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095: Circular fashion with Kathrin Baumann
2.5k Plays8 months ago
In this episode, Mia delves into the world of circular fashion with expert Kathrin Baumann. Discover how circular fashion can reduce your mental load and save you time in managing your kids' or your own wardrobe.
Resources
Little Renters - Children’s clothing rental
Promo code: LIFEADMINHACKS10
This provides your subscribers with a 10% (or $5) monthly discount for the first 3 month of subscription to Little Renters.
The Volte - Adult clothing hire
For the full show notes, head to Life Admin Life Hacks.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast & Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save your time, your money and improve your household harmony. I'm Diana Roberts, an operations manager who's kind of addicted to reselling clothes on Facebook Marketplace that's intrigued about the idea of renting as an alternative option.
00:00:23
Speaker
I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer. You recently rented a dress for the first time, and as a classic fashion underbuyer, was instantly hooked.
Circular Economy & Fashion
00:00:32
Speaker
In this episode, we interview Katherine Bauman, who explains what is a circular economy and how they're beneficial, why circular fashion is important, and how you can rent clothes for yourself or your kids. Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks.
00:00:48
Speaker
One aspect of life admin that people don't often recognize as life admin is maintaining a wardrobe of clothes to wear. Clothes don't magically turn up in your closet. Someone has to decide what to wear, where to buy, buy them, maintain them and then dispose of them thoughtfully if and when they no longer appeal to you or they're outgrown or they're beyond mending.
00:01:10
Speaker
So we touched on this work in episode 61, shopping for storing and decluttering clothes, but it was great to interview an expert in the growing area of circular fashion. Catherine, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much Mia for having me. So in a previous podcast episode, we talked about shopping for storing and decluttering clothes.
00:01:32
Speaker
And for parents, especially managing your kid's wardrobe is actually a life admin task that can take up a lot of time and head space. You know, they grow out of things quickly. Some have strong tastes that can also change quickly and making sure they have enough to wear without breaking the budget is an ongoing task. So what drew you into the world of circular fashion?
00:01:53
Speaker
Well, exactly the problem you're just describing. My kids were growing out of the clothes very quickly and I have a boy and a girl, so I couldn't even pass them down. And then just the act of going through the closet and every season, sometimes multiple times decluttering, then I'm storing them in the garage, filling them up with boxes. Then when you're ready to sell, you're taking sometimes pictures of individual items, listing them on marketplaces, responding to people's messages, sending them off to an endless
00:02:23
Speaker
something else on my list. So then I cluttered them into one big box or passed them onto friends and family members. That list is actually, so I experienced that problem myself with my kids. And then also just hearing and reading about the impact of fashion on our environment kind of was daunting. And I was like, Oh, okay. And kids are even contributing to it more because they need new clothing.
00:02:48
Speaker
sometimes when they're little every three months. So that kind of triggered some of my thinking and going into this business.
Environmental Impact of Fashion
00:02:56
Speaker
So how does the fashion industry contribute to environmental waste? So let's talk especially about kids. They grow out of them very quickly. So sometimes we tend to buy fast fashion brands, cheaper products. They are made out of
00:03:11
Speaker
A lot of them have polyester and plastic in it. So it's bad materials. They use a lot of water. Most of them are manufactured in some third or second world countries. So that's when they're manufactured. But then when we consume them, we might only use them for a couple of times and then we throw them out. If you throw them to those recyclables and then they get shipped off to some of those countries where you might've seen some pictures of
00:03:39
Speaker
deserts full of waste, clothing waste, and they're not recycled. They're not reused. And it just lands there. So yeah, it's recently I was with my family and we went to like a pioneer world, like one of those old timey sovereign hill kind of pioneer world. We go to old fashioned houses and they had all these bedrooms and each bedroom had this tiny little wardrobe.
00:04:03
Speaker
It was like, you know, a wooden standalone wardrobe and maybe a chest of drawers. And that was two people's full wardrobes. And my daughter was like, whose clothes went in there? And I'm like, well, that would have been the parents. All their clothes would have gone. And she's like, how? And I said, well, you know, in the olden days, people had much smaller wardrobes. They had a couple of dresses. They had one coat, one jacket, a couple of pairs of shoes. And that's it.
