> As I understand it, a big part of produced clothing just goes straight to waste to begin with.

My niece runs a business that relies on the way we discard clothes. She buys clothes from suppliers in India who source them from the bales of discarded clothes sent to them from Europe. Her suppliers have in effect sorted through the mountain of discards to find the ones that have sufficient value to sell back to us. She specifically buys clothes that have 'vintage' appeal (think tailored jackets rather than hoodies) and sells them primarily to students in a northern English city. Her business has done well enough to move from market stalls to a dedicated high street store and she is just branching out into 'vintage' kids clothes.

That would be great, a lot of clothes are made at sizes that don't sell very well and which get discounted, then discarded if they don't sell.

However, made on demand will likely cost more, plus you can't fit items first. Unless they make items for fitting which you can then order to have manufactured.

But yeah the main thing is that on-demand can never compete with mass production even if a big part of the mass produced stuff is discarded.

"If" is doing a lot of hold-your-breath, make-a-wish work in that sentence.