I’ll be the first to admit that I have a huge problem when it comes to buying clothes. I love fashion more than anything, but there is no good excuse for bad spending habits.
I first had the idea for this blog while I was online shopping. I had just read a chapter of Imelda Burke’s The Nature of Beauty and something resonated with me.
She mentioned that we wouldn’t put toxic chemicals in our food and then put it in our body, so why would we do the same to our skin with our makeup and skincare? I was like, YES! Then I went on Zara’s website to see if they had any cute crop tops. And I thought to myself, what am I doing? She had such a good point, and it is super relevant to the fashion industry as well!
All of the same issues: synthetic chemicals that are detrimental to health, harsh and unfair working conditions, low wages, cost cutting manufacturing techniques at the expense of our beautiful environment, are huge issues for both industries.
And so the idea for this blog was born.
To sum up my main mission: put my money where my mouth is. I want to be a conscious consumer and support companies that have similar values to my own. Here you can read more about my mission.
Here were my top reasons for ditching fast fashion and becoming a believer in quality over quantity.
Fast fashion consumes important resources.
Fashion is the third most polluting industry in the world, and one of the largest consumers of water. Producing just one pair of jeans uses over 1,000 gallons of water which equates to 450 billion gallons of water every year just to make jeans in the US alone. One pair of jeans takes more water than you drink in a whole year. That’s crazy! After the water is used to manufacture the clothes, it is often reintroduced to our rivers and oceans and 20% of water pollution is all thanks to getting just the right color on that tee shirt you wore once.
Now let’s talk pollution. Production processes emit CO2 that is no doubt contributing to climate change. Certain materials like polyester and nylon emit nitrous oxide which is 300 times more potent than CO2. YIKES.
The production of fabrics uses 20 billion pounds of over 2,000 different chemicals a year. The good stuff includes formaldehyde, chlorine, and lead.
You spend way more on clothes than you should.
Whatever happened to the good old days when you would pick something out in the store and save up for it? It’s so much more valuable that way. With fast fashion, you don’t have to save up because they have a cheaper, trendier version for you to have at the swipe of your credit card. You probably couldn’t even save up for it because it’s gone 2 weeks later. A $8.99 blouse doesn’t seem like a lot, but that’s what you tell yourself every single time. $9 becomes $20 becomes $30 becomes $150. And all of a sudden you’re standing at the register thinking, “how did that happen? It’s a $9 shirt!” If you have experienced this, you are not alone. Everyone is guilty at some point or another. Let’s stop doing that!
It’s a mind game.
Why is it that the more clothes you have the more you feel like you have nothing to wear? How does that work? Well, I’m no psychologist, but it’s a mind game. The trendier the clothes, the more specialized they are. Instead of having a dress for “nice dinners” you have 20 dresses for 20 different types of events (i.e. dates, girls night, dinner with parents, “could be on insta” dress, etc.) So when a new type of event comes along, all of your clothes already have “labels” or “another purpose” and so you resort to the phrase we have all said, “I have nothing to wear!” when in fact, you simply have too many choices and you feel less trendy for wearing something over again.
Someone else is paying for your $10 pair of jeans.
No, I don’t mean you’re mom is paying for your clothes. A $10 pair of jeans anywhere is too good to be true. So who is paying for that? The person who made it. Not fair? I agree. For example, in Bangladesh, minimum wage is only 18% of a true monthly living wage. In order to make jeans that can be sold for $10, they have to lower the cost of manufacturing through labor costs and material costs.
It’s designed to create waste.
There are so many scary facts about how many clothing items are produced and how long they actually get used. It’s mortifying. I had absolutely no idea that this was happening before I started seeking out the answers. Did you know that 60% of all clothing ends up in incinerators or landfills within a year of being made? And when you combine that with the fact that 14 items of clothing are made for every 1 person on Earth, that’s literally TONS (13 trillion in the US to be exact) of clothes.
Now, for the worst part. American throw away about 14 million tons of textiles a year. Over 99% of the clothing thrown away in the US can be recycled or reused, but 85% ends up in landfills. And polyester takes more than 200 years to biodegrade. So, the waste is there to stay.
You have a choice.
Another great reason. If this is something that you’re interested in (and by getting down this far, you must be slightly intrigued), then that’s a great reason. Whether it’s because you want to reduce your carbon footprint, want to bring awareness to unethical working conditions, because you want something better for your body, or you’re conducting a personal experiment to see how far you can take it. I checked every one of those. I have the choice, and I have the information. There is no doubt in my mind that fast fashion is contributing to social and environmental issues, and I can either choose to support that by spending my money there or not. It’ll be hard (like, really hard if you love clothes like me), but next time Zara has a sale, maybe just say “nah, I’m good.”
What to do instead
Capsule Wardrobe
Tons of new companies have popped up recently to offer clothing capsule wardrobes. The gist of it is that you only have maybe 5-10 items but those items can be mixed and matched to form maybe 20-30 different outfits. Cool, huh? Sign up to get new ones every season. They are also my inspiration for traveling light!
Clothing Memberships
Recycling is great. Whoever said “let’s make a company where we recycle our clothes so everyone can have cool trendy stuff and not pay tons or contribute to landfills” is an absolute genius. You can sign up to receive a certain number of items every month and they even let you pick your pieces! All for one flat monthly fee. I’d get even more out of that than the gym.
Set a limit for yourself
You probably don’t need that third black knit sweater with a slightly different neckline than your other two. Limit yourself to one of each thing you need. One good quality knit black sweater, one work cardigan, one pair of black flats. The versatility of simple pieces is absolutely endless, you just need to experiment!
Define what you need
It’s so tricky to define what you need when you’re obsessed with fashion. That’s why subscription services are great. I think most people would say that they go back to their favorite pieces over and over while others just waste away in the closet. Going into your closet and donating everything you haven’t worn in the last 90 days won’t work. I always justify keeping things because I say to myself, “but that’s more of a winter item and it’s summer so I might have worn that if it hadn’t been 80 degrees.” Here’s what I am doing: Everyday I wear something, I don’t put it back in the closet where I got it from. I hang it up in a separate area where I keep the clothes I am wearing. After a few weeks, you’ll find that you’re going to the new spot rather than the closet to get your clothes. That’s when you know you have defined what you need. Fill in the holes and shop accordingly, knowing that you already have much of what you need.
Shop with sustainability in mind.
Who says you can’t have a great selection of clothes AND have sustainable clothes? If you can have both, I’m really jealous of you. Identify eco friendly brands, shop in stores that donate their proceeds, research their supply chain – most companies don’t even know the full extent of where their clothes come from. The brands are out there and now it’s our turn as consumers to bring sustainable fashion from niche to norm.
