Chapter 7 — full chapter
7.4.4 Shared Wardrobes
Use-oriented services decouple value from selling ever more new products by focusing on access and circulation. Resale platforms keep garments in use through second-hand marketplaces, supported by grading, cleaning and quality control. Rental and leasing models work especially well for occasion wear, workwear and uniforms, requiring robust fabrics, durable construction and efficient maintenance logistics. Take-back programmes create a route for users to return unwanted items into brand-managed streams that feed reuse, remanufacturing or recycling. Subscription wardrobes and wardrobe management services curate rotating assortments, while shared wardrobes facilitate peer-to-peer or community-based access. All these models depend on upstream design for multiple lifecycles and midstream capabilities to inspect, clean and repair items repeatedly.
Try it now
take one garment you own and map its potential second and third lives on a simple take-back-to-recovery flow: reuse/resale → repair → remanufacture → fibre-to-fibre recycling. For each step, note what your company (or a partner) would need to collect, inspect, clean and transport — this is the skeleton of a reverse-logistics cost model. Free tool: WRAP's circular business model canvas.