Short answers, pulled from the story.
Estimates of when humans began wearing clothing range from 40,000 to as many as 3 million years ago. A 2003 study suggested humans were wearing clothing at least 100,000 years ago, based on evidence from lice, and in September 2021 scientists reported evidence of clothes being made 120,000 years ago from deposits in Morocco.
The oldest known piece of woven clothing is the Tarkhan dress, an over 5000 year old linen garment. The oldest sewing needles include bone and ivory examples from about 30,000 BC found near Kostenki, Russia, and a needle at least 50,000 years old from Denisova Cave in Siberia.
Clothing protects the wearer from the elements, rough surfaces, sharp stones, rash-causing plants, insect bites, and ultraviolet radiation, and it insulates against cold or heat. It also serves social functions, signaling modesty, social status, wealth, group identity, and individualism.
Clothing has long marked rank. In ancient Rome only senators could wear garments dyed with Tyrian purple, in traditional Hawaiian society only high-ranking chiefs could wear feather cloaks and palaoa, and in China before the republic only the emperor could wear yellow.
The value of global clothing exports in 2022 reached US$790.1 billion, up 10.6% from 2021. China is the world's largest clothing exporter at US$178.4 billion, or 22.6% of the global market, followed by Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, and Turkey.
Campaigners consider fur cruel and unnecessary, and Copenhagen in 2022 and London in 2018 fashion weeks banned real fur from runway shows. Gucci and Chanel banned fur from their garments, Israel became the first government to ban real fur sales in 2021, and California enacted a sale ban effective the 1st of January 2023.
It is estimated that 80-150 billion garments are produced annually. Globally, used clothing is worth $4 billion, with the U.S. the leading exporter at $575 million, and used garments are repurposed into quilts, rags, rugs, bandages, paper, and other household uses.