British Women Waste £7.3billion on unworn clothes

06/01/2006

As the shops gear up for further price reductions this weekend, Brits are being urged to 'shop smart' as new research reveals that British women own £7.3billion* worth of clothes that they don’t wear.

Research by Churchill Home Insurance shows that 86 percent of women have gone out and bought clothes that have remained on the hanger ever since.  And the reasons for the unwanted clothes phenomenon - they are no longer fashionable, the owner simply no longer likes them or they were bought in a size too small by unsuccessful dieters.

The research reveals that each woman has an average of 14 items - such as jeans, blouses, skirts, dresses and shoes – which are gathering moths in wardrobes around the UK. Each of these items costs an average £21.82.

This means that each woman has £305** worth of clothes in their wardrobe that have not been worn in the last year – they could have bought a weekend break, a new TV or even a designer handbag with the money. This equates to a whopping £12,810*** worth of unworn clothes over the average working life.

And the figures are set to rise dramatically over the next few weeks. Sixty-two percent of women admit they buy most of their unworn clothes in the sales. The New Year diet craze is also to blame for women who are looking to drop a dress size and find a bargain – 63 percent have bought clothes in a size too small in the past and one in ten admit to doing this regularly.

But it's not just women who have hundreds of pounds of clothes going to waste in their closets – men are nearly as bad. On average, men have nine pieces of clothing that they haven’t worn in the last year, each with a price tag of £18.68. This adds up to a huge £7,901**** worth of unwanted clothes over the average working life.

Martin Scott, Head of Churchill Home Insurance said: "The research clearly shows that many householders are guilty of buying new clothes in the sales which will never get worn.  However, few are likely to realise how much money they are spending over the years in this way."

And when the unwanted clothes are finally removed from the wardrobe, the big winner in the billion pound unworn clothes business is revealed – the high-street charity shop.

More than 70 percent of men (73%) and women (75%) will bag up their unwanted shirts, trousers and shoes and take them to the local store.

Online survey carried out for Churchill Home Insurance with 2,518 UK inhabitants, December 2005. UK population figures based on information supplied by the Office for National Statistics

* £7.3bn = Average cost of unwanted item (£21.82) x Number of items not worn in the last year (14) x Number of adult women in the UK (23,986,400)

** £305 = Average cost of unwanted item (£21.82) x Number of items not worn in the last year (14)

*** £12,810 = Cost of clothes not worn in the last year (£305) x 42 (average number of working years for a woman, based on 18-60 years)

**** £7,901 = Cost of clothes not worn in the last year (£168.12) x 47 (average number of working years for a man, based on 18-65 years)

For more information please contact:

Abi Clark

Churchill  Insurance

020 8313 5830

pressoffice@churchill.com