What did the average household spend $1,700 on in 2010?
What do women spend 287 days of their life deciding on?
What industry employs over 225,345 US citizens and, in 2010, almost reached a worldwide revenue of $2,560 trillion?
Ding! Ding! Ding! You’ve guessed it!
Clothing.
It’s a big part of our lives even though it might seems pretty basic, I mean it is pretty much a piece of cloth that we use to cover ourselves. But despite its perceived simplicity, we wear it (almost) everyday, it protects our skin, expresses our personality, and can impact our mood.
Nethertheless, these are the same clothes that can give our skin rashes, that can make us feel uncomfortable, and put us in a bad mood for the rest of the day. And do you know where all these problems arise from? It’s just a single factor. A single factor that is often left out when designing clothing. A single factor we often overlook when shopping, and only realize after our transaction is finished.
Function.
You’d think with all the fashion designers out there, with about 19,300 of them in the US, there’d be someone with a brain. Someone who would think about making clothing practical and suitable for daily lives.
Can you count the number of times you’ve sat down and had you pants rise way too low? Can you count the number of times you couldn’t bend your arms in jacket sleeves? How about all those times that shirt kept giving you that itch that just wouldn’t go away.
And how do you react in these situations? Do you get annoyed? Flustered? Depressed? Angry? Good! This is exactly how you should be reacting.
With over 7 billion people on this planet, there’s a lot of clothing. It’s worn. It creates problems. It’s thrown away. But you know what isn’t happening? It isn’t being redesigned.
You’d think that all those fashion designers were blind. The problems are right in front of their faces and guess what they’re doing? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They advert the problems by going back to the same patterns, same fabrics, same everything.
We need a revolution. A clothing revolution. One that would change the way clothing is produced. One that would give our appendixes flexibility and comfort. One that would make clothing functional.

This realization first became apparent to me after seeing the ads for Trendy Top. Have you seen those commercials?
“Introducing Trendy Top! The top that’s not! Trendy Top is the specially designed tee just for your hips. Just like a camisole covers you chest, Trendy Top covers your waist and all the rest!”
Well in case you don’t know what I’m talking about, Trendy Top is one of those “As seen on TV” products. It’s designed to look like you’re wearing an extra layer under your shirt, but thats just to disguise it’s real purpose. Really, it covers any skin that might be exposed if you’re shirt is to short or if your pants are too low. It’s a great idea but why should we even need it? Why can’t our clothes be designed so we don’t have problems like this in the first place. Can’t shirts be made longer? Can’t pants be made higher? Can’t clothing just be made functional?

Obviously a designer noticed this problem of too low pants and too short shirts, that’s why the Trendy Top was created. It’s good to know that at least someone is thinking about the problems we face with clothing. But really what that designer should’ve done is redesigned pants and shirts. Instead they made things even more complicated by adding a whole other component to the equation. That designer was this close to creating clothing that was functional, and yet missed it by a long shot.
Now I’m sure there are some skeptics out there (you know who you are). You’re the ones going, “What is this crazy girl saying, doesn’t she know that there is functional clothing? Doesn’t she know about bullet proof vests or those gloves made for touch screens?” And yes, I do know. But I’m not talking about bullet proof vests or fancy gloves. They might be functional, but they’re a whole different type of functional. Those examples are the “premium-grade” functional, whereas I’m just talking about “old school” functional. You know, the type functional meant for simple everyday tasks like going to school or work. The type of functional that’s not often remembered.
Of course if you really wanted functional clothing you could go to a place like Eastern Mountain Sports, REI, L.L.Beans, or any other sports stores. But there are problem with clothing from stores like those. One being the fact that you might have to substitute style for quality. Another problem being the hefty pricing. But if that doesn’t sound like a big deal to you then okay, go for it. Those stores would be the perfect places for you to find clothing. Let me know how it works, going into the office looking like you’re going for a hike. After all, style does play a key role in the function of clothing.
This brings us to the other side, beautiful clothing with absolutely no practicality. You could call this, “fashion”.
Ultimately, clothing is fashion, a way of expression, or even an art form. So, in the name of art, we often abandon comfort for beautifully woven dress, and cute heels. Even if those dress make us walk like statues, and the heels make us feel like we’re on stilts. If we really care about art, and one’s ability to express themselves, why should we care about comfort or function? Why should someone have to make their artwork meet standards?
But really the question is, why can’t we have both? Why can’t we have stylish clothes that are also practically for daily life? Why isn’t there a happy medium between function and style?
Even cars have the combination of style and function. Just take the Chrysler minivan, or the Ford pickup truck, for example. Both are reliable cars, design to withstand the elements, seat many people, and get us through our day. And guess what? They have the added details of style and luxury, giving them the best of both worlds. We don’t feel uncomfortable driving in them, and we like the way they look. So then why aren’t our clothes like our cars?
And you know what happens when we don’t feel comfortable in our own clothes? We don’t wear them. It’s a simple fix to the problems we face, but at the same time it creates even more problems down the line. Pollution for example.
There are two main reasons for how our clothes cause pollution, and both relate to their function.
1) Throwing out clothing we don’t wear.
2) Throwing out clothing that doesn’t last.
Let’s spice things up and start with reason number two.
Rip! Rip! Riiippp! Your pant seams split, your shirt tears, and all other pieces of clothing are covered in holes. At this point, why even bother keeping them? They’d be more of use in the trash. So that’s exactly where they go. Not that big of a deal right? It’s only a few pairs of pants and maybe a couple shirts. It’s not like the few shirts you throw away are going to create much waste. But what you don’t realize is that you’re not the only one doing this, almost every other human on this planet is doing the exact same thing. Over time, this adds up to a lot of shirts and a lot pants growing mold in landfills. More pants, more shirts, and more mold we don’t need polluting our Earth.
Now to reason number one.






