In light of Tumblr exploding with Abercrombie & Fitch hate (for many reasons), I've recently been wondering what clothing companies do with their unsold product. Googling it isn't producing as much information as I'd have thought (I doubt there is a book in publication listing what companies do what either).

Honestly, I don't know if I should be surprised or not that it's not easy to find out which companies destroy unsold clothes.

As far as I've been able to find companies can either have their unsold clothes destroyed. They can sell the clothes to Salvaged Goods companies (who either sell the clothes in outlet/discount stores, or re-purpose the materials via recycling.), or donate them to various charitable organizations (most notably ones that clothe the homeless, or those living in impoverished conditions globally).

A&F proudly destroys their unsold product to preserve their "Cool and Beautiful People Only" image. Ralph Lauren also insists that stores that sell their products destroy unsold product to preserve the high fashion image of the label, and H&M is also known for doing this.

Wal-Mart says it donates the clothes, but people have caught various locations destroying them.

Notably Macy's and Brooklyn Industries are in the habit of donating unsold clothes to Clothing Banks. The Gap use to, but doesn't seem to any more.

Mainly there is a lot of general unspecific comments about stores selling their clothes to places like TJ Maxx and Marshall's, but I haven't been able to find out which ones.

Maybe the question should be what happens to the clothes that even outlet stores can't sell? Are those donated, re-purposed or destroyed?

Personally I don't feel comfortable buying clothes from companies that only add to textile waste, and pollution. Even if a company wants to preserve their label (which don't get me started on how lousy that sounds. They don't want anyone who can't afford $50 for a shirt to wear their label? They'd rather destroy clothes than have people living in underprivileged demographics wearing them?), they should at least have them recycled! What's the point in filling dumps with mutilated clothes?


What do you guys think? Does anyone know what more companies do with their unsold clothes? (Does anyone know what Suzy Shier does, I love their styles, but I can't bare to shop there if they just destroy them!)