What makes us keep one garment for years while another quietly disappears from the wardrobe?

This question sits at the centre of my research for Welcome to Our Wardrobe, and of my conference paper, What Makes Clothes Last? Emotional Durability and Garment Retention in Wardrobe Studies, presented at ITCDC in Zadar, Croatia.

The research began with wardrobes rather than products. Looking closely at the clothes people actually keep revealed that longevity is rarely explained by physical durability alone. Garments remain in use because they become entangled with identity, memory, everyday routines, comfort and care. A seemingly ordinary piece of clothing can accumulate a biography.

From studying wardrobes to designing a garment

The conference paper brought these observations together through three connected areas: relational biography, identity regulation and material practice, alongside the practical realities of context and fit.

But the research also created a design question for me. If emotional attachment cannot simply be designed into a product, can a designer create better conditions in which a longer relationship with a garment might develop?

The All Day Trouser grew from that question.

Rather than trying to make a garment that announces itself as a “sustainable product”, I wanted to make a trouser that I would genuinely choose to wear repeatedly: cycling to work, teaching, travelling, going to the gym and moving through ordinary daily life.

Designing for adaptation

The finished trouser has a full, slightly cropped silhouette, front pleats and a deliberately clean front. At the waist, elasticated sections work with adjustable side straps and metal buckles. The adjustment is visible rather than hidden.

This matters because bodies and circumstances change. A garment with some capacity to adapt may have a better chance of remaining useful rather than becoming obsolete because of a small change in fit.

The rear uses rounded patch pockets with small metal eyelet details, while robust construction and practical finishing were developed around repeated everyday wear. The cotton fabric is also allowed to crease, soften and change rather than depending on a permanently pristine surface.

None of these details can guarantee emotional durability. Attachment belongs to the wearer and develops through experience. What design can do is create conditions that support continued use: comfort, adaptability, usefulness, material resilience and enough visual character for the garment to remain distinctive.

A garment as an ongoing experiment

This is why I think of the All Day Trouser as more than a final prototype. It is a continuing research object.

The conference paper asks what existing wardrobes can teach us about keeping clothes. The trouser turns that direction around and asks what happens when those insights are taken back into design practice.

Will the adjustable waist extend its useful life? Will the fabric become more appealing as it softens and records wear? Will repeated use produce familiarity and attachment? Which details will prove genuinely useful, and which will matter less than expected?

Those questions cannot be answered at the moment a garment is finished. They require wearing.

For me, that is an important shift in how we might think about sustainable fashion design. Instead of treating the finished product as the end of design, we can consider the life that follows: adjustment, wear, maintenance, memory and change.

The All Day Trouser began as a practical response to my own wardrobe and became a way of testing the research through making. The next stage is not to preserve it in its new state. It is to wear it, let it change, and see what kind of relationship develops.