Ask HN: How would you do renewable clothing as a service? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How would you do renewable clothing as a service?

3 pointslgkk6 comments

I'm really into renewable X and sustainability, so this is something I'm personally interested in and I see so many people doing subscription based fashion.

I saw a few years ago an ad at H&M about their Loooop machine that they use to renew clothing. Could it be possible to make clothes shopping fun, fitted and tailored, and environmentally friendly? Could even leverage AI to come up with designs when there are various strand colors and textile types.

Now, I have no idea how the Loooop machine works or how exactly something like this _could_ work, but I don't think its impossible. However, I do know that I see a lot of people upset about fast fashion, and I personally go through a lot of socks and t shirts each year.

I have experience forecasting for retail planning for a big clothes retailer, but that's about the extent of my personal experience with this industry. (I'm a software engineer these days)

Could even be on demand- as seasons change, the used clothes can be sent in and "traded" for heavier socks, or maybe the undershirts are turned into neckwarmers and the undies into thermals. Turn 3 pairs of socks into a hat, or something else.

Thrift stores already exist, both brick-and-mortar, and online. I use them, but they're a small piece (12.3%) of the overall clothing market, presumably because most Americans prefer the convenience of finding exactly what they want - new - or they dislike the idea of wearing used clothes.

The Loooop machine feels like a greenwashing gimmick. Doing any work in the US must be more expensive than the total cash (not environmental) cost of manufacturing and shipping a new clothing item from Bangladesh or Viet Nam.

I mean, you could probably build a small business and fund it through a big retailer's philanthropy budget; that's not a bad idea. But I can't see any way to do it at meaningful (environment-changing) scale.

The most effective environmental strategy would be to have the Kardashians (or whoever) pivot to only shopping at Goodwill and tweeting about it. But that's not going to happen.

Environmentally, just buy cotton clothes from a thrift store, use them for years, and then give them back to a thrift store or clothing donation bins or use them as rags. And don't buy plastic clothes. Clothes are so cheap because of third world labor, and there's no real way to make recycling them economically viable. It's like plastic bottles, way easier and cheaper to make them new.

If you're a luxury brand like H&M or Patagonia though, you can just offer it as a cost of doing business and recycle some tiny percentage of what you sell. Looks like H&M shreds theirs. Patagonia offers free repairs and also downcycles used plastic clothing (which they sell a lot of) into sleeping bags, bottles, etc. But Terracycle tried that a much wider level and never really made a difference.

Mostly it's just greenwashing. Ecoconsumerism just ends up being a marketing tactic that preys on people's guilt without doing much for the planet. I'd argue most recycling is that way, clothes or not. It's a guilt reduction service, not waste reduction.

Random thoughts and observations: - Product; 'modular' clothing. where the parts / panels can be relatively easily replaced by anyone. And thus also combined in diffent ways.

- product / service: patchwerk clothes, combine the good parts.

- celebrate mending of clothing, celebrate blemishes as 'character'.

- redyeing (with natural dye's)

- Education: there was a british tv program where they put a mix of young people in the shoes of people in 3rd world countries; having to live and work for just a short time in sweatshops and things like that. It was very powerful. Show that stuff in school, or better yet make it a schooltrip!

- Unreasonable prices are a big part of this (negative externalities), but we don't want to price out people with less income.

- Observation / problem: fastfashion floods thriftstores, meaning it's more difficult to find quality items, and it just becomes part of the fastfashion cycle.

I don’t mean to shit on your idea, because I think in some ways it’s a cool idea, but I think for it to work, you’d have to also try to encourage a pretty massive cultural shift in the way people consume fashion. Fast fashion is a massive problem, but the reason it’s a massive problem is because so many people don’t actually give much thought to the environmentally devastating impacts, and a lot of people just want the instant gratification of having the new thing right now! People who are already looking for ways to be more sustainable are likely already doing things such as shopping at thrift stores and repurposing worn out things themselves. Additionally, some of the bigger brands do actually take back their old stuff, and either repurpose it, or resell it, branded as things like “sustainable” or “conscious”. There are also websites that are specifically for selling second hand things from brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Hermes and the likes… sometimes for more than it was originally sold for. I personally would rather buy something secondhand, than have it go through another stage of repurposing that actually can also end up increasing carbon footprints etc…

Honestly?

I would lean in to some of the ideas coming out of Japan. Like a business dying old clothes black, to give them a new look [1]. There are also ways of patching holes with decorative fabric / elaborate darning that have their own aesthetic (and there are plenty of sewing/CNC embroidery/quilting machines that let you do this at medium scale)

[1] https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/zerowaste/20230714/209...

https://www.sculpteo.com/en/3d-learning-hub/applications-of-...

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