FASHION The fashion sector is currently characterized by an overflow of garments, representing enormous amounts of resources that are currently being used for a very short time and then discarded. Thus, many garments are caught up as deadstock in retail and warehouses and in the textile waste sector. The DK based NGO, the Danish Consumer Council THINK, revealed that an estimated 677 tonnes of unsold garments are skipped to the waste sector every year (THINK, 2021). The problem has not lessened with the lockdowns of Covid-19, when extensive amounts of garments arrived in Denmark for the various collections and pre-collections and were left unsold. On average, Danes are discarding 36,000 tonnes of textiles per year (Watson, Trzepacz & Pedersen, 2018). Out of these, 30% are being resold in Denmark, but only 3% are believed to really generate economic value. The remaining 70% are being sorted mainly in Eastern Europe. Out of these, 11% is currently being incinerated, while 19% is downcycled, which leaves 40% to be sold on the global resale market. Furthermore, Danes are estimated to swop and resell 7,500 tonnes of garments among themselves on informal markets such as private flea markets, social media and in their social circles, and yet a further 1,600 tonnes are estimated to be resold on online resale platforms such as Trendsales, DBA, or Facebook (Watson, Trzepacz & Pedersen, 2018). These numbers include workwear, which was also part of this project. For many reasons (amongst others the pandemic), DFD (United Laundries), LEFTOVER and NYBO Workwear were active in a series of knowledge-sharing workshops but were less active in the actual research projects. However, it was inspirational to share insights from those two areas, as workwear represents extensive user-led testing and product development that has been lost with the outsourcing of most product development and production of fashion
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