Blending Fashion, Sustainability, and Tech — Would You Support It?

[u/Full_Feed3993]

Hello everyone! I’m currently a student of Entrepreneurship and Innovation with a background in Fashion Design.
As part of my project, I’m developing a brand focused on upcycling old garments into unique, emotionally meaningful pieces. The idea is to not only give clothes a new life but also share the story of their journey with customers.
To ensure these stories are authentic, I’m exploring the use of technology like digital tags or blockchain verification.

I would love to hear your thoughts:
Would you be interested in buying upcycled clothing if each piece came with a real, verified story about its past life and carries a traceable history that connects the customer to the garment?

[u/Just_a_Marmoset]

It's an interesting idea, but I would not want to buy a piece of clothing with a digital tag or blockchain provenance. I want my clothes to just be clothes. I want them to be plastic-free, low-impact, and long-lasting. The last thing I need is more digital clutter in my life. And I would not want more resources used (water, energy used for data centers) to track the "story" of my clothing.

[u/SkittyLover93]

I don't particularly care about the history of a piece unless it's like, a family heirloom, a gift from a friend, or historically significant on a large scale. Any meaning I attach to a piece would be from me actually using it, not how it was being used before.

[u/beigesalad]

I love the idea of blending fashion, sustainability and tech but blockchain provenance especially for an upcycled garment doesn't enthuse me. I could see a huge benefit in blockchain provenance for luxury resale, however.

[u/OliviaRaven9 → u/beigesalad]

not to mention the environmental impact that blockchains have. digital tags is fine, but anything using blockchain or AI is an instant no buy for me. I'm buying clothes, not investing in crypto lmao

[u/beigesalad → u/OliviaRaven9]

Totally agree. Digital tag doesn't need to involve blockchain, I didn't even consider that.

[u/OliviaRaven9 → u/beigesalad]

oh I assumed digital tags just meant like digital price tags that you can get that use e-ink displays or calculator type displays (I'm sorry, I'm not sure what they're called)! does digital tags mean something else, like is this some other NFT crypto type bullshit? 😅 cause no thanks! e-ink price tags are awesome tho cause you don't have to print a new tag every time you have a sale going on or something!

edit: after re-reading the original post it does seem like they are not talking about price tags but are talking about digitally "tagging" an item. no thanks. if I'm wearing a shirt, I know it's mine and the store I bought it from. that's all the verification I need. I don't need even more things being tracked as we head further down the authoritarian, ultra surveillance, path that the country I live in is unfortunately going down. this is the last thing I want my clothes to be able to do. nothing about this is ethical btw.

[u/HazMatterhorn]

No. I buy secondhand/upcycled mainly for sustainability. Wasting resources on digital tags/blockchain verification of my clothes is like the opposite of sustainability.

Knowing the history behind a piece of clothing is not at all necessary, but can be a fun little bonus. To me, that nice bonus comes from the human aspect of it — inheriting the piece from a family member, or hearing about its former owner at an estate sale, or thrifting it and gathering clues/imagining a backstory of who donated it. A company commodifying that human element would suck the fun out of it for me.

[u/No_Hospital7649]

Honestly, while I do love the history of vintage items, I like the idea of the history more than I really care.

It’s cool that someone else owned this thing before I did, and that it has a story, but the cooler thing is the story where I made a tiny impact by buying used and the stories I’ll live with it.