How Many Clothes Do You Own?

And how much is too much? I counted.

Let’s not mess about, this is hard. In my first year of Rule of Five, I had to calibrate to new (well, new to me) levels of deprivation - shopping had become such a panacea for me when it came to entertainment, self care, reward and renewal, doing without it required a whole new mindset. I dedicated good time to alternative creative routes - mending, alternation, rental, swapping parties, borrowing from friends, restyling what I already had, (all of which you can find on this substack page - have a look through if you need some inspo).

This is an old pair of jeans I had upcycled with white cord stitching by Fanfare the Label. Totally reinvented a boring old pair of Mom jeans. The jacket was a borrow from a second hand sale which I nearly bought - and then didn’t. Picture is by Rahil Ahmed for the forthcoming Secondhand Spring competition.

The second year is no less hard. I haven’t had quite the same amount of time to explore parallel creativities, (although the jeans above were a highlight), and have found myself hovering over the click to buy button so many times. Mending, altering, renting - none of this is quite as easy to do (yet) as hitting the Shop Now button on Instagram. The ease with which we can buy things now, and the power marketeers have at their disposal to target us, doubles the challenge. Our economy is still based on growth, which means for fashion and clothing companies to be successful - they need to sell more stuff. And we need to buy it.

But Fivers, we’ve got this. if you are wavering, just remember the facts.

According to The Or Foundation, no one knows how many clothes are produced globally each year. Estimates range from 80 billion to 150 billion - that’s a reporting gap of 70 billion. Reason being, most companies refuse to publish the number of garments they produce: The Or Foundation’s recent #speakvolumes campaign asks brands to be transparent, so at least we can start to understand the scale of the task at hand. “Transparency on production volumes is essential to enable informed policies, honest and focussed dialogue and better collective decision making,” the Foundation say.

Here are some of the brands that do publish production numbers:

A lot, right? Too much. But before I cast stones, I though I should have a little count up. How many clothes do I have? How much is too much? How many times have I been through my over stuffed wardrobe and thought, I haven’t got anything to wear, but can barely make it to the back of the wardrobe because there’s so much ‘old’, ‘timed out’ stuff?

Well, today I’m wearing a particularly brilliant pair of man repeller (love that phrase

Leandra Medine Cohen

) elephant cords from YMC Create I had completely forgotten I owned. It was only by getting into my wardrobe at the weekend to do a proper count that I rediscovered them. There’s treasures in there, you just have to unearth them.

So, what was my total? Well I’m not going to lie, I’m going to admit the truth. After a lifetime of shopping and getting dressed, I have 144 items of clothing and 24 pairs of shoes in my wardrobe.

I am one of 8 billion people in the world. So that’s a lot of clothes. The Hot or Cool Institute who came up with the numbers five for this campaign, suggested ‘A Sufficiency Wardrobe’ of just 74 items. Mine is roughly double that.

Precisely, I own:

• 39 tops and jumpers

• 19 pairs of trousers and jeans

• 16 skirts

• 3 jumpsuits/dungarees

• 47 dresses

• 14 jackets

• 6 coats

• 24 pairs of boots, shoes, sandals and sneakers

And I haven’t included gym kit, pyjamas, lingerie or socks and tights.

It seems like a lot. Worse, most of it I really don’t wear, but those rarely worn pieces are so connected to memories and times of my life, I can’t bear to be parted. I have a daughter, so I justify keeping it all by thinking she might wear it one day (she already does), but maybe I could free up some space by donating a bit more. It’s difficult to ascertain what the average clothing count is, so please tell me your yours (don’t worry, the survey is anonymous):

In 2016 ClosetMaid conducted a survey claiming the average number of items in any wardrobe was 103. But in 2016 we didn’t have Shein, Boohoo and Pretty Little Thing - we had Asos and Topshop and Zara. Things have got worse since then.

How much is too much? In my book What to Wear and Why, I suggest a working wardrobe of ten super high quality, wear them all the time pieces. For me, that’s:

1. an oversized blazer

2. a warm, smart coat

3. a playful knit

4. a white shirt

5. a comfy trouser

6. an everday dress

7. a good pair of day shoes

8. a good pair of boots

9. a warm functional knit

10. one set of exceptional underwear for those days

This is where all my investments go these days. I also subscribe to the 80/20 rule - where 80% of my purchases are hard working everyday pieces, and 20% are fabulous and outrageous personality pieces. My ‘fives’ this year (including an allowance of four second hand pieces) have been a suit, an oversized blazer, a second hand everyday dress, a chunky navy blue knit, a pair of red trousers, a vintage crochet party skirt, a pair of black cowboy boots and some red Mary Janes.

The process of counting the clothes was a good opportunity for a wardrobe audit. I pulled out all the tired, broken clothes that couldn’t be upcycled or rehomed. I now have a pile which I need to take to a recycler. On top of that I have found another 9 items of high quality clothing I am donating to Smart Works.

Waste is a problem, and last week Europe’s Textile Recycling Sector issued a warning that the industry was facing “an unprecedented crisis”: since the spring, the price of sorted secondhand garments has been lower than the cost of processing them. Which means a lot of the recycling companies are about to go bankrupt. There are lots of reasons why the price has dropped and the costs have gone up (wars disrupting markets and shipping routes), but the blame was squarely placed on the rise of ultra-fast fashion.

The problem is broken down here by Sarah Kent in the Business of Fashion, but essentially, as she points out:

The challenge is that the infrastructure to recycle textiles globally is limited, while the volume of waste is growing and its quality deteriorating.

While much of the arguments about sustainability are gradually progressing - transparency on supply chains, better safeguarding for labour, biodegradable materials, circular business models - the big elephant in the room is production levels. Often it is cheaper for a brand to entirely remake a collection in 6 months time in the Global South, than store the over production in a Global North warehouse. Instead, it is classified as waste, and donated, burned or dumped.

This is why we are doing Rule of 5. because we have got to stop buying so much. And fashion has to stop making so much. Anything we buy should last us for years, or should find a new home, or at the very last resort, a textile recycling plant (so not fossil fuel derived materials or blended materials, which cannot recycle).

The system is broken. But we can put our foot down and tell it the way we want it to be. Courage, Fivers!

Tell me how you’re getting on this year…