As a child growing up in Tunisia, Hasna Kourda was taught by her grandparents how to make and care for her clothes.
“We come from a small island in the south, where everything had to go in circles – water, food and clothing,” says Ms. Kourda. “We learned how to make things from the first step.”
When she moved to Europe to study at a French business school in the early 2000s, Ms. Kourda was shocked by the amount of clothing people were buying.
“I naively thought that people have incredible social lives and need all these things. Then I realized that there is a very strong throwaway culture.”
If people don’t throw away the clothes after wearing them just a few times, they often leave them at the back of the closet never to wear again. A global study from a few years ago found that people don’t wear at least half of their clothes.
Ms. Kourda could never shake her discomfort at all this waste, and after working for various companies in the fashion industry for a few years, she decided to do something about it.
In 2017 and based in London at the time, she began raising funds to start her own fashion tech company to help people make the most of their clothes.
Launched in 2020, Save Your Wardrobe is an app that allows users to manage their clothes by creating a digital version of every item in their closet.
Garments are scanned, identified and stored virtually via the app. Then the app can remind you of everything you own in hopes of repurposing unworn clothes.
It also connects people to local services like dry cleaners, places to donate items they no longer need, and repair and alteration shops to extend the life of their garments.
The Save Your Wardrobe app launched in March 2020, just as the pandemic hit. It has now been downloaded more than 100,000 times, says Ms. Kourda.
Luxury fashion website FarFetch is an investor, and Save Your Wardrobe has also partnered with another such retailer, Zalando, to launch a clothing care and repair initiative. The app is currently free to use, but a premium version with advanced features is in the pipeline.
Rachel Kan, sustainability expert and founder of consulting firm Circular Earth, believes that the cost of living crisis will push many people to buy fewer clothes. “There’s going to be a big shift towards minimalism,” she says.
Lin Kowalska is a Swedish entrepreneur and the founder of Popswap, a clothing swapping app. She believes technology companies like hers offer a way to lessen the impact of the fashion industry on the planet.
The magnitude of this impact on the world environment is surprisingly high. According to the United Nations, the fashion industry is responsible for between eight and ten percent of annual global CO2 emissions.
Millions of tons of textile waste are created every year, and every second the equivalent of a truckload of old clothes is burned or buried in landfills, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. This organization is committed to more textile recycling.
Popswap is a social media platform where users can show off their outfits, connect with people whose style they like and swap clothes with them. “Just like on Tinder, they bond with each other and match up in style and swap outfits,” explains Ms. Kowalska.
Previously in marketing, she came up with the idea for Popswap after talking to friends about accessing each other’s closets. Ms. Kowalska then asked technical developers she knew to create an app to help her and her friends swap clothes.
Launched in August 2020, Popswap has since gained 40,000 users, with more than 100,000 clothing items swapped through the app to date.
Most of Popswap’s current users live in Sweden and swap clothes with people who live nearby. Ms. Kowalska intends to expand the app to cities around the world, including London.
The majority of the app’s users are aged 16 to 25, also known as Generation Z. “Gen Z loves it,” says Ms. Kowalska.
Popswap is free to use, although the company makes its money through premium subscriptions and in-app advertising. Popswap has also hosted clothing swap events during Stockholm and Berlin fashion weeks.
“If we can find a way to make money from fashion without producing new clothes, that’s the solution,” says Ms. Kowalska. “To do this, we have to work together across industries and be more technology-heavy.”
Young people are embracing second-hand fashion, as evidenced by the demographic age demographics of popswap’s primary users. This is also evidenced by reports. More than three-quarters of 16-24 year olds in the UK have either swapped fashion items with others or would be interested in doing so, a 2020 study found.
At the same time, mass-produced, cheap, poor-quality clothing that is now often referred to as “fast fashion” remains popular with cash-strapped shoppers.
A 2022 report by ThredUp, a US-based second-hand fashion website, says that while used clothing sales have surged, 59% of fast fashion shoppers say it’s a habit that is difficult to give up.
To help people quit fast fashion, ThredUp recently launched an ad campaign featuring Stranger Things actress Priah Ferguson.
Anthony Marino, ThredUp’s president, says the company’s mission is to inspire people to think second-hand first. “We believe the sustainable fashion revolution is well underway, thanks to disruptors like ThredUp, which have given consumers easy ways to participate in the circular economy,” he adds.
Founded in 2009, ThredUp has grown into one of the largest online resale sites for women’s and children’s clothing with more than 35,000 brands.
The company buys used clothing for cash or store credit, and then lists the clothing for sale on its website.
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When the company went public in March 2021, it was valued at $1.3 billion (US$1 billion). And last year, the company partnered with luxury brand Tommy Hilfiger on a resale program.
“Our ultimate goal is to keep as many garments out of landfill as possible,” says Mr. Marino. “The more consumers, governments and other industry players put pressure on fashion companies that overproduce single-use fashion, the more they will be encouraged to change for the better.”
Circular Earth’s Ms Kan says apparel tech companies like Save Your Wardrobe, Popswap and ThredUp continue to play a crucial role in reducing pollution and waste in the fashion industry. “We need to be able to recirculate fashion in an effective and economical way, and fashion tech companies are going to have a really big role in that,” she says.
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