Sorting Out Clothes

What can one city tell us about the global textile waste problem? Sorting Out Clothes is the first detailed ethnography of clothing waste infrastructures that starts where the problem starts - the Global North.

Based on more than 100 interviews, cultural anthropologist Heike Derwanz follows the journey of fast fashion in Hamburg, Germany: starting with two women from different socio-economic backgrounds sorting through their wardrobes, travelling through local flea markets, eBay, church clothes banks, upcycling brands and recycling sites, only to end up in homes and waste heaps in the Global South. Bringing together human agents such as designers, social workers and vintage sellers with objects from containers, plastic sacks and internet platforms to piles of sorted textiles, this on-the-ground cultural study reveals how the global economic system of fast fashion shapes local infrastructures entangled in everyday lives.

Combining material culture, waste studies and economic perspectives to scrutinize the so-called circular economy of today's global textile recycling market, Derwanz investigates what agency modern consumers really have in the lifecycle of their clothes.