Australian Fashion Industry Statistics

Australia's love affair with fashion is gloriously contradictory: as the world's second‑largest textile consumers we buy around 27 kg (roughly 56 new items) per person and spend about $2,800 per household each year, yet garments last only 2.2 years, the average woman wears just a third of her wardrobe and one in three items is tossed after a single wear — even as nearly two‑thirds say they'd pay more for sustainability, 30 percent buy second hand, Depop tops one million Australian users and 85 percent donate unwanted clothes, while 58 percent cite size and fit as the biggest barrier, nearly 40 percent of millennials buy on impulse, 62 percent research online before buying in store, 40 percent switch brands over price, trust in green claims has slid to 45 percent skeptical, luxury grew 12 percent in 2023, Gen Z spends the biggest share of their income on fashion, Victorians spend slightly more than Queenslanders and 15 percent of fashion spend goes to discounts and outlets.

Australia's fashion market has become a fast-moving digital juggernaut, with one in four dollars now spent online, mobile and social channels driving the lion's share of purchases and BNPL smoothing checkouts, cross-border sites capturing 40 percent of spend while THE ICONIC attracts over ten million visits a month, click and collect, virtual try-on and subscription services gaining traction and interest in Indigenous fashion surging, yet retailers face a meager 2.1 percent conversion rate alongside 70 percent cart abandonment and a 23 percent return rate, so turning high traffic into loyal, sustainable buyers during Cyber Week and beyond will demand smarter omnichannel and environmentally minded strategies.

Australia's fashion industry punches above its weight, contributing more than $27.2 billion to the economy and about $7.2 billion in exports while domestic apparel revenue nears US$19.7 billion with steady 2.66 percent growth, driven by a US$10.45 billion women's segment and strong luxury, footwear, menswear, accessories and sportswear niches backed by robust cotton and wool exports and over $1.7 billion in annual investment, even as retailers operate on slim roughly 4.8 percent margins and Australians average 26.6 garments each year.

Glamorous on the runway but pragmatic behind the seams, Australia's fashion industry is a predominantly female, SME-driven sector employing nearly 489,000 people across more than 37,000 businesses with roughly 89% classed as small to medium enterprises, where designers earn about $1,450 a week, creative directors average $110,000 a year and 54% of designers are self-employed, yet only 3% of clothes sold are made locally and textile product manufacturing has contracted sharply since 2000 to roughly 35,000 jobs largely concentrated in Victoria, over half the workforce is casual or part time, clothing retailers number 16,258 and the retail arm is ranked ninth by employment with an average worker age of 28 and New South Wales accounting for about 34% of retail employment while Melbourne and Sydney host over 60% of fashion headquarters, more than 30 design schools feed the talent pipeline and First Nations designers are increasingly visible at Australian Fashion Week, all supported by a broad supply chain spanning logistics, marketing and tech.

Australia's fashion industry is simultaneously booming and bankrupting the planet: while ethical fashion has grown 32 percent, secondhand sales top $600 million and rental platforms saved about 40 tonnes of waste last year, Australians still send an average of 23 kilograms of textiles each (about 227,000 tonnes) to landfill annually, only around 7 percent of textile waste is recycled and less than 1 percent of clothing is remade into new garments, 60 percent of inputs are synthetic plastics that add microplastic pollution, charities pay $13 million to cart unusable donations to landfill, 87 percent of companies do not pay a living wage and 71 percent of supply chains show modern slavery risk, even as a 2030 phase-out goal, a proposed four-cent garment levy, more take-back schemes and a $4.6 billion circular opportunity promise a way out if brands finally set decarbonisation targets and stop importing 1.4 billion new items a year that waste resources like the roughly 2,700 litres of water used for a single cotton shirt.