When you’re clothing isn’t functional, it creates many problems for you. So, you don’t wear it. When you don’t wear the clothing in our closets, it takes up much needed space and makes clutter. So, you throw it away. And once again, more pants, more shirts, more mold, more pollution.
The US Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 5.2% of the total trash generated in 2011 was made up textiles. Okay, I know what you’re thinking, when you hear 5.2% it doesn’t sound like that big of a percentage. But when I tell you that the 5.2% is equal to 13.1 million tons, it puts things into proportion. So when I say that out of those 13.1 million tons, the agency estimated that 13.9% of all the different types of textiles were clothing, 13.9% sounds quite large.
Think about it, 13.9% of those 13.1 million pounds of textiles are made up of the clothes we threw away in 2011. That’s a lot of clothing. Almost 1.8 million pounds to be exact.
But it’s not our faults that we’re forced to throw our clothing into these landfills. Even though shirts are said to have an average life expectancy of 2 years, easily stained material, itchy fabric, and effortlessly torn material, forces us to abandon them sooner.

With all this trash being generated by clothing, the US EPA estimates that if clothing was recycled, it would have the same impact as removing one million cars from US highways. But what could be even better than recycling? Reducing. How could we reduce the waste made by non-functional clothing? Make clothing last longer, feel comfortable, and look nice. Make clothing functional.
If clothing was functional:
1) We would wear it (meaning we would keep it in our closet instead of the trash).
2) It would be durable (meaning it would last us a while’s worth of use).
3) Our landfills would be cleaner (meaning these statistics would no longer prove relevant).
4) Our dreams would be fulfilled (meaning there would be no need for anything like Trendy Top)
If everyone on this planet own just a single shirt, a single jacket, and a single pair a pants there would be over 21 million articles of clothing being worn. But let’s be realistic, people own way more clothing than this. According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2008, the average American owned 92 articles of clothing. Not including underwear or pajamas. So if you continued that average around the world, (92 x 7 million) that’s, give or take, 644 million articles of clothing. Now, maybe that estimation has a lot of flaws, considering how much assumption was made and all the factors left out, but it still gives a basic idea of how much clothing there is.
Now how much of all of that clothing do you think is functional? None? Maybe if you’re lucky, there are some pieces here and there that you could consider functional. But there isn’t enough. Not enough of the clothing out there is stylish and makes us want to wear it. Not enough of the clothing out there comfortably gets us through our day, and make sense in its design. Not enough of the clothing out there is functional.
It could make a person cry, just thinking about it. Something as simple as clothing, creating so many problems. It causes discomfort. It causes waste. It causes ugliness. It’s even sadder to think that all these problems could be resolved, and yet, they aren’t.
There have been a few signs of progress. The Trendy Top. Duluth Trading Co.’s Longtailed T Shirts. The Snuggie. But these are just the baby steps in the pilgrimage to creating practical clothing. These are just a few of the planet’s 7 million people trying to do something for this cause.
But it’s not enough. It will never be enough.
Not until we can walk through the stores of a mall knowing we will walk away with clothing we’re happy with. Not until we can sit down without worrying about our pants being too low. Not until we have flexibility in our own clothing.
So I urge you, if you have experienced situations like these in that past, if you have grasped any of the ideas stated, if you have a desire for functional clothing, get up. Pick up a pen. Turn on your brain. Change our clothes, make them functional. Make the clothing for our future. The clothing of our future.