Fashion’s Emissions Problem Starts With Clothes We Barely Wear

What if the biggest climate lever in fashion isn’t better materials, but simply wearing clothes longer?

The fashion industry accounts for roughly 10% of global carbon emissions and 20% of industrial water pollution. In this episode of Climate Confident, I’m joined by Phoebe Tan, co-founder of Taelor, a menswear rental subscription service using AI-driven styling and real-world garment data to rethink how we consume clothing. The challenge isn’t just fabric choice. It’s overproduction, underutilisation, and a system optimised for churn instead of longevity.

We dig into how rental models can increase garment utilisation and reduce emissions by extending lifecycle wear. You’ll hear why durability data, wear rates, damage rates, wash cycles, may be more powerful than sustainability marketing. Phoebe explains how Taelor feeds performance insights back to brands, effectively becoming a live testing lab for quality and circularity. And we explore a hard truth: convenience often drives behaviour change faster than climate messaging ever will.

If net zero requires rethinking consumption systems, fashion is a revealing case study. This isn’t about trends. It’s about utilisation density, supply chain feedback loops, and whether circular fashion can scale beyond a niche audience.

🎙️ Listen now to hear how Phoebe Tan and Taelor are challenging overproduction and pushing practical decarbonisation in climate tech and the energy transition.

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The fashion industry alone contribute to 10% of the carbon emission, 10%, right? It contribute to 20% of the water waste, water pollution issue, right? Because of the garment dyeing. Making new clothes every single second is damaging our planet at accelerated rates right now. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to episode 262 of the Climate Confident Podcast. My name is Tom Raftery. Fashion accounts for roughly 10% of global carbon emissions and 20% of industrial water pollution. But the industry isn't optimised for durability. It's optimised for turnover. We've built a system that rewards selling more garments more often, regardless of how little or worn. In some markets, the average item of clothing is used just one or two times before being discarded. The climate impact isn't just in how clothes are made, it's also in how briefly they're used. So what if the real innovation in fashion isn't a new fabric, but a new utilisation model? What if increasing wear density matters more than inventing the next sustainable material? My guest today is Phoebe Tan, co-founder of Taelor, a men's wear rental subscription service using AI driven styling and real world garment performance data to extend clothing lifecycles. In this episode, we explore whether rental can reduce overproduction, how utilisation data, reshapes brand decisions. Why convenience often drives climate progress more effectively than environmental messaging, and whether circular fashion can scale beyond a niche sustainability audience. If you are interested in how consumption systems evolve and what happens when ownership stops being the default, this one's for you. Phoebe, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself? Thank you Tom. First of all, thank you for having me on the podcast. Hi everyone. My name is Phoebe. I'm co-founder of Taelor. Taelor, it's a menswear rental subscription service with AI styling. So thanks for having me. And tell me a little bit about yourself and your background, Phoebe. What made you get into this space? Sure. So before starting Taelor I was in the corporate world for 16 long years, and about three years ago I met my co-founder now. A few years ago we decided to join hand and start our first venture together. So a lot of people ask, why Taelor? Why menswear? Right? Why get into the menswear space? In the beginning on, honestly, we wanted to do women's clothing. Both Anya and myself, we've been using the clothing rental services for long time. Companies like Rent A Runway and then Newly, there are many companies focusing on women. So as for myself, I found this kind of services fits my lifestyle perfectly because I'm a minimalist by nature. I don't like to buy, own a lot of stuff. I wear it, I like it, I don't have to buy it, right? I send it back and get new ones. So it's perfect. That's why I've been, renting clothes for years, haven't bought anything brand new in a long, long time. And why men's wear specifically? Yeah, great question. We asked ourself that question earlier. When we first started of course, we, we both very, very business driven. So we look at the, marketplace at the time a few years ago. And looking at the competitive landscape, who are the players in the market, the rental space, right? Circular model. And we learned that, wow, the circular model, it's booming, growing much, much faster than the overall retail channels And the rental model also growing very fast as compared to secondhand. At the time, most rental company focusing on women, more than 10 of them, But specifically for Anya and myself, we both loved the service, but there's one big pain point. Which is we have to spend a lot of time browsing through a thousand of items just to pick one. And every time, you know, when I'm ready to pick my own rental clothes, I'll have to spend at least an hour. That's the part that I don't like as much as I love the service, but the, the browsing through thousand of items, spending time picking items, that's a part of them we don't like. So. when we first started, we interviewed to a lot of people and realised that wow, a lot of men actually have a similar problem. They do wanna look great, but they don't wanna spend time, chasing after, fashion. They don't wanna think about what to buy, what to, what to pick. So leveraging the technology, we figure, you know, we can redesign the journey. Why do they have to pick, why can't we already pick the clothes for them? Why can't we style them? They don't have to think about it, That's why we decided to leverage the technology and really focus on, this. Specific pain point targeting men who simply hate shopping, hate laundry, they need help. No, it's, it's true men. I know. It, it, it's