That wardrobe door doesn’t shut properly anymore

We stand back sombrely and survey the bulge� Even though my bit of cupboard is neuroticneat (colour-coded and seasonally grouped) everything is creased, because it has no space around it�

“Come on - charity shop time! We cannot need all this”.

We run a rule of ‘buy something, get rid of something’, but don’t always stick to it� And while Depop, Marrkt, Vinted, Thrift+, Swish etc are all great, buying and passing it around is not addressing the problem of overproduction�

As CREW has recently explored, through their ‘fast fashion’ talks and ‘subversive catwalk’ events, the industry is there to persuade us that our 5-yearold skinny jeans are ‘embarrassingly dated’� And when everyone around you

‘Two pairs of jeans take as much water to produce as a person will drink in a lifetime;

85% of our old clothes end up in a landfill. Synthetic fibres can take up to 40 years to degrade and dyes and chemicals leach into the earth, contaminating water and soil’.

When clothing made of synthetic fibres like acrylic and Lycra is washed, tiny plastic particles are released and work their way into the seas and oceans is suddenly wearing lovat green, you find yourself subliminally hankering for a lovat green something yourself�

The cost of this is enormous, most of it not immediately apparent to us� Leah Thorn’s a:dress website explains that: Meanwhile, sustainability marketing adds a new 3 Ps - Preservation (Environment), Public (Society) and Performance (Economy) - to businesses’ usual 4Ps- “Product, Price, Place, and Promotion�” Not enough, though, is it?

Fashion is the second mostpolluting industry in the world, after oil and produces more greenhouse emissions than international flights and shipping combined�

There’s human costs, too - as we cannot pretend we do not know, given that even mainstream news reports inform us about low pay, modern slavery, dangerous working conditions for garment workers� We don’t seem to care� To the extent that events like the Rana Plaza collapse hardly touched our hearts�

As soon as we start our clear-out, we falter� Once a year or so, there’s a formal funeral; those black trousers, almost never worn, have to go back in� In the UK, I feel that I do need a raincoat, a warm coat, a formal jacket and a lightweight jacket�

Those 3 blue checked shirts? Do I really need 3? They’re 10 years old and 2 of them were hand-me-downs from the teenagers, but they’re still in good nick, so

I’m loathed to lose them� This is hopeless�

We put almost everything back, sighing�

I feel it’s our capitalist obsession with individual ownership that’s a big problem here� Like the book libraries, kids’ toy libraries and car-share apps, I think it’s time for us to be on a clothesshare app� They can have 2 of those blue checked shirts, for a start�

Caroline Osella writes @worthingethnographic.com/