00:04:30
Speaker
You know, we have vast wardrobes now, whether it's kids or adults. And there's just been such a shift in the variety of clothes we wear and then the frequency in which we're shopping. And new trends as well. Yeah, the fast fashion cycle. And I think fashion is, depending on what stats you're reading, between 8% and 10% of the world's carbon footprint is from the fashion industry. So it contributes quite a large amount to our carbon emissions as a whole.
00:05:00
Speaker
So, Catherine, break down the circular economy idea. For us who are people who aren't familiar, what is the circular economy and how does it work when it comes to clothes? I think what people hear a lot are the kind of three R's we do.
00:05:13
Speaker
reuse and recycle. So first of all, I think a lot of when you look at fashion, there's a whole new movement to reduce your consumption in the first place. So not by as many clothes, and only by really the pieces that you're going to wear. So I think that's where a lot of advocates try to extra reduce consumption in the first place, then we're trying to reuse as much. So whether that is passing down,
00:05:37
Speaker
a resell, a rental, or some people are mending and making new things out of clothing. And then the end of life is then the recycle. So can we recycle textile into other products?
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah. So that's kind of, and it's about like a circular, it's closing the loop. So reusing as much as possible in my business sense. Yeah. Yeah. And some of the big retailers now, you can take back in clothes or textiles,
Retail Initiatives in Recycling
00:06:05
Speaker
can't you? Yeah, you can take back. They might reuse them for new products. They might resell them or there's a lot of textile recyclers that come up that like really end of life garments that are then recycled into
00:06:20
Speaker
construction material, stuffings for cushions or furniture, things that can be reused instead of landing in landfill. Okay. So I'm familiar with, I think H&M does it and Uniqlo does it. Are there other retailers that you're aware do it? There's a few that Katmandu I think does. Patagonia is one of the pioneers as well. And a lot of the children's brands are also offering either a take back or they might have a completely different
00:06:47
Speaker
website where they offer resale or they call it re-worn, reborn, all of those kinds of things. So they take back, you can get a credit for new stuff, but you know that your pre-loved clothing is actually resale to other people. Yeah, the credit's a nice incentive.
00:07:04
Speaker
So Catherine, how are people's views on getting secondhand clothes changed? What have you observed in your time in the industry? So for occasional wear, I think it's very common. Like if you think about you're going to the races or to a wedding and you know you as an adult, you know you're wearing this dress only once. So they're more inclined to rent.
00:07:25
Speaker
For children's wear, especially in Australia, I think hand-me-downs is a very common movement. So you pass on your pre-loved clothing that you know your kids love.
00:07:35
Speaker
to someone, you and your family or your friends. And also I think if parents buy quality durable clothing, I've seen you can get five, six families way out of them. So they pass them on. So I think that is something that's quite common in Australia. And then I do think there's a big culture and it's been really getting more and more like the op shopping.
00:07:58
Speaker
there's some really high-end op shops who only sell luxury brands. So I think the movement is definitely there in Australia. And I think when you think about other industry, like you're renting a car, you're renting apps,
00:08:11
Speaker
I don't know, any equipment, tents, bikes. Why not your clothes that you know you only use for a short period of time?
Personal Experiences with Clothing Rental
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, I was always really grateful when my kids were little, the families that did come to, you know, they'd come around and they'd, oh, I've bought a few pieces for you. It was wonderful. It was like Christmas getting, getting a bag full of, of hand-me-downs. And there were some families where there was one family in particular. They had three daughters. So when my daughter was born, it was just a
00:08:39
Speaker
was beautiful. It was beautiful what came my way and it was nice to be able to return the favour and pass on my old clothes or their own clothes. I love seeing pictures or like when I see my friends with their little daughter or and she's wearing the dress that my daughter wore and I'm like oh I love that someone is loving it as much as my daughter did so you know it's yeah it's something that is still being used. It's funny because I was giving my daughter's clothes away. There were lots of neighbors in the street who had kids who were just a little younger
00:09:09
Speaker
So I gave them the clothes to them. And then they've obviously given them to other people in the neighborhood. And sometimes I just see some random child that I don't know. I'm wearing one.
