From "Around 15 million garments per week flow through Kantamanto, one of the largest secondhand clothing markets in the world...." by Ann Althouse, quoting another article from The Nation (click through for the links.)
The original article is addressing a First World problem of too many westerners buying too many clothes which they don't wear long enough before discarding. One of those pieces where you can conjure a problem but it is kind of hard to get excited about if you are of the non-totalitarian disposition and can't get enamored of coercive solutions which such worrywarts always turn to first.
Reading it reminded me of a striking graph I blogged about 5-10 years ago (but which at the moment I cannot find.) The Bureau of Labor statistics tracks expenditures by class (food, housing, apparel, etc.) as well as age and sex. Not surprisingly male apparel expenditures were about half that of females.
Someone looked at male expenditures on apparel by age. There was a reasonable rise from the twenties to, I recollect, the fifties. By the time they hit fifty though, it plummeted. They just quit buying clothes very often. It conjured a mental image of men totally uninterested in fashion, fully focused on functionality, and with a stocked wardrobe of Dad's clothes of some sustainable durability.
Given this article, I guess they were socially conscious pioneers.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment