Clothing retail and trade in Australia
New South Wales and Victoria are home to the majority of Australia’s clothing retailing businesses, with the two states collectively accounting for around ten thousand businesses. While the country does locally produce apparel products, a large proportion of clothing in circulation is imported. In 2021, Australia imported around 7.4 billion U.S. dollars’ worth of apparel products, with trousers, shorts, and jerseys the most common apparel product imports. China is by far the leading import partner for apparel products to Australia, followed by Bangladesh and Vietnam.Are Australians ditching fast fashion?
Sustainability has come into focus across many industries, with the clothing industry particularly under the microscope, as the environmental price of fast fashion increasingly plays on people’s minds, as well as concerns regarding garment worker safety. Sustainably and ethically produced apparel is increasingly in demand, with more than half of Australian consumers viewing sustainable clothing product availability as important. Australians are not only putting pressure on brands to provide sustainable alternatives but are also engaging more in resale activities and mending or repurposing clothing items.Nonetheless, Australia’s fashion industry still has a long way to go to transition to a more circular structure. The industry significantly contributes to the country’s waste crisis, with thousands of tons of clothing and textiles going to landfill each year. In June 2023, the Australian Fashion Council launched an initiative called Seamless, which hopes to transform the country’s fashion industry. The scheme aims to improve Australia’s reuse and recycling of clothing and textiles by fostering circular business models, expanding collection and recycling points, incentivizing sustainable design and production processes, and encouraging change in consumer behavior through re-education campaigns on acquisition, care, and disposal. The council hopes to put Australia’s fashion industry on the path to circularity by 2030, with major retailers, including BIG W, David Jones, The Iconic, Lorna Jane, and Rip Curl, committing to the scheme. With the consumer drive to purchase sustainably prevalent nationwide, this goal may come to fruition.
