Oxfam's State of Style 2026 report, released on 1 September 2026, reveals the disparity between the amount of clothing purchased and worn.
According to Oxfam's State of Style 2026 report, it is estimated that 32% of clothing in UK closets has not been worn in the past year, while more than 40% of respondents confessed to wearing some clothing once.
Oxfam claims that the water used to make the clothes not worn in Britain could be sufficient to serve one million individuals with drinking water for their entire lives. Clothing that we seldom wear still requires water, energy, raw materials and labour costs to produce.
The process of clothing production involves many steps, including growing cotton, dyeing it, sewing clothes and then transporting them to stores. All of the costs mentioned above are incurred even before the final consumers wear the purchased clothes.
Even if a product is never used, the production costs still apply. People share many outfits through online platforms and mobile apps, which may encourage some consumers to purchase clothes without considering whether they really need them, which results in more clothes piling up in a closet.
Donating the unwanted clothes allows for a second round of use. However, it does not resolve the issue of overconsumption in the clothing industry. Some items cannot be resold or reused anyway, ending up as waste.
The solution is really quite simple. All we need to do is repair what we already have, buy less, buy better and reuse whatever we already have. When we buy quality items, we actually help prolong our consumption cycle, as we will not have to replace clothes as often.
The issue here is not really that we have a whole closet full of clothes but how common it has become to add new clothes even when we already have plenty.
The most reasonable choice is to make the most of the garments we already have instead of buying new ones.
Sources: Oxfam’s State of Style 2026 report
Oxfam’s Second Hand September 2026 campaign
Oxfam’s official press release (1 September 2026)
