Courtney Dootson
Graphic Design Student
The lifecycle of clothing
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Clothing maintenance
The human body sheds skin cells and body oils also meaning sweat, urine, and faeces and from the outside, sun damage, moisture, abrasion, and dirt, which can ruin the clothes that we wear. Most people wear their clothes until they fall apart, they're too small, or stains don't come out, but that is why we use dry cleaning or to repair our clothes, we mend them by sewing them or knitting them etc. With leather though, it's difficult to repair and it's hard to get a stain out.
Cleaning, ironing and storing
From early methods of pounding clothes against rocks in running streams, to the latest in electronic washing machines and dry cleaning, hot water, chemical cleaning and ironing will always be the traditional way to clean clothes. Most clothes are ironed before they are worn to remove wrinkles and believed to look clean, fresh, and neat. Clothing like knitted materials are not readily wrinkled, and do not need ironing. when everything is done and ironed, clothes are hung on hangers to keep them fresh, that's one reason why clothing shops hang there clothing. If they were always folded, they can prevent creases and a lot of people don't want to see that when purchasing the clothing.
Non ironing and mending
A resin used for making non-wrinkle shirts releases formaldehyde, which is a naturally occurring organic compound with the formula CH2O and in 1999, a study showed the effect of washing on the formaldehyde levels found that after 6 months after washing, 7 of 27 shirts shown that it was a safe limit for direct skin exposure. For mending clothes, tailors would mend rips with thread and make them seem like the tear was invisible and wasn't there at all.
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Now-a-days, clothing is just an item and is not as seen as art that much. Mass-manufactured clothing is less expensive than spending time mending it, which proves people are willing to spend less money on buying clothes than spending more money to know that you're not being mugged off. To be honest, it is easy to use a sewing kit than buying the same top and wasting fabric as well.
Recycling
Anything can be recycled from quilts to shoes and paper to plastic bottles; it's not hard to give away the clothes that you don't want and can't fit in anymore. Some charities will give you money in return for your clothes, where as there are others things that can help recycle clothes like thrift shops, flea markets and online auctions. Used clothing are often collected on an industrial scale to be sorted and shipped for re-use in poorer countries and globally, used clothes are worth billions and wasting them is a waste of fabric and money.