The Lifecycle of a Garment

Look at what you’re wearing today. Touch the fabric. Look at the details. Remember how you put it on. Does it have a zip? Buttons? Is it new or an old favourite?

Think for a moment. How much do you know about how it was made?

It probably all started with a designer having an idea and drawing it. Next they created a detailed technical pack so a first prototype could be made.

Simultaneously somewhere else in the world fibres were being made. Perhaps from cotton farmed using lots of water and pesticides or one of the estimated 200 million trees chopped down each year to make viscose. Or even entirely man made from petrochemicals like polyester fibres.

Whatever the starting point, the fibres were spun into threads, bleached, dyed, finished and sent to mills to be woven or knitted into fabrics.

Meanwhile our sketch is being transformed by pattern cutters, technicians and seamstresses into a garment that can be tried on and hopefully chosen by a brand to be part of their collections.

Next it is fitted and adjusted by designers and garment technologists, while buyers and merchandisers are deciding how much to sell it for, which factory to make it in and how many to buy.

Then the factory will develop patterns to fit each different size and buy all the fabrics, threads, buttons and zips. Teams of people will cut the pattern pieces out in the fabric, stitch our garments together and add all the details that make them unique and desirable.

Then they’re pressed, their quality is checked and they are packed ready to begin their onward journey in a truck or a ship, perhaps sailing halfway around the world.

Finally our well travelled garment will arrive in a warehouse, be unloaded and sent out to stores or photographed ready for sale online.

This is where you join the process. Maybe you saw something on an influencer yesterday and discovered it online. Maybe as you’re reading this it’s being packed up and handed over to a courier. If you’re going somewhere special, did you order three or four things to try on so

you could choose which one to keep?

Often clothes sold online are ordered and returned a couple of times before they are finally bought.

But you love it and decide to keep it. Maybe you wear it straight away or save it for that special event. If you’re an average consumer in the UK you’ll only wear it seven times before you no longer want it.

So you resell or swap it with a friend and it finds someone else who wears it until it’s found crumpled on the floor and sent to the charity shop. Here it is rescued by a designer who upcycles it, embroiders it and resells it to owner number three..