What is the best? What do people here buy? Do you stay away from all synthetics?
Cotton is a great all around material, but has such heavy water usage, and a lot isn’t made well. Linen/hemp seems better for that, and is durable, but it’s such a specific look and with too much casual linen/hemp you look like a 00s stoner. Synthetics are literally plastic and every wash puts more micro plastics into the water. Is wool good? It works well for a lot of stuff, but is expensive and is an animal product. Vintage wool stuff can be pretty great. Lots of good deals on vintage wool coats which have held up great including brands you’ve never heard of and are long defunct.
What else is there?
Edit: also open to just durability recommendations. What lasts you the longest?
Apologies in advance for not directly answering but this is a rant I have on lock. I feel like fabric sustainability is sometimes used as a form of greenwashing by companies to launder the fact that the biggest hits to sustainability in the west come in the form of quantity of consumption, not type.
The average American spends over $1k every year to buy about 24 garments. On average, a garment will be worn only 7 times before being discarded. Most garments that are donated or sold to secondhand stores will never be sold, being moved instead to rag houses, where pickers from the vintage clothing industry will pick out bulk quantities of clothes for resale. The vast majority of clothes are passed over by pickers. Some are made into industrial rags. The rest are sent to a landfill.
The most sustainable thing individuals can do is to just buy less and to buy secondhand whenever feasible. Beyond that we need to nationalize the industry and stop manipulating people via advertising to keep buying so much.
What the fuck who is only wearing their clothes 7 times? Who has this kind of money? I feel like I’m a close to median USian but then someone says something like this and I feel like I’m from another planet.
real. im still wearing clothes ive had for 20 years lol
You might be close to median, but VibeCoder said average. Averages are susceptible to an outsized influence by outliers and unbalanced distributions. If a small portion of people buy a ton of clothes and only wear them once or twice, it can really drag down the average. And even then, depending on how the statistics were measured, my average might be around that if it’s counting people ordering something, trying it on, and returning it if it doesn’t fit.
I’m a bit suspicious of the figure.
Let’s say you buy 24 clothes in a year, and wear only one item of clothing for every day of that year, and don’t wear any of the others. The average clothes worn figure is still 15 times.
If you assume a person wears the same top, bottom, underwear and socks every single day for a year, they would need to buy ~200 items of clothing a year to meet that “7 wears” average figures.
I guess this could work if it’s taking account of the millions of clothes sent to landfill by companies, but then it’s pretty deceptive.
You’re missing that the hypothetical clothes wearer has already bought 24 items from each of the previous several years and only regularly wears a small percentage of all those pieces.
Also, it’s the average number of wears for a garment, rather than the average number of times a person wears a garment. Plenty of garments are never worn, while most people will wear each garment at least once.
You’re missing the basic math that makes it very difficult to be true.
In the example where only four items of clothing are worn daily, you would need to have almost ten years of accumulated clothes purchases.
Of course, most people wear different clothes once a year. If you had two different outfits, then you would need 400 items, and if you went wild and wore three different outfits (3 bottoms, 3 pairs of socks, 3 tops and 3 items of underwear) you would need 600 items.
Average wears per item of clothing and the average times worn by a person in a year would be the same if clothes were all disposed of within a year. Obviously they last longer, so it would be a conservative estimate at best.
I will go and try and find the source methodology of the figure though
No you’re right. I suspect that if these figures are both true, the average number of times a garment is worn and the average number of garments a person buys are not really comparable due to their methodology. Also, is 24 the gross number of garments purchased, or the net? if people buy much more than 24 and then return them (and they’re not resold), the 7 wears figure becomes more believable.
I have seen figures as low as 1 wear. Loads of fast fashion clothing is bought and quickly returned (wrong size, changed their mind, etc), and these often cannot (by policy) be sold again so go to the landfill.
Feel free to go off. I want a state run clothing store for consistent, well made staples everyone needs that isn’t shoved into your face via ads. Give me a clothing ration card lol.
I agree, and don’t buy very much, but I go through periods where I like looking around, seeing what is made of what and how it’s constructed. I may buy like 0-5 things a year new or used plus the odd underwear or socks or shoes when needed.
Years ago though, I bought a lot of fast fashion crap and almost have none of it left because of how easily it degraded, but I have other stuff which is newer to even older than me and is still wearable for a long time with the correct care. 7 wears is crazy low but sounds about right. Very bad for the earth, but also shit value for clothing. I want to wear something for many years before I convert it into rags to use.