00:09:18
Speaker
daughters old pieces of clothing. And I'm like, that's some value right there. That's some quality manufacturing and some value. And I actually have, I dipped my toe in the water last year with this because I had Dinah and I went to the NGV Gala, which is a big ball at the National Gallery here in Melbourne. It was our end of year sort of celebration for each other. And you have to frock up. You have to wear something fancy. It's like people are there in full on gowns. It's really fun. And I, you know, I do not have a wardrobe of
00:09:48
Speaker
formal wear. And I've talked a lot on the show about how I'm kind of an underbuyer. I don't buy a lot of clothes and look, I'm not passionate about fashion, but I really wanted to wear something fancy. And so I ended up at a site called The Vault, V-O-L-T-E, The Vault. And it's a site where people who have gone and bought wonderful dresses make them available to rent. So you can rent these amazing gowns for a fraction of the cost of what they are to buy. And literally, you know, you pop on the site,
00:10:16
Speaker
by the time that's your size, they mail it to you, you
Little Renters: Children's Clothing Rental Service
00:10:19
Speaker
wear it. They include a post bag.
00:10:22
Speaker
put it back in the post bag and send it back. You don't even have to launder it. They'll take care of all of that. So it was so convenient. It was so fun to wear this fabulous piece for one evening and then send it off. It sold a lot of, it ticked a lot of boxes in my book in terms of fashion. And it saves a lot of money. Yeah, it does because I would not have wanted to fork out, you know, whatever, $500 for that dress and worn at once or been stressed about when am I going to get the value? When am I going to re-wear this particular gown?
00:10:52
Speaker
It was kind of nice to just have a gown that I wouldn't normally wear and have that kind of shock value of it and never wear it again. Yeah. Another thing I've tried is swapping with friends as well. I went to a function as well last year and I didn't have the right shoes. And I was like sending a message to my friend. I was like, do you have some shoes I can wear with this dress? So sometimes just swapping wardrobes with your friends is also a good budget friendly and circular fashion as well. Yeah.
00:11:20
Speaker
So tell us how Little Renters works. What's the model? How do you do it? How do you get involved? So Little Renters is a children's clothing rental service.
00:11:31
Speaker
At the moment, we are looking at newborns to year five. Instead of buying the clothing and it's high quality clothing, you sign up on a subscription and you get a bundle of clothing that you can choose in terms of your style preferences and you get them for the month.
00:11:52
Speaker
as you want. You can have them for two months, three months. If your child suddenly has a growth spurt or it's now a different season, you can request a swap and we basically swap out any amount of clothing
00:12:04
Speaker
and you basically have a new wardrobe. And it is saving you the time of buying and reselling and decluttering and storing. It's saving you money as well, because it's definitely just a fraction of what you would pay if you buy these clothing items outright. And at the end of the day, it's good for the planet as well.
00:12:23
Speaker
So what kinds of, you said you get to choose different styles, what kinds of styles are you talking about? So that we call it a style questionnaire. So once you subscribe, we send you styles questionnaire and you can choose your favorite colors, your favorite prints, brands you love at the season. If you have anything particular, if you're going to an occasion and you need a special dress, you can put those preferences as well. And then we curate a specific bundle based on that. So if you like.
00:12:52
Speaker
pop colours and bright colours or floral or animals, we make sure that you get exactly what your kid and you love. That's good. I just remember some judgmental mummy moments when you say, I just didn't like dressing my children in black. I mean, there's always kids in black and like animal print and I just was like, yeah, not for me.
00:13:13
Speaker
So it's great that you get to choose the styles that they're working with. And every child has their own favourite colours or they're suddenly into dinosaurs. So we try and make sure that there's these pieces that exactly let you know. Yeah. And so how do people prepare their clothes to be rented out? Like what what kind of brands are we interested in and what kind of quality do they have to be?
