Fashion at the crossroads

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1. INTRODUCTION

Figure 1: The rise of fast fashion28

Circularity has become the new buzz word across industry, particularly in the world of fashion and textiles. The idea that nothing should be wasted that everything, once it has reached the end of its useful lifetime, should be collected and the materials in it recycled to make more of the same products, or composted to provide nutrients the fashion soil - is The rise offorfast certainly a desirable objective. But how realistic is it? At least for textiles, this goal still seems to be a long way away, as shown by the examples that we reviewed in this investigation.

Sales of clothing have nearly doubled from 1 Trillion Dollars in 2002 to 1.8 trillion dollars in 2015, projected to rise to $2.1 trillion by 2025

Clothing production doubled from 2000 to 2014 The number of garments exceeded 100 billion by 2014 The average person buys 60 percent more items of clothing and keeps them for about half as long as 15 years ago Global trade in used clothes reaches 4.3 million tonnes, many are unlikely to be worn again.

Since 2000 there has been an “explosive expansion� in fast fashion, led by the brands H&M and Zara

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2025


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