The next big thing in fashion? Not washing your clothes

[ProudLib72]

Unbound is part of a broader wave of startups designing clothes that require less laundering. An eco-friendly brand called Pangaia, which launched late last year and already counts celebrities like Jaden Smith and Justin Bieber as fans, creates $85 seaweed fiber T-shirts that are treated with peppermint oil to keep the shirts fresher longer between washes. The brand estimates that this will save about 3,000 liters of water over the course of a lifetime, compared to a regular cotton T-shirt. Then there is menswear label Wool & Prince, which creates everything from $128 oxford shirts to $42 boxer briefs out of wool, all designed to be washed infrequently. Last year, the company launched a sister womenswear brand called Wool& that makes dresses that can be worn for 100 days straight without washing.

This new flock of wash-less brands are capitalizing on the convenience of not having to launder your clothes a lot, which is particularly useful if you’re traveling or crunched for time. But they’re also making an environmental argument: Over-washing clothes is not good for the planet. Washing machines account for 17% of our home water usage, and a quarter of a garment’s carbon footprint over the course of its lifetime comes from cleaning it. And yet, washing machine company AEG estimates that 90% of clothes washed aren’t actually dirty enough to be thrown in the laundry basket.

Part of this has to do with the fact that laundry detergent brands have convinced consumers that they need to wash their clothes frequently, perhaps even after every wear, to be clean and hygienic. For instance, many laundry detergent ads show parents washing their children’s muddy and messy clothes, suggesting that good parenting involves doing a lot of laundry. Mac Bishop, who founded Wool & Prince, saw this firsthand. His first job after college was working for the marketing department of Unilever, which produces dozens of laundry detergent brands around the world. “The only way to grow as a laundry detergent brand is to make customers feel like they need to keep washing their clothes more and more,” he says.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90359188/the-next-big-thing-in-fashion-not-washing-your-clothes?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Sounds good to me! I don't like washing clothes at all. If I can go two weeks wearing the same pair of underwear... Heaven!

[AJT]

1. Here's my initial reaction

ewwww...

[50 Shades Of Blue]

7. Yours'n'mine both, LOL!

[customerserviceguy]

8. I second the motion...

in my stomach.

[shanny]

27. Mine too.

My second, is grunge making a comeback?

[Skittles]

2. ummmm....no

it would take more convincing for me

[ProudLib72]

17. But, but, but Justin Bieber!

Come on Skittles, there's a celebrity endorsement you can take to the bank!

[Skittles]

20. who?

lol, what a twerp

[csziggy]

3. Uh - I disagree with one of their premises!

"Sweat itself is clean. It’s when it gets absorbed in clothing that it begins to attract bacteria and smell bad. So the key is finding materials that don’t trap sweat.”

They have not smelled my underarms after I put in a full day of work on the farm in a Florida summer. My armpits stink and anything that has been in contact with them stinks. That is in addition to the literal shit that would be all over my clothes after shoveling out two barns.

Maybe for city dwellers who live much of their lives in controlled environments and who do not do serious manual labor, not washing clothes is OK. But when I was running my farm, the clothes I peeled off after working all day were not fit to stay inside the house unless they were washed immediately!

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Down here in the heat and the humidity

there's a lot of perspiring going on, and daily washing yourself, if only a sponge bath to vital areas, is needed
to combat heat rash, various forms of jock itch in various places, esp. the feet.

I am indoors most of the time now, so can wear the same dress a few days, but not without daily body washing in between showers.

[csziggy]

12. Yep, you have that right!

Same here - I now longer am physically capable of working on the farm but I still need to wash every 24-36 hours.

[MuseRider]

15. I am still doing that in Kansas

and I spend half the rest of my time doing anything and everything I can to make certain that when I go out away from my farm I don't stink. I know too many people who I run into in a grocery or other place and I smell them coming, especially the chicken farmers.

I like the idea behind this but I will be washing clothes and my body as frequently as I do now for the rest of my life. That and wearing just a touch of perfume, sorry folks. I like it, it makes me feel clean and a little less like a farm hand again and I never hear complaints.

[ProudLib72]

19. You should see the clothes I've been wearing to work on my car

I don't wash them. I think they would actually damage the machine. Eventually, they will just get tossed.

[democratisphere]

4. We'll have to go back to burning incense in the parlour.

Sniff-sniff.

Why not. Everything else is regressing.

