India, March 12 -- We have a curious relationship with our clothes. We buy them with optimism. We wear them with personality. We fold them with varying degrees of discipline. And eventually, we part with them, sometimes tenderly, sometimes ruthlessly. But here is the uncomfortable truth: the life of a garment does not begin when it enters our wardrobe, and it certainly does not end when it leaves it.

For most of us, clothes exist in a neat little bubble between "I like this" and "I'm done with this." Everything before and after feels distant, almost abstract. Yet the hidden life of garments is where the real environmental story unfolds.And it is far more complex than we imagine.

Before It reaches you

Long before a shirt hangs in a stor...