00:13:36
Speaker
you can sell your pre-loved clothing to us and I inspect and I clean. Sometimes I repair, take out stains, but really a lot of the clothing sometimes we get either has still a tag on it or you can tell they've been barely worn, but they're still in excellent or new condition and then we put them up for rent.
00:13:58
Speaker
Okay. So you're selling your clothes on and then that you're rented out. So that's just a one off transaction. Got you. So the parents that basically give us their pre-loved clothing, they earn every time this item is rented out. So I have a way of tracking that this item was given by
00:14:17
Speaker
Mia's family and every time this item is rented out to another family, you accumulate a revenue share basically and you get a payout once the item is sold. So over the life cycle of this Garmin, you can actually earn more than if you would sell this one item for $5 on a marketplace. And I think also you know that this item has been gone to multiple families along the way. Wow. So
00:14:41
Speaker
Let me just take a look at that right. You can either sell it outright to you and then you'll make it available to rent or you make it available to rent ongoing and you earn revenue each time it's rented out.
00:14:52
Speaker
It's the second one. It's the second one. Oh, I see. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I have a lot of customers who actually do both. So they give me their outgrown clothing and then they rent the next size up. So it's kind of a cycle as well. You kind of, you're contributing your pre-loved items to the little renters community, but then also you're renting your next size up. Yeah, that's cool. So that's quite a budget-friendly way of earning money, but also getting new clothing.
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah. And do you take the full range of brands or are you only interested in sort of high-end premium brands? Yes, so our target is high-end premium brands because the material is more durable and we can last for longer. And some of the brands like Pure Baby, for example, if parents have bought them, you know you can wash
00:15:42
Speaker
them pretty well and they can go through multiple families. So our business model is built on items that have durability and then you can rent it out for longer. But having said that, some of the items, because they're still new and I feel like the fast fashion items, I still feel I can make them last longer and reuse them. So we have a couple of
00:16:04
Speaker
items in inventory that are from fast fashion brands but it's not our preference because they only last maybe a couple of families and then the materials are so thin you get holes in and you can't wash them properly and you can I can really tell the difference between a hundred percent cotton item versus something that has polyester like cheaper qualities in it. Yeah so that's reassuring for people who decide you know
00:16:29
Speaker
when they are trying to make decisions for their clothes, if they're going to be handed down to their own children or to others, that it's worthwhile going for that quality because you are going to get longer life out of it within your own family. And then possibly we make it available to rent for others to use and potentially make more money on it than you did spending it. And a lot of those brands on average, you pay between $40 and $70 depending on what category if you buy a niche or like joggers.
00:16:57
Speaker
They're high-end, so you pay a lot for one piece, so it also makes sense to rent it.
Sustainable Practices & Community Repair
00:17:04
Speaker
Okay. And do you see any other sort of trends or habits amongst people who are trying to be eco-conscious around fashion? What else are people doing? I think the, and I've gotten myself into it, like repairing you, trying to repair as much as possible. You might have your favorite knit or one of your favorite items, and it has a whole,
00:17:26
Speaker
There's still ways to kind of fix it. There's beautiful repair workshops in some of communities where you can go and learn how to repair your items. So I've done this with Molly, myself, but then also use some of the material and make something new out of it, whether that's, I don't know.
00:17:41
Speaker
finding new ways like bags and making using the textile and recycling and recycling it for other areas in your house. It feels like there's a whole range of lost skills to do with clothes making and mending clothes. My grandmother had a sewing room and it was always fun to go to her house and
00:18:02
Speaker
step gingerly into the sewing room with bare feet because they were often pins all over the floor. Do you have like a mannequin? She would make her so many clothes as cousins with a lot of matchy matchy outfits going on but she could make anything and she made a majority of her clothes and I have these beautiful fond memories of going to you know big haberdashery stores with her where you get out the pattern book and she'd be flicking through the pattern book looking for for styles and then going and finding all the fabrics
00:18:32
Speaker
And my mum and auntie can also sew and they can knit and that's lost. I have zero skills. It's a beautiful skill to have, I think. I got given a sewing machine. I can run up a hem, I can do straight stuff. I've chintered to make a pair of pajamas once that didn't go well. There's a whole measure twice cut once thing.