[Kali]

6. I love when worlds collide

me = fashion!

[procon]

9. Rule of thumb in my house is any garment

worn next to the skin gets laundered after every use. C'mon people... You know we sweat right, and we also leak from various orifices and in all the most unmentionable places, and those smells - un huh, you with me now - do not disappear. We are also oily (yeah, that stinks too!) And we shed flakey bits of dead - eeew! - skin and hairs from everywhere.

Maybe some outer garments can skip a laundry day or two. In days gone by we had undergarments designed to protect our nice clothes so they didn't need frequent washes. But when was the last time you bought a slip or chamisole, and don't forget those dress-shields!

[customerserviceguy]

10. So, it's bad to wash your clothes when they need it?

And the "lost" 3K liters of water, does that just disappear from the planet?

I always use less than half of the detergent recommended, and my clothes come out fine.

[3catwoman3]

11. Wool makes me itch. The idea of woolen underwear...

...is making me squirm even to think about it. No way.

[ProudLib72]

16. Actually, no. This wool definitely does not itch

All kidding about stench aside, merino wool is awesome stuff. If you have the opportunity to try on something made out of merino wool, by all means do it. If I had enough money, everything I own would be made out of it. The trouble is that it's really expensive.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

13. Yuck.

I wash my clothes after one wearing.

What I find a bit weird and somewhat distressing is that I'm discovering that a lot of women in my age group (I'm 70) don't take a shower every day and don't necessarily put on clean clothes every day.

I can tell you precisely the three times in recent years that I didn't take a shower, although I did put on clean clothes. Two days in a row earlier this year I couldn't shower because my hot water heater died. Luckily it got replaced after two days. Had it been any longer I'd have asked my neighbor across the street if I could shower in her place. I know she'd have been fine with that.

The other was about three weeks ago. I took the train from New Mexico to Kansas City, and even though I was in the sleeper car where there's a shower, I was arriving in KC at 7am, and I just didn't get up early enough to shower. But I did change my clothes. Nonetheless, I felt a bit grubby.

The two days without a shower felt awful. And I don't do physical labor that gets me sweaty or dirty. But my day doesn't start until I've had a cup of coffee and a shower. And put on clean clothes.

Washing clothes doesn't wear them out if you use cold water and wash on the gentle cycle. And when you consider it's the height of fashion to buy jeans that are so tattered even the homeless wouldn't want them, well I just wouldn't be all that concerned that washing un-tattered clothes will be a problem.

At the very least change your underwear daily.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I've been washing my clothes after one wearing for some decades now.

[3catwoman3]

18. I have been known to shower twice a day...

...when circumstances warrant it.

Some people need their morning coffee. I need my morning shower.

[Codeine]

22. I promised myself years ago

that I would never allow myself to be that smelly old man. Working in retail you deal with a lot of them, old folks who just smell musty and stale and frankly kinda gross.

Not gonna go there. And yeah, fresh clothes daily. Because anything else is fucking vile.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

26. And I don't want to be a stinky old lady.

Our sense of smell does seem to diminish with age, and if you start skipping showers and washing clothes, or at the very least changing your underwear, pretty soon you'll be a smelly old fart.

[Skittles]

31. I cannot really start my day without a shower

seriously, it would make me feel, as you say, "grubby" to skip my shower

[Generic Brad]

14. Does that preserve the essential oils?

Years ago my daughter went through a phase where she stopped washing her hair because influencers on the internet were claiming it kept the essential oils on her hair. Man, did her head stink! I suspect not washing clothes would have the same effect.

[Codeine]

23. Nothing like shaving your head

to teach you just how gross the smell of scalp oil can be. I can’t wear hats because they get so funky so quickly.

[LastDemocratInSC]

21. You can always just turn your underwear inside out.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

25. Good lord, that's even more disgusting.

[LastDemocratInSC]

28. Hey, it's not my idea. A salesman I once knew joked about that.

At least I hope he was joking.

[Codeine]

24. No. Just no.

Clean clothes, people. Clean clothes and daily showers or gtfo.

[benld74]

29. Sounds like college

[ProudLib72]

30. College? I thought Justin Bieber was still in middle school!

Yeah, luckily for me, my sister lived a few miles away when I was in college. I would sneak in while she was at work and do laundry.

[blueinredohio]

32. Besides the smell, I can't afford an $85 t shirt.