Parents are raising children in an era of fast, disposable fashion, where cheap clothes flow through kids’ lives at a relentless pace. For many families, trying to choose more sustainable options means navigating fragmented secondhand markets, investing scarce time and attention in search and evaluation, all while managing tight budgets and a constant stream of everyday decisions. These demands fall especially heavily on mothers, who often carry a disproportionate share of the cognitive labour involved in planning, sourcing, and managing children’s things.

This project explores why circular clothing options for children are hard to rely on as an everyday default, and how they might be redesigned to fit the realities of family life. Drawing on interviews with parents, market research, and systems mapping, this work traces how fast fashion and secondhand systems interact to reinforce over‑consumption, decision fatigue, and the perception that fast fashion offers better value than more sustainable options. The analysis identifies key leverage points for change and develops opportunity areas that focus on easing cognitive load, making value more visible and recoverable, and creating connected infrastructure that makes the system easy to use. The project concludes with design concepts and future scenarios that illustrate how circular clothing systems could become a workable, attractive default for families at scale.