The average lifetime for a garment in the UK is just two years with an estimated £30bn of unused clothing hanging in consumer’s wardrobes. And yet, still we shop for more.
Society has not only become reliant on fast-food and single use plastic. Fashion has become the fourth largest environmental impact after housing, transport and food, and one which many of us forget about.
Gone are the days when we patch up a hole or replace a button; each week we buy 38 million items with 11 million of them going into landfill. Nevertheless, there are plenty of brands encouraging us to recycle, reuse and rent. Fashion rental is relatively new to the UK, but we’ve found some top brands leading the way, which means consumers are not only being kind to the planet, but also kind to their bank accounts.
Over the past three decades Rokit has recycled over a million tonnes of discarded clothing and accessories. Under one of the UK’s biggest vintage warehouses, the vintage clothing company sells hundreds of one of a kind pieces that are hand selected and sent daily to their four London stores and added to their ecommerce website.
Each garment is laundered, pressed and carefully mended if needed. Any unusable styles are transformed by the Rokit Recycled team who create and customise pieces.
Back in 2019 Rokit collaborated with London College of Fashion where students were tasked to create a capsule collection re-using and re-working existing garments supplied by Rokit. The winning collections were showcased in the window displays in Rokit’s Covent Garden and Brick Lane stores during London Fashion Week SS19.
Here’s to more great collaborations and sustainable pieces at 2020’s London Fashion Week.
MY WARDROBE HQ is a fashion rental marketplace based in the UK where consumers can access both current and past season designers’ collections as well as pre-loved pieces from individual’s wardrobes on a rent and buy model.
The sustainable fashion brand doesn’t stop there either; they host an array of events at their Brompton Cross store from pre-slopes workout with a KX trainer to meditation and healing sessions.
Most recently, they have launched a pop-up store in Liberty London. Between 11th February and 31st March 2020, MY WARDROBE HQ will bring fashion rental to Liberty London’s Great Marlborough Street store with a specially curated rental edit of event wear – a real first for retail.
Girl Meets Dress is a luxury dress hire site for special occasion outfits. Offering designer dress hire to women in the UK and Europe, you can borrow a maximum of three dresses at one time for either two or seven nights.
Consumers can rent a dress from a selection of 4,000 pieces from over 200 designers including Self Portrait, Stella McCartney, Marc Jacobs and many more. There is the option to visit their showroom located in Fulham or have the items delivered home and then sent back after the event.
As winner of awards such as the Drapers ‘Best Innovation’ award and the Redbull Future 50 Top 10, Girls Meets Dress is going from strength to strength. Don’t take our word for it though – check out the dresses for yourself!
Founding Style Lend six years ago, Lona Alia wanted to help women around the world have access to the world’s most coveted closets and in the process to promote sustainable fashion consumption. Their tagline Fashion Can Save the World is integrated across all strategy and business decisions within the company.
The ecommerce start-up site hosts hundreds of designer clothing that users can rent for a fraction of the cost and return after a few days. The difference, however, is that the clothes belong to someone else. Alongside their rent offering, Style Lend also allows women to monetize their dresses by lending them out to other women, without having to sell them.
Style Lend teaches and encourages us to make a positive impact by consuming fashion in a different way. Their social media channels not only host images of their beautiful products, but also provide tips on how to keep your wardrobe ethical.
Clothes Doctor is an online clothing maintenance service providing clothes repairs, alterations and restoration treatments alongside their eco-friendly clothing care products. Founded in 2017 by Lulu O’Connor, the brand’s aim is to help modern consumers love their clothes for longer.
Through their services, products, inspirational videos and blogs, and sustainable partnerships, Clothes Doctor encourages consumers to love their wardrobe whilst contributing to a more sustainable lifestyle.
All Clothes Doctor products are made in the UK and are vegan, cruelty-free, and free from plastic. That all sounds amazing, right?
TRAID is little different from the rest of the clothing brands in this blog. They are a charity working to stop clothes from being thrown away and, where possible, turning clothes waste into funds and resources to reduce the environmental and social impacts.
TRAID achieves their goals by providing a network of over 1,500 charity clothes banks, home collections and charity shops diverting around 3,000 tonnes of clothes from landfill and incineration every year.
Clothes are given to TRAID as cast offs and waste which they transform into high quality stock for their charity shops. All funds raised by TRAID contribute to global projects improving conditions and working practices in the textile industry.
If you are launching a new product or would like to raise awareness of your sustainability work for your brand or business, get in touch with our Consumer PR team today to find out how we can convey your key messages to the UK media.
Read more on our consumer case studies here.
