From Runway to Reality : Fashion in Figures

Behind shop windows and runway shows, the fashion industry hides a far less glamorous reality. Over the past few decades, it has become one of the most powerful — and most polluting — industries on the planet. Massive clothing production, accelerating consumption, growing textile waste and considerable environmental pressures: the numbers are staggering. The two infographics below help put this phenomenon into perspective. They illustrate the economic scale of the sector, the volumes of clothing produced and discarded each year, as well as the environmental and social impacts that accompany the rapid growth of the global apparel market.