A Worthwhile Wardrobe: Circular Fashion through Charity Retail
Published: 1 November 2025
Developed by Professor Deirdre Shaw and Dr Katherine Duffy, A Worthwhile Wardrobe explores how charities can rethink their retail models to tackle the twin challenges of fast fashion and falling donation quality. The team worked in partnership with the Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice, industry experts, and consumer voices to trial a new approach to charity retail; one that centres on reuse, transparency, and longevity.
Rethinking Donations, Rethinking Impact
Clothing production has doubled in the last 15 years, but the number of times we wear each garment is falling fast. Most of our discarded clothes end up in charity shops, but only half make it to the shop floor. The rest become a burden: costly to sort, difficult to reuse, and damaging to the environment.
A Worthwhile Wardrobe offers a solution. Rather than selling clothes once, this model keeps high-quality occasion wear in circulation through repeated use; originally via a rental model, now through a “buy and return” system installed in the Hospice’s city-centre shop.
Donors are invited to share the stories behind their garments and are encouraged to re-donate items after use, creating a circular loop that extends clothing lifespans while generating ongoing revenue for charitable care.
Collaboration for Circular Solutions
The project builds on years of research into ethical consumption, digital fashion services, and consumer culture. Previously, Shaw and Duffy researched how digital tools can reshape consumer behaviour. In an earlier ESRC-funded project, they explored sustainable consumption through collaboration with the Save Your Wardrobe app, helping establish a digital evidence base for mindful clothing use. That work laid the foundation for their ongoing focus on ethical fashion and consumer culture.
A Worthwhile Wardrobe has involved a wide range of partners, including the Prince & Princess of Wales Hospice, ACS Clothing (specialists in garment care and sanitisation), Consumers, donors, volunteers, and the ESRC collaborative PhD programme.
Together, they have created a working model that is scalable, sustainable, and socially inclusive, enabling charities to shift their focus from waste management to value creation.
The model is currently being piloted in-store and attracting interest from other charities across the UK. With backing from innovation and knowledge exchange funding, the team is exploring further commercialisation and policy engagement.
Professor Shaw and Dr Duffy are also contributing to national conversations on sustainable fashion through roles with Textiles 2030, Zero Waste Scotland, and the UK Parliament’s Fixing Fashion Inquiry.
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For further information, please contact business-school-research@glasgow.ac.uk
First published: 1 November 2025