a generalisation, but it applies to me. Men hate going into shops and shopping. I know, I do anyway. So, no, this, this sounds ideal. What about things like brands though? If I want a particular brand, is, is that something that's available through your rental store, or do you just stock a limited number of brands and you have to choose from amongst those? How does that work? Right now we have over 100 clothing brands from all over the world. So at, at Taelor, you know, I mentioned about our customers, they are easy professionals, they are single guys, they wanna impress their date, or for work, they wanna close a deal, And they are in a meeting, right? So they are meeting their friends. So there is a practical need for them to wanna look more elevated. But they don't care so much about fashion. So that's why a lot of our customers, they don't necessarily come to us looking for a specific brand or looking for branded products. Our mission is really to help to also reduce the carbon footprint, right? How do we do that? In our case, through our business model. Rental and resell? Why buy something that you don't even know you love, and then let them sit in the closet collecting dust. Through the rental, now you can try something and if anything you love, only if you love, you buy it and then send it to someone else. Someone else can try it on. By doing so now we are able to extend the life of every single garment until the end of its life. I only care about quality. I only care about how you help me to look better. So those are the specific elements or problem that we are trying to solve. So that's why yeah, we focus on quality, also customer love, something interesting. Interesting features, interesting function. So something functioning, comfortable. Yeah. Also very important, although right now there's a lot of ama amazing brands out there. We partner with over 100 brands and continue to expand, our brands, and also our categories as well Okay. And you mentioned if your customer finds something they love, can they then purchase that through you as well or would they have to go elsewhere to purchase, they can only rent it through you? You know, right now we do have top, bottom, complete outfits. We put together two to three outfits every time. Send it to our customers. They wear the clothes, they go out, meet people. Anything they love, they can buy. They can keep it. At a deep discount because a lot of time it's used, secondhand. They can buy it. And then guess what? Our customer been, they've been asking us, do you have shoes? Do you have hats? Do you have belts? They want Taelor become their one stop shop. They don't wanna go to 10 different channel, you know, buy different things. Right. Our vision is really be a one stop shop trusted brand for busy men, anything they need, they can come to us. Any products for now. And then we plan to expand into services. That we can consult and help them, with their daily, decision making One of the big pain points that I've come across when I buy clothes online is obviously sizing Hmm. I think the numbers for the apparel industry are much higher in terms of returns, which obviously generates its own carbon footprint. So I think it's around 30% of stuff bought for clothes is returned. Whereas for electronics it's down around 5% or similar. How do you deal with that? For our business model, because it's a, we really focus on styling, styling the customer in terms of picking the right outfits for, whatever occasion they're looking for in terms of fit. Fits is really, really important when it comes to men's wear. Even though you know the. trend now, you know, it's it's moving towards looser, more comfort fits. It used to be, yeah, slim fits, right? Even now, our slim fit customers, they're more open to try looser fits. So, it, becoming more and more straight cut, looser fits right? Which, which have less of a problem in terms when it come to fit, right? That's in general. But how do we deal with fit, right? Picking the right fit to our customers. So we, we leverage the AI. Our technology help us process our customer information. When our customer go on board, to become a a member, they have to complete a simple style quiz that ask them question about their body measurement, if they have any specific fits issue, and one question that we do ask them, you know, any brand specific that fits them best. Because we ask them question about how tall are you? Some guys they dunno. So when we ask them question about what brand fits you best, that's a good indication for us. We have all the data and we know, okay, if you fits well in this brand, then you will fit well in this, this brand, right? And of, of course, yeah, we also capture the fits information about the brand that we carry. You, receive the first shipment, you try it out, our first picks for you. And you give us feedback. You will provide reviews. You say one of the clothes is, too small, on the shoulder I have broad shoulder, I told you, but it's still too small. So those are the things that we can adjust in the next shipment. And our customer understand, you know, when they receive their box, there are six items in the box, right? If one or two items just slightly too big, slightly too small, and still not, too bad, they can still try it out, give us feedback, and the next one we can fix it. And you mentioned AI. Where does AI help out? I mean, is it things like demand forecasting? Is it sizing accuracy? Is it inventory rotation? Is it all of the above? I think just right now, right now, the focus on styling and inventory prediction. Styling, you know, in terms of, finding the right fits for you and recommending the right outfits for you, depending the occasion. We also consider, information such as, customer reviews, which product have higher purchase rates, right? Because those are strong indication that customer are satisfied with those products. So we incorporate all those logics, And then similar profile, customer with similar needs. Or similar style preference, AI will help us to recommend them, you know, similar outfits. And, then for inventory prediction, right? Because we have a lot of data points, simply from our customers, right? Giving us feedback, and our customer behavior too. You know, what