The majority of lifestyle advertising requires everyday, generic, simple pieces of clothing in tonal neutral colours, logo free and often a worn in look. The standard way to provide the clothes for this would be to purchase a selection for each outfit either in store, or online and then return post shoot what was not used or what is considered to be a returnable condition.
Unfortunately there is a huge environmental impact with this route.
To meet tight shoot budget requirements stylists are forced to purchase items from the high street and fast fashion retailers who have poor supply chain credentials, with no knowledge if the garment workers have been fairly paid, or the vast environmental damage from manufacture and what the clothes are made from.
Every year more than 200 million trees are cut down to make fashion fabrics like rayon and viscose & It takes 2700 litres of water to produce the cotton to make one T-shirt (which is enough for a person to drink for 2.5 years). The fast fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions which is more than that of all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
Returns and post shoot clothing waste is also a problem, returns sent back online are not always re-sold, and charity shops can't cope with the volume of waste so clothes are often sent to landfill. A rubbish truck full of textile waste is landfilled or burnt globally every second. Textile waste which is mostly non-biodegradable will remain in landfills for approximately 200 years.
The styling bank aims to help tackle this problem and meet this need by re-cycling post shoot stock and making it available for re-hire on other shoots. The added bonus of re-using post shoot stock is that the items are not brand new, and have a used worn in look. The selection of stock on the styling bank will continually evolve but will always be based upon post shoot waste and not new purchases.
Photo credit: Photographer - Matthew Joseph for Riverstone. Wardrobe pictured supplied by the styling bank.