Just curious what fabrics ppl here like too look for. Not having a washing machine full of polyester clothing seems like a good start. If I’m looking for one nice piece I will wear a lot, I stay away from certain materials even if I like what it looks like.
If you want your fabric to be durable do your darndest to get as 100% of a single fabric as possible. So get a 100% cotton shirt, or 100% linen, or 100% rayon, etc. The mixing of fabrics is what makes the clothing weak, and yk maybe the bible was right on this one
I didn’t know that. So much stuff out there is mixed.
Does the Bible actually mention not to mix yarns?
Leviticus 19:19 “Keep my decrees. Do not mate different kinds of animals. Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.”
Deuteronomy 22:9–11: “Do not plant two kinds of seed in your vineyard; if you do, not only the crops you plant but also the fruit of the vineyard will be defiled. Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together. Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together.”
I’m of the opinion that these sorts of verses are actually just life advice so you don’t get screwed over in some way
I’ve thought that might be the case. Pretty sure that’s how Pork became haram.
I’m going to start emailing companies to tell them they are sinners (in more ways than just this)
hard to separate them from the ones that are
those other people over there i’m going to command you to genocide later do things a particular way so let’s forbid that because it could promote cultural mixing
In like with what you said though, one could answer this question with the durability of the textile in mind. Longer lasting garments that are maintained well won’t be discarded or replaced as often.
Gotta multiply that against the environmental impact of production to get the full score
I’ve definitely heard the argument that certain synthetic fibers are better for this reason if the owner is open to repairing and/or re-dying their clothes. Not sure which synthetic fibers, if any, won’t leave your washer riddled with microplastics though.
I personally like bamboo, not sure how much water it needs, but it grows really fast. The fabric itself is wonderful, it’s fluid and does not bother my skin like poly does.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen bamboo clothing. I’ll have to keep an eye out. From the photos it looks more cotton like than I’d expect
Look for rayon, viscose, and lyocell
I thought these were all semi-synthetics and stayed away from them. I’ll look into it.
Are they usually made with bamboo?
They are, or some kind of wood pulp. People shit on them a lot but its still better than polyester by a mile in terms of the environment. Plus they can be tight and stretchy without much or any elastane.
Cool, I’ll keep that in mind
Check out a “how it’s made” type video for rayon or some home chemist making it. It’s cool as hell.
Roughly, mash up wood pulp (or bamboo or whatever), dissolve it in a series of chemicals to make viscose. Viscose turns back into chains of cellulose when exposed to acid, and you can get whatever kind of strands you want by controlling how it touches the acid.
Actually, here’s a home chemist making it out of cotton (only a home chemist would bother making it out of cotton).
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Omg you’re missing out. I would not be without my bamboo socks, ever! I also have bamboo pjs, they feel fantastic. They’re durable too!
I will definitely keep an eye out, and try to feel some in person.
Do you find the socks last longer?
It honestly depends on the quality of the socks you buy. I have a few indestructible pairs that weren’t even that expensive tbh, but on the other hand I got gifted a pair for Xmas that disintegrated after the first wash. Stay away from Amazon alphabet soup brands! Stay away from Amazon full stop actually
I got some good clothes and have lasted me at least 8 years and still look new, Idk if its my autism or that I just dont care about looks or fashion or everything in general, but I have like 4 trousers and 4 t shirts, a hoodie and a raincoat, 3 shoe pairs, and 2 pajamas, thats everything Ive been wearing for years.
I dont really know whats good or bad I went to a local store and they helped me ger everything, they were kinda expensive but looking at cost/time they are cheap actually, I would have already replaced cheaper ones twice or thrice.
2 trousers are jeans with elasticity idk how, i have wide hips and thights and usually its my only way for trousers to actually fit me
Cotton linen blends are great for tops. While cotton does use a lot of water it’s very good for jeans; i recommend raw selvedge denim, it does have some special considerations mainly being initial cost (which has gone down) and the fact that’s its unwashed so you can get the indigo dye on to your shoes and shirt. What makes raw selvedge denim so great is how well constructed it is so it last forever and as you wear and wash it, it starts to lighten in color so when they became a very faded light blue you practically have a new pair of jeans you can style. Hemp is cool too, i’ve only bought from patagonias hemp line and its is expensive but it’s definitely the most comfortable most durable clothes i own.
