Featuring: Patagonia Worn Wear

Article
By Ollie Nicholas
22/02/19

Subtitle

How often do you recycle and reuse old clothing?

Contents

1. Sustain Your Style

2. Textile Waste

3. Patagonia Worn Wear

4. Worn Wear Stories

Tested to the Max in the Tropics – Tom Enderlin

The fashion industry is the second largest polluter after the fossil fuel industry. We are currently in an era of ‘fast fashion’, where we careless buy and throw away our clothes. Patagonia has always been a brand with an awareness for the environment and their initiative, ‘Worn Wear’ works to keep clothing in use for as long as possible to reduce overall strain on the environment.

Subtitle

How often do you recycle and reuse old clothing?

Contents

1. Sustain Your Style

2. Textile Waste

3. Patagonia Worn Wear

4. Worn Wear Stories

The fashion industry is the second largest polluter after the fossil fuel industry. We are currently in an era of ‘fast fashion’, where we careless buy and throw away our clothes. Patagonia has always been a brand with an awareness for the environment and their initiative, ‘Worn Wear’ works to keep clothing in use for as long as possible to reduce overall strain on the environment.
1. Sustain Your Style

The world is slowly starting to wake up and become conscious that we need to take responsibility for the planet that we live on. For too long, our society has been developed at the expensive of the natural world, rather than embracing it.

I was recently prompted to buy a reusable water bottle and to cut down on plastic in 2019 (a small yet important step for us all to make). This led me to think a bit more about where else we can cut down the strain that anthropocentrism has placed on the natural world. I wanted to think of a subject that we can all have an impact on, so I sought to identify an object that everybody uses.

Something obvious that we all use, is clothing. What is less obvious is how our clothing and our attitude towards clothing has an impact on the environment. In recent years, I’ve spoken to a lot of people about environmental issues, but I’ve never really spoken about clothing in this respect.

The fashion industry is actually the second largest polluter after the oil industry. It has an impact on a whole host of problems such as water consumption, pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and inhumane working conditions. From start to finish our fashion industry is having a detrimental impact on both the environment, and on the labour force in some of the worlds poorest countries. Clearly this is a problem that needs to be tackled at the source, by rethinking the entire process, rather than just pursuing the easy fixes.

Check out Sustain Your Style for more in depth information about the impact that the fashion industry has on the environment. Their site breaks down the environmental impacts and suggests ways in which we can all make a change to our attitudes on fashion.

The True Cost (Documentary)

2. Textile Waste

In our lifetime, we will all go through countless wardrobe changes. Our clothing is probably the most instantaneous and recognisable extension of our personality, yet we are so quick to carelessly buy and throw away what we wear. In the era of ‘fast fashion’, we on average have 5 times the amount of clothes as our grandparents would have had. We are trapped in an endless trend where garment quality is declining every year which makes our clothes cheaper. However, this means that our clothes immediately look faded, shapeless, or worn out, which then means we buy more. After all, with clothing now being cheaper, why not buy more? Even if our clothes are not worn out, we will probably still throw them out anyway to keep up with ever changing fashion trends.

In 2015 only 15% of textiles waste was recycled and 65% of all textiles waste in the US went straight into landfill. These statistics are generally representative of most western countries in the world today and this represents just another example of human ignorance to environmental issues. These issues have been staring us in the face for a long time and up until now, environmental concerns have sat at the bottom of the agenda.

If we don’t act now, this will just become another tragedy of the 21st century.

3. Patagonia Worn Wear

Patagonia has always been a brand that has had an awareness for the environment. The values of the company reflect the values of those that started it; groups of climbers and surfers whose style championed simplicity and utility.

Products are based on the principles of durability, function and repairability, which gives each item of clothing or equipment a life-span that can serve multiple generations, whilst limiting ecological impact.

This ethos has lead to the creation of Worn Wear, an initiative that aims to keep Patagonia gear in use for as long as possible; with the overall goal of reducing strain on the environment. Ultimately, it is of the upmost importance that products are made to a high quality to ensure a long life-span, which is something Patagonia works hard to achieve. However with Worn Wear, they go above and beyond, by creating an opportunity for people to repair and recycle old Patagonia gear. They have also created a space where used products can be resold. This not only stops the need for large amounts of new products to be made, it continues on the story of the items of clothing that have taken people all over the world.

4. Worn Wear Stories

Clothing can be so much more than just what we wear. It can be a line of continuity between the past and the future. Worn Wear are always keen to share the stories of various journeys that people have taken, and what becomes apparent is that recycling and reusing clothes goes beyond saving money, it is a culture. It is remembering the fact that clothes and equipment follow you all around the world. Your clothing will take you through so many life experiences and you owe it to yourself and the world around you, to hold onto some things. If you do have something that you can’t use anymore, pass it on and maybe it will take someone else around the world too.

Patagonia Worn Wear

Only a few broken ribs. Marcella Schlegel. Berkeley, CA. 

About six weeks ago Marcella was in a car accident while traveling in Mongolia with her husband. This down vest was shredded with shards of glass while Marcella’s husband needed 25 stitches. She herself suffered a collapsed lung and a few broken ribs. Marcella kept using the word “only” while describing the accident and injuries. When asked why she was using the word in such a peculiar way she commented that they could have easily all died.

Photo and story by: Kern Ducote

Six Seasons of Tree Planting. Robyn Klinkman. British Columbia, CA.

This thrifted patagonia fleece has kept me warm for 6 seasons (and counting) of tree planting. It has endured everything from the boggy swamps of northern Ontario to British Columbia’s coastal storms. More importantly, it has been with me to meet some of the most inspirational and open-minded people in my life. I am grateful that my favourite sweater can withstand Canadian bush work, and know that it will keep me warm on future adventures.

Photo by: Brenden Nobili

The Guy in the Patagonia Shirt. Andrew Frei. Longview, WA.

This year I thru-hiked the CDT. The routes I chose took me 2,800 miles across the backbone of America: from Canada to Mexico, from low burning deserts to the windswept peak of Mt Elbert. For nearly 5 months, day and night, I wore the same shirt. Not only did it keep me comfortable and safe in all weather, but at the end of my trip I was still getting compliments on it! My family wants me to frame it in a shadowbox, but I think it still has a few miles left. Thank you for making gear that lasts.

Photo and story by: Andrew Frei

Bibliography

Patagonia Worn Wear, Patagonia
Fashions Environmental Impacts, Sustain Your Style

Links

Sustain Your Style (https://www.sustainyourstyle.org/)
Patagonia Worn Wear (https://wornwear.patagonia.com/)
The True Cost (https://truecostmovie.com/)

Social

Patagonia Worn Wear (@wornwear)
Sustain Your Style (@sustainyourstyle)

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