How many new clothes do you buy

in a year? Apparently Downunderites buy an average of fifty-five. In the UK the number is apparently around thirty-three. 

That is what I have been told but I find it hard to believe. Who has the money to buy that many clothes? Is it why some people claim to be poor? Why do three hundred thousand tonnes of clothing end up in landfill in this country every year?

Yes, I threw out some clothing last year. I threw out some underwear that was, in anyone's book, no longer within its use by date. I also passed on a t-shirt. My BIL now uses it as "rag" in his workshop. That was it. One pair of jeans went into a rag recycle bin because they had worn through at the knees and had paint splashes. I am too old a cat for that "worn" look when it reaches that point.

I tend to wear my clothes until they can no longer be worn with any honour or decency. I do not have a wardrobe full of unworn clothing. Even my BIL muttered something about this when we were moving things from one place to another.

Of course I did not need a wardrobe of "work clothes". Working from home meant I just had to look clean most of the time. I do not own a dress. I did not need one. 

We finally gave away the Senior Cat's tweed jacket. It was almost seventy years old. Someone else is actually using it now. I think he would be pleased by that.

So what on earth are other people doing? Why are they "dumping" so much? What are they buying?

The clothes must be cheap I suppose. They will come from chain stores or on-line places and are made in China or Vietnam or India or some other country with cheap labour. The materials they are made from are often artificial and do not wear well. We know all that but people continue to buy them. They are "fashionable".

A friend who likes to make her own clothes was bemoaning how hard it was to get "good cotton fabric" recently. The really good fabric can be very, very expensive. Even I know that. Expensive it might be but she still wears classic clothing she made many years ago. It has not proved to be that expensive over all and it looks good.

Of course it is likely that most of us, including me, cannot do anything like that but a lucky few can.

And sometimes we can be lucky. I was passing a "factory outlet" store one day when a shirt caught my eye. It was a "sample" that had apparently gone no further into production. Perhaps it was just a bit too "classic"? I do not know. I will never know. It was my size and, if I was even more careful for the next few weeks, I could just afford it and the second sample in the different colour. I bought both of them.

They were, dear reader, made from Liberty fabric. That was thirty-seven years ago. I can still wear them and I see no reason to send them to land fill because they are little faded.