SHEIN, a global online fashion and lifestyle retailer, today released findings from its 2025 Global Circularity Study, offering insights into how SHEIN consumers purchase, use and manage clothing across its lifecycle.
Conducted between November and December 2025, the study surveyed 15,461 SHEIN customers aged 18 to 44 across 21 markets across the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa. The study examines consumer behaviour across the clothing lifecycle, from purchase decisions, garment use and care, to end-of-life management, offering data-backed insights into how everyday consumers across the globe engage with fashion and circularity.
The study indicates that many behaviours commonly associated with circular fashion – such as repeated wear, repairing garments, and passing clothing on to others – already occur as part of everyday clothing practices.
At the same time, the results highlight that consumer decisions about clothing tend to be shaped by practical considerations, including price, fit and everyday usability. Together, these findings underscore the importance of designing systems and initiatives that promote circularity that work within the realities of consumers’ everyday clothing use.
Practical Considerations Shape Clothing Purchasing Decisions
Across markets surveyed, respondents reported that clothing purchases are primarily driven by practical considerations such as affordability, fit and lifestyle relevance.
When purchasing clothing online, finding the best price was the most frequently cited factor, with 71.6% of respondents reporting they always consider price. This was followed by availability of sizes that fit (66.7%), reflection of personal style (58.1%) and how well an item fits everyday lifestyle or changing needs (53.8%).
Many respondents (71.1%) also reported that they purchased fewer than 30 clothing items, whether from online sites or physical stores, in the past year. Taken as a whole, the responses show that consumers often balance cost, fit and everyday usefulness when making clothing purchases.
Clothing is Worn Repeatedly
Beyond purchasing behaviour, the study looked at how consumers wear and maintain clothing after purchase. Respondents reported high levels of repeat wear across core clothing categories such as everyday basics, outerwear, footwear and activewear.
Between 36.2% and 41.1% of respondents reported wearing their SHEIN clothing in these categories more than 50 times, while 16.4% to 19.9% said they wear them between 31 and 50 times.
When deciding how long to keep clothing, consumers prioritised factors including comfort (88.1%), fit (82.2%), visible wear and tear (64.4%), and ease of care (63.3%), suggesting that garments tend to remain in use as long as they continue to meet practical needs.
How Consumers Define Circular and Sustainable Clothing
The study also explored how consumers interpret the concepts of circularity and sustainability in fashion.
When asked about what characteristics best define circular or sustainable clothing, 47.0% of respondents selected durability and long-lasting quality, while 37.8% cited clothing made with lower-impact materials, such as recycled fibres or materials produced using less water. By contrast, fewer than 10% of respondents associated sustainable clothing with higher prices or fewer style options.
These findings suggest that consumers often interpret sustainability through practical product characteristics, particularly how long clothing lasts and how easily it can continue to be worn.
Reuse is Common, Recycling Faces Practical Barriers
When clothing is no longer needed, respondents most often keep garments in circulation through familiar reuse pathways. Across all markets surveyed, giving clothing to friends or family was the most common approach (82.6%), followed by donating to charities or non-profit organisations (69.0%).
Repair also plays a role in extending garment life, with 61.7% of respondents saying they had repaired or made alterations. Among those who had not repaired clothing in the past year, 58.3% said that having the skills or knowledge to repair would encourage them to do so.
Participation in formal recycling systems was lower, with 37.2% of respondents reporting that they recycled clothing in the past year. Among those who did not recycle clothing, the most frequently cited factors that would encourage recycling were knowing where or how to recycle (43.6%) and having convenient or nearby recycling facilities (40.3%).
These results suggest that access to more convenient systems and local infrastructure, and greater awareness of available options can influence consumers to participate in activities that keep clothing in circulation for longer and support a circular economy.
Designing Circularity for Real Life
Taken together, the data gathered from this study highlights how practical considerations shape how consumers engage with clothing throughout its lifecycle.
Respondents also expressed the strongest interest in initiatives that enable direct participation, such as resale through SHEIN Exchange (43.8%) and physical take-back bins for donation or recycling (43.1%). By comparison, informational initiatives such as digital product passports (15.6%) or garment information about environmental footprint (18.8%) attracted lower levels of interest.
The date indicates that initiatives that promote circularity may be more effective when they align with consumers’ everyday routines, and provide practical ways for people to repair, reuse or recycle clothing.
Insights from the 2025 Global Circularity Study help deepen SHEIN’s understanding of how consumers buy, use and manage clothing, supporting its efforts to develop impactful initiatives that are aligned with how consumers truly use their clothing in everyday life.
Read the full 2025 Global Circularity Study here.
