. Thirty-three percent of the women surveyed consider clothes “old” after wearing them fewer than three times.
Jenkins theorizes that one reason for this is because of social media. “Think about how a lot of bloggers will wear one thing one time and then never wear it again,” she says. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re giving it away right after, but Instagram culture leads us to believe that we should be ashamed of being seen in the same outfit more than once. “And I think that that’s totally absurd and something that we need to fight back against.” Another reason people aren’t wearing items until the end of their lifecycle is a bit more obvious: the quality of clothing doesn’t lend itself well to long-term wear.
Source: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-really-happens-when-you-donate-your-clothes-and-why-it-s-bad
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