We wear less than half of the clothes we store. (Credit: Adobe Stock)
In June 2025, the Senate adopted an anti “fast fashion” law which must counter the rise of ultra ephemeral fashion. Beyond its environmental and social impact impacts, the latter directly threatens French industry and textile trade. In this context, the Ecological Transition Agency published, in June 2025, a study on the practices of purchasing and use of French in terms of clothing. The stake? Better understand the engines of our growing overconsumption.
For several years, the clothing trade has been going through a crisis in France, marked by rectification, judicial liquidations, restructuring, employment safeguard plans and disposal plans. In 2023 alone, the sector lost 4,000 jobs in the country, according to the Alliance du Commerce.
Despite this hardly brilliant context, the number of new clothes sold continues to increase: 3.5 billion in 2024 against 3.1 billion in 2019, according to the 2024 refashion barometer. This represents 10 million parts purchased every day in France.
We have data on the clothing market and on the intrinsic sustainability of textiles, but behaviors related to purchases and the use of textiles remain unknown. This makes their durability extrinsic difficult to understand. It is a question of better understanding the factors which, apart from wear, lead the French to no longer wear a garment.
Of course, trends are taking shape. We know that new consumption practices have emerged and others have strengthened. Growing success of ultra ephemeral fashion, on the one hand, rising in power of the second hand, on the other, in particular via online platforms.
However, the environmental impact of the textile sector represents 4 to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But to stimulate changes, it is essential to understand what is at stake.
This is why the Ecological Transition Agency (ADEME) led, with the observatory of society and consumption (Obsoco), a survey of 4,000 people on their practices of purchasing and use of clothing.
This study was refined by a behavioral approach to 159 people, 40 of whom were also the subject of an ethnographic approach at home.
Half of our clothes stored and almost never used
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Despite the substantial volume of clothes sold (42 pieces on average per person and per year, according to the Refashion figures), the French are not aware of the total quantity of clothes they buy and that they have in their cupboards, reveals the survey.
They thus declare up to twice as much as they really have. Thus, while the average declarations is 79 pieces per person, the observation reaches the 175 rather.
More than half of these clothes are stored and not used. In French cabinets, 120 million clothes bought more than three months ago have never been worn, or only once or twice.
Not only do they underestimate the volume of this stock, but only 35% of French people consider that the amount of clothes they have exceeded their needs. Only 19% think their clothing purchases are excessive. There is a real dichotomy between the excess of home clothes and the questioning of the act of purchase.
A minority of large consumers
This paradoxical perception is problematic, since it slows down the achievement of the first objective, namely to reduce the flow of clothing.
On this, the study made it possible to draw up a profile of buyers and highlighted that a minority of large consumers (20 to 25%) carried the market. Rather young, urban and sensitive to the identity and aesthetic dimension of clothing, these people express a desire to regularly renew their wardrobe.
Contrary to what one might think, the shops remain the main place of purchase, despite a strong surge in online sales, first among the oldest but also among young people.
The great evolution of the market in recent years is that it has been flooded by ultra ephemeral fashion giants, such as Shein and Temu.
This second-generation ultra ephemeral mode is distinguished from ephemeral first generation fashion (H&M, Zara, Primark being some of the most emblematic brands of this segment), that it competes, by its lower price range, its rate of renewal of the more frequent ranges, its marketing aggressiveness and the broader extent of its offer.
Buy more, cheaper … and sometimes unnecessarily
Today, despite its omnipresence on the Internet and its meteoric ascent, it is, at this stage, acclaimed only by 25 % of French people (against 45 % for ephemeral first generation fashion). It is mainly popular with a young, feminine audience, with rather modest incomes, in which is identified a slight rural dominant.
In the speech of respondents, the choice to turn to these brands is clearly justified by being able to buy a lot and to renew regularly thanks to attractive prices and a wide choice.
Those who frequent them are twice as many to declare that the volume of their purchases has increased. The rate of purchases deemed unnecessary a posteriori is also greater in these consumers. The rebounded effect of consumption, linked to ever lower prices, is clearly identified here.
The second hand in full swing
In parallel with this ultra ephemeral mode, another more virtuous consumption practice has experienced a revival in recent years: the purchase of second -hand.
Based on re -use, this purchase method allows you to extend the duration of use of our clothes and therefore avoid or repel the purchase of a new habit. This makes sense, since most of the environmental impact of a product is due to its manufacture.
The practice was mainly popular with the development of online platforms, where it was previously confined to thrift stores and flea markets. An undisputed leader in the second hand online, Vinted, has established himself. Today it captures 90% of consumers who go through the Internet for their purchases of used clothing.
A double -edged practice
By buying second -hand, the majority of consumers do not seek an alternative source of supply for environmental concerns. For many of them, Vinted and the competing platforms are only an additional supplier, complementary to the new market. And, in particular, ultra ephemeral fashion: we often find Shein or Temu customers on second -hand platforms, in a very clear consumer logic.
The products that find buyers on these sites have often been very little worn: they only lived between 20 and 30% of the “normal” lifespan of a garment. This means that the rotation of goods increases, without guarantee that the habit, despite its multiple owners, be brought to wear.
In addition, the fruit of the resale of second -hand clothes serves in 50% of cases to buy other clothes, or is allocated to other expense stations. The risk would be for the approach to supply a consumerist loop. To prevent the second hand from having these rebound effects, the challenge, for consumers, is therefore to reconcile re-use and sobriety, by limiting incoming flows and increasing the intensity of use of clothes, that is to say by using them more often and longer.
But that implies questioning the notion of need. Today, in clothing matters, it is apprehended in a very extensive manner and greatly exceeds the strictly functional need: it overlaps the needs of sociability, social integration, identification and distinction. This must be questioned, in particular given the ever more powerful marketing and advertising methods.
By Pierre Galio
(Head of the “Consumption and Prevention” service, ADEME Agency for Ecological Transition)
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