product do they like? They give us review Thumbs up, thumbs down. You know, for us it's one to five, And also we break down our reviews by fit, by quality, by style and overall. All this data point help our AI, to better predict, what product we should buy more into, And also better to predict our demand based on each product utilisation. And so you can see the wear rate of different brands and different types of clothes, so you know which brands are higher quality than others. That's right. Wear rates more important yeah is a damage rate. And then their life cycle. On average, how many time can I, wear this specific product specific brand on average, we have all the metrics so we know, right? So, that's why, you know, I really believe, you know, even if you pay$200 for a shirts, versus $80 for a shirts, when it comes to quality, it doesn't really matter Tom. The $80 shirts can last equally long, if not longer. So we have all the information, which is very, very critical, I think, for a business model. And also play a part in saving the environment in the sense that yes, we are promoting high quality products, truly high quality products, promoting them, introduce them to our customers, based on real data. Okay. And is it business wear? Is it casual? Business casual? I want to go clubbing tomorrow night. which of these, or is it all of these as well? Yeah, well, everyday occasion, whether social, work, clubbing. Except for we right now we don't have formal wear. So if you wanna go to a formal event that require tuxedo, we don't carry that yet. That markets, you know, it's already very crowded. There's a lot of companies offer tuxedo, formal wear. So we are not in this space for now. We do have a plan to expand more through partnership. Do the traditional apparel brands benefit economically, do you think from longer garment life cycles? I'm glad that you asked. Yes, I, I believe so. Right now a lot of brands, the biggest pain point for them is they don't have a lot of data. They test out their products in the early development phase. And then they produce, then they launch, and then it's out of their hands, right? And how much the customer share about the quality is very, very little. They only share when they have something specific they, they don't like. Usually it's extreme cases, something that they really love, right? Nothing in between. So you miss a lot of feedback in the typical e-comm model. Our customers are a lot more willing to share feedback, because they wanna make sure, you know, the next shipment I receive, it's better fit. So I better tell you, right? I wanna tell you. So that's why within a very short period of time, as soon as we launch a brand and we launch it to our customers, within a couple of weeks we receive a lot of data that we can share with our clothing brands so they know Wow. Yeah. the product actually, you know, is not performing quite well as they, thought in terms of quality. Taelor told me after three washes, you know, the, sweater start polling, Something positive. Customer love this specific style. You know why they love it? Right? Because oh wow. It's very stretchy, very comfortable. Those are specific details and very useful for our clothing brands, for them to decide whether or not they will expand the collection, whether or not they will continue to use specific fabrics to expand the collection. And for some of our brands, they also leverage our data to help them better position themselves in the US markets in terms of, yeah their branding, their pricing. The feedback that we provide is very helpful for international brands that have the intention to get into the US markets, right? So we become their test vehicle, their research partner, and for all the brands, including US brands. Taelor essentially Yeah. Can become their, research firm in the sense that, hey, I have new collection that I wanna test out. I wanna get very quick feedback. We can help them with that. They can also come to Taelor. We have a lot of out of season products that we are trying to get rid of. Instead of burning the clothes right. In some cases, brands do, or throw them away, They can send them over to us and then we can continue to use them. Because for Taelor, we focus on styling. So anything last year we can still use them. So we essentially is the one stop shop for clothing brands. One stop shop solution for them to help them monetise their inventory, maximise their returns. What happens to the clothes at the end of Taelor's life when you decide, okay, now this item of clothing has had enough wear, it's damaged, and I don't feel good sending it out to customers. What happens then? We sell them at a minimum value to upcycle companies. So they take the clothes, you know, they decompose them, make something new out of it. So that's one channel. And we also donate. Yeah, we do donation as well. Cool. And do you think customers are joining primarily for climate reasons or for convenience reasons or for access to decent clothes reasons, or some other reason that I haven't mentioned? Yeah, it's all, of the above. if you look at the numbers, the circular fashion is growing. Secondhand market is growing, right? So a recent article, research paper, by McKinsey, Gen Z is driving the demand in the circular models. They're more conscious about the environment you know, about their decision, right? and that's one reason. And then, two is that, you know, because of the growing, secondhand marketplaces, right? And recommerce companies. So allowing consumers now to not only buy, they can also sell. The younger generation, they're very smart, right? They wanna, they wanna buy, when they buy something, they already think about, you know, what is the resale value of this product and they wanna sell it. And They wanna sell it later on. They can do so now, because there's a lot of platform, That's a driving, the behavioral change. And our customers, why they choose Taelor, why they come to Taelor. You know, the number one reason is actually convenient. They wanna save time, People who don't know so much about fashion that's why they come to us. Through Taelor's styling our AI styling, we help them save time, help them look great seamlessly. It's simply, you know, a better way to look great. Not having to