Digital wardrobes - a remedy to fashion waste?
Do you enjoy decluttering? When you see an ad for a Marie Kondo special on Netflix, do you drop everything and watch it right away? I do. Being mindful of my possessions started in 2013, when I took a Feng Shui course. This led me to read about being in harmony with one’s environment, and about minimalism. I downgraded my possessions, starting with kitchen ware, finishing with books. I decluttered my parent’s house. I sorted, discarded, sold and gifted objects. Looking at ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of an empty basement or attic gives me satisfaction to this day.
Photo by Parker Burchfield on Unsplash
And then I got introduced to the concept of digital wardrobe last summer. Tina, a participant of the Founder Institute Hong Kong (accelerator) program, pitched it. I was fascinated. To me, digital wardrobes take the concept of decluttering and being ‘in control’ of one’s clothes to another level as they provide you with a visual inventory of what you own.
Off of the top of my head, I can think of a number of use cases for digital wardrobes:
A busy management consultant travels for work four days per week and doesn’t recall how many clean shirts he / she has at home
An influencer constantly receives free bags to showcase on his / her Instagram page, stores them in their cardboard boxes once the picture has been taken — and is surprised by a closet full of bags months later
A teenager with a penchant for fast fashion goes on regular shopping sprees and is not aware of how many t-shirts and jeans he / she owns
My use case and prototype:
I travel a lot (long distance before the pandemic). During the past five years, I moved — from Frankfurt to Singapore to Berlin to Zurich to Berlin. My preference for moving light and my passion for online purchases of used clothes led me to tuck them away at my parents’ house. Using a digital wardrobe would make it much easier to remember all the clothes I own as well as the state they are in. Tina, the participant of the Founder Institute Hong Kong, was on to something!
Creating a prototype: I started taking pictures of my clothes and uploading them to my computer in a dedicated folder. Next step: Create an excel spreadsheet with hyperlinks to the pictures.
With respect to defining the market potential of digital wardrobes, one would have to define the target group (executives who travel for work? fashion influencers? teenagers with a penchant for fast fashion?), and conduct customer interviews to determine product-market fit. During the customer interviews, I’d make sure to share about the product and probe whether there is a willingness to pay for it.
I have come across two existing solutions I like:
Storey, a digital wardrobe created by two former Google employees
Save Your Wardrobe, an app which helps extend the lifespan of clothes (created by Hasna Kourda out of London).
In particular Hasna’s Save Your Wardrobe app helps remedy a negative aspect of consumerism: textile waste. According to the European Environment Agency, consumers in the EU discard 11 kg of textile waste per year (2021). As of 2019, consumers worldwide owned 136 items of apparel (according to Statista). This number is probably much higher for consumers in the Western world.
I know that using a digital wardrobe tool (my own or a fancy app) would help me buy less “new” clothes (new or second hand items). It would also serve as a reminder of the state that my clothes are in. I’d schedule a visit to the local tailor. My conclusion: I will finish my make-shift digitale wardrobe. And most likely, download one of the digital wardrobe apps to test and compare.
Sources:
European Environment Agency. Brief: “Textiles in Europe’s circular economy”. Published in November 2019, updated in 2021. Link.
Statista: “Average number of apparel items owned by consumers worldwide from 2017 to 2019*”. Published in January 2002 by P. Smith. Link.