The state of the second-hand clothing market and consumer attitudes in China and the Occident.

Social Events

I started by briefly researching some data on waste in the apparel industry. Here are ten statistics on fast fashion waste. In each of the sub-headings we can see some huge figures and I have highlighted them all.

The findings of CNN STYLE found that even though China has a huge population base, but imports no more than two million dollars worth of second-hand clothing each year. So the waste of clothing in China is very serious. And all this is enough to show that rectifying the waste in the garment industry is something that really needs to be brought to everyone's attention.

Comparison between Chinese second-hand clothing brands and

European&American countries

China:

· I researched a sustainable clothing brand in China. It is called klee klee, which means slowly.

The survey results show that the brand has many sections on the use of environmentally friendly ingredients. For example: vegetable dyeing, use of natural colours, and so on. For the Chinese brands, they focus more on craftsmanship and traditional culture. However, they hardly ever use second-hand clothing and fabrics in the making of their garments.

· The second sustainable brand is Susan Fang. Susan Fang launched her eponymous label in 2017 after graduating from Central Saint Martins. The designer has created a new way of making fabric called “air weave”. It is a fabric that is both 2D and 3D and is made up of strips of fabric, with the pattern being cut into strips in a way that minimises waste. All cut strips are also reused in other new products.

Susan Fang's shoes are made from TPU (a biodegradable material) and the brand's packaging uses ribbon strips to avoid fabric waste. For the second season, the designer has created a shoe that comes in only 2 sizes, but fits 6 different sizes. Each shoe is specially handmade to avoid wasting resources due to stock. The designer has also created the “Air-Embroidery” technique, which uses “layers” to give new possibilities to the fabric, reusing the previous season's prints with sustainability at its core.

The pictures below tell the story of Susan Fang working with Yi women to make charity bags and all proceeds from this project will go to the Dandelion Foundation.

Europe&US

· Venera Kazarova: Initial research of discarded materials and second-hand clothing, includes Russian designer and artist Venera Kazarova who has collaborated with photographer Ira Bordo and make-up artist Olga Glazunova on the collection 'Recycling into Art', using disposable cocktail straws, bags, napkins, wrapping paper, tin foil and more for the design of clothing. They wanted to combine a kind of trash with glitter and glamour, and the 'special' costumes, headwear artwork and glitter on the models' faces and hands were combined to create a contrasting effect.

· Collina Strada: The clothing brand Collina Strada has a very dramatic visual effect, reflecting climate awareness, social awareness, the search for change and self-expression. The designer, Hillary Taymour, hopes that in the future it will become a transparent brand that is fully sustainable and progressive, using second-hand textiles and other ways to make the fashion industry sustainable. She has given the world a utopian, psychedelic twist, as seen in the 2021SS collection below. Although we still have a long way to go with sustainability, and it may be an uphill battle, we can move forward with optimism as we try our best to become the solution rather than the cause.

Ready-to-Wear, Spring 2023, Collina Strada Pre-Fall 2022, Collina Strada

· Eileen Fisher

Originally from New York, EILEEN FISHER aims to bring garments to life through clean lines, simple shapes and sensual fabrics. It seeks to find the best balance between the modern and the timeless, between beauty and function. At EILEEN FISHER, the dialogue about good design begins with the sharing of design ideas. "Simplicity, sensuality, beauty, timelessness and functionality" are the five points that form the basis of the EILEEN FISHER aesthetic, which EILEEN FISHER aspires to achieve in every product. That is why EILEEN FISHER's clothes are simple, classic and unadorned. But every year since the brand's inception, they have recycled sustainable garments from various institutions and reused them to create new garments. The value of the recycled garments is approximately $2 million per year and the proceeds are donated to environmental and women's associations.

· Vaillant Studio: Vaillant Studio is a French niche brand that designs and produces clothing from a wide range of unwanted fabrics, such as denim, which is recycled from old Levi's, or leather, which is recycled from the big fashion houses. and reworked and upcycled into new chic pieces.

Conclusion

To sum up, Chinese sustainable brands will focus more on sustainability in the garment making process compared to those in the west. For example, the amount of water and other dyeing chemicals used in the production of fabrics is controlled in order to reduce the amount of waste water discharged and to reduce environmental pollution. In addition, Chinese design brands prefer to promote the integration of traditional ethnic handcrafting methods. This is because in China, traditional handicrafts are more primitive and traditional craftsmen usually use more basic raw materials and produce items over a long period of time. Klee Klee, for example, uses vegetable dyeing, using the roots, stems, leaves, flowers and fruits of plants as raw materials for dyeing. They also never use any artificial dyes, giving the fabric the most original colours of animal or plant fibres. Chinese clothing brands choose to combine with traditional handicrafts to achieve sustainability goals, which can simultaneously promote Chinese national culture and allow some traditional techniques to be passed on. However, this is more time consuming, costly and labour-intensive than recreating clothes directly from second-hand fabrics and garments.

The sustainable clothing brands in Occident surveyed above, however, conclude that they are more adept at using some of their unwanted fabrics or dismantling second-hand clothing to recreate new garments. By recycling their unwanted fabrics and garments, I think they can be more effective in promoting sustainable development.

As can be seen from the results of the following questionnaire, the survey shows that the most of British people donate or resell clothes second-hand in their daily lives, and even consider the environmental aspects of buying new clothes. However, Chinese people's awareness of clothing sustainability is weak as nearly a third of them dispose of their old clothes by simply throwing them away, possibly due to the lack of recycling facilities in China. Furthermore, over 70% of people never buy second-hand clothes or sell their old clothes. This may be because Chinese people would stubbornly believe that second-hand clothes are not very clean, so the second-hand clothing market in China has not been developing very well.

However, nowadays, the global economic downturn due to the epidemic and the introduction of sustainable development strategies in various countries may boost the growth of the second-hand market in various countries. In addition, major clothing brands are currently launching sustainable clothing collections, so the reuse of second-hand or unwanted items may be a new trend.

At the same time, I would also like to call for sustainable clothing brands in China. We can also look at those stagnant fabrics and second-hand clothing, after all, China has a huge population base and countless fabrics and clothing are wasted every year, putting these to use and promoting a new cycle of discarded items can also achieve the goal of sustainability.