00:18:55
Speaker
But there's a lot of, if people are interested, I think a lot of communities have started these kind of repair workshops. A lot of them are for free as well, where you can print one or two clothing items and they teach you how to mends. So I've done that a couple of times and we've taken some, got my kids to come along, get one of their clothing as well. And they taught us how to mend it. Even the little, like some things you can do at home. You don't need the perfect sewing skills as well.
00:19:23
Speaker
Are there any you would suggest we can put links to this in the show notes if people want to tap into this. I find in my so that they're very local. So keeping up to date with your local community groups.
00:19:35
Speaker
might pop up especially now in Melbourne and I think there in Sydney as well those fashion festival or fashion Melbourne fashion wig there are workshops as well where you can bring your clothing and either repair it or sometimes swap it yeah so I think they're not particular bigger ones but they're very local hyper local in your community. Okay so tap into your little local community newspaper and your council newsletters and magazines about those kinds of things. Yeah.
00:20:02
Speaker
Catherine, where do you think this whole circular economy is going? What do you see as things that would keep in mind for the future? I think what I can see, and especially if you look overseas in some of, especially Europe, where governments and manufacturers and retailers are being held accountable for their fashion
00:20:26
Speaker
in Australia as well. It's coming slowly as well. And there's a lot of pioneering brands here as well who take it on themselves already to make sure they're producing eco-friendly, sustainable, but they're also having a tech tech program. And there's a lot happening, I think. And in the next couple of years, when you look at, you said for women's wear, it's very mainstream now to maybe rent an occasion where, and especially the younger generation, they are used to finding
00:20:56
Speaker
little gems and op shops. There's a thing to go to op shops and find the handbag or the dress that usually costs $500. I think there is more and more coming. And with children's wear, when I talk to parents, they're like, oh my God, you're so right. They're growing out of it so quickly. It makes totally sense rather than spending $50 or $60 to rent it when I only know I really need it for two or three months. So I think I can see a slow trend. And with the rental
00:21:28
Speaker
and try it out and then they're fine. Oh, this is actually quite convenient and it's saving me time and I don't have to worry about going to the shops or ordering online. Yeah, okay. That's cool. It's great to hear that it's sort of coming from the top down, but also coming from the grassroots up. Oh, definitely.
00:21:44
Speaker
Definitely. And I think if you look at outside of fashion industry in other products, it's there's more and more people are very conscious about what's in the product to manufacturers. Where is it coming from? What's the footprint? And how can I reduce my waist
Future of Circular Economy & Fashion
00:21:59
Speaker
at home? Big movement. Lovely. Catherine, is there anything else you want to share with our listeners when it comes to circular fashion?
00:22:07
Speaker
I think my journey as well, I think it's trying out different things and whether that's handing down, going to a swap event, I've started to actually go into different op shops and see if I can find
00:22:21
Speaker
clothing, just going on a journey and see what works for you. Some people like to buy new things, but maybe being more conscious about the aid you really needed. Is this a durable brand? Is this something that I know I will wear for longer and not just this summer?
Closing Remarks & Listener Engagement
00:22:38
Speaker
Yeah, wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and ideas with us today. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. So where can our listeners find you if they want to hear more?
00:22:47
Speaker
So they can find us on Instagram and follow us on little underscore renters or they can hop on our website littlerenters.com where they can either sign up to the newsletter or even if they're very keen to try out renting with little renters.
00:23:03
Speaker
and we will offer your listeners a promo code 10% off for the first three months. So if you want to try the rental, just sign up. We'll send the promo code in the newsletter. That's wonderfully generous, Catherine. Thank you so much. So listeners, if you'd like to get that 10% promo code, sign up for the Life Admin Life Hacks newsletter, all included in there. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for listening.
00:23:30
Speaker
Show notes for this episode are available at lifeadminlifehacks.com. And if you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend or review us in your podcasting app. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.