shop, anymore. And of course we have customer come to us, you know, they want more variety. They want to, expand their wardrobe through the styling rental model. Now, they can try different outfits, They can look differently or surprise themselves, surprise people around them. The trend now is for guys who are very used to wearing skinny jeans not so much anymore slim fit jeans or, pants. Now they are more open to try something looser, comfort straight fits right, looks very cool because it's on trend. That's the beauty of the rental model because you're not buying, you're not forced to keep any specific items. So now you are more willing to try and then through that for our customers usually within the first few months yeah, their style change. They discover for guys who don't know about their style, they discover their style. And does Taelor make suggestions like say, oh, I like the this shirt, for example. What would be good jeans to go with that? Or what would be a good top to go with that? Are those kind of suggestions available on the site as well? So, when we put together outfits, yeah, usually it's complete outfits that they can mix and match with different items. Right? A pair of jeans, of course you can create multiple outfit and then we will share our human style also AI. Yeah, we'll craft for notes. We call styling notes they can read, okay, you know, my, my stylist Melissa, say I should pair this jacket with this, quarter zip underneath, And then with this pair of chinos, and then what kind of shoes. And they can also read the styling notes on their account page, on their app. This is actually very important for our customers. Once they receive the clothes, they don't necessarily know what to do. There's so many different color, different top different pants. so it's really important. When you started out on this journey, was there any particular early signal that told you that this model would scale beyond just a niche, say, sustainability audience? When we first started, you know, we did a pilot. And then we have a lot of people join us on the wait list, People, because when we first started, we only have size medium. because we wanna test out, we wanna test the concept, test out the model. But when we launch and when we go out there, you know, wow. A lot of people are interested. Everywhere across the US. They're not in specific region. They're not in New York, only, California only. They're everywhere. And we also look at their profession. Again, pretty diverse, Even though, we, we learn one thing in common is people facing professionals. There is a need for them to look great. They are sales, they are professors, they are consultants, they are realtors, Also single guys who want to impress their date. That's when we realised, wow, we are actually hitting a, a mainstream markets. We are talking about a lot of guys. We're talking about a lot of guys who don't know much about fashion. They don't care about fashion. They hate shopping. They hate laundry, right? So, all, all those things they learn we realise, well, this big market for us. Yeah, yeah. And what didn't work? What was harder than expected? Where did you have your initial kind of roadblocks and that you've managed to push through? Early on, yeah. Year one is, it's balancing, the growth. And also at the same time focusing on our, our customers. And that's why in the beginning, you know, when we have Oh!, a lot of customers we have customer, in different sizes, what do we do? I think it's very tempting Yeah. To just do everything all at once. And I think. Because we also wanna grow fast, right? As a, as an early startup, that's very important. We decided to, yeah, really, really focus, in, in really understanding our customer pain point, And then building a perfect journey to serve our customers. With that, yeah, we need, we really need to focus on, continue to improve our user experience, our customer journey, and continue to enhance, improve our AI. And trying to balance both and making sure that yeah, we can keep our customers. Customer retention is equally important, than just grow and, and hit every single market. And I think learning the customer who are persona, who are customers early on and, and continue to fine tune our service, our products to them. Super, super important. Yeah. Okay. And if fashion were designed for circularity from day one, what would look different? It will make a huge impact. A small decision That you and I can make, can make a huge impact. If we turn the entire, fashion industry into circular model, it will make a great impact, you know. Today, the fast fashion, is still doing a lot of damage. The fashion industry alone contribute to 10% of the carbon emission, 10%, right? It contribute to 20% of the water waste, water pollution issue, right? Because of the garment dyeing. That means, you know, making new clothes every single second is damaging our planet at accelerated rates right now, because of the fast fashion, because we produce clothes faster than ever, we reproduce clothes faster than ever. Right. And we we are throwing clothes into the landfill more than ever. So reducing overproduction, reduce waste, reduce pollution ultimately. So that all depends on, you know, our decision, our daily consumption decision from the user perspective, right? How we consume, do we buy brand new or do we, try rental. Encourage the user, the listeners, right? If you never rented, clothes before, give you a try. Phoebe if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them? Yeah, they can check out Taelor, at taelor.style, They can find our services there or they can find our contact information there. You can share my LinkedIn information, right? Yeah, if you wanna try it out, the service, you can apply this promo code to get 25% discount. Podcast 25. Phoebe, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question that I did not ask that you wish I did, or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you feel it's important for people to be aware of? No, Tom, I think you asked a lot of great question. We cover a lot of good topics. Nice. Phoebe, that's been really interesting. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. Thank you. Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.