Fashion Fast

Hi Friend! Welcome back to the blog. Today I want to share what I have been learning about fast fashion and how you and I can make a difference.

At the start of the year, I always set a reading goal. This year I’m doing 24 books for the year. The books I choose usually have to do with topics I want to learn more about. One of those topics is fast fashion. I just don’t have a lot of knowledge about it. I started reading The Conscious Closet: The Revolutionary Guide to Looking Good While Doing Good by Elizabeth L. Cline. What an excellent book to start the year with. I learned so much and want to share it with you.

From reading Elizabeth Cline’s book I learned that we don’t realize that just becoming more conscious of our wardrobe and clothing can impact the environment hugely. She starts by breaking down the lies we believe about fashion. She explains that clothing should be something that lasts longer by buying better quality clothing, considering the material and fabrics used to make them. She suggests going through your closet to audit what kind of fabrics you own many are made of synthetics that may not last very long. In this closet audit, she also suggests clearing your closet of items you don’t like or don’t wear anymore. The point after is not just to dump the clothes you don’t want at some goodwill or other chain that may not truly be recycling or taking care of the clothes correctly, many times our donated items still end up in landfills. After learning of this I found a wonderful clothing brand called For Days that has a service called The Take Back Bag. You order a Take Back Bag fill it with old clothing, scan a QR code that they have on it and ship it back. They claim to recycle your textiles from the clothes you place in the bag. I hope to try it out soon and will report back.

In her book, she challenges the reader to do a fashion fast, where you don’t buy clothing items or accessories for 30 days. I found this perfect timing because, at the beginning of the year, most people do different kinds of fasting whether from social media or sweets, well mine this year was not buying clothes. My initial thought was that this would be a piece of cake because I typically don’t buy clothes often, but at the end of last year with the holidays I found myself buying more clothing items and I started a bad habit of it. I have found myself at times looking at certain clothing items at the stores and thinking I should get this and quickly realizing that I had the challenge to fulfill. January is nearing the end and I’m happy to report I haven’t bought anything. This did bring to my attention how we as a culture buy what we want instantly without considering if this item will last or is made of good quality fabrics. It also made me want to buy more staples for my wardrobe I hope to buy good quality jeans that will be able to pair with other items in my wardrobe. She stresses in her book that when you have items that match and you enjoy wearing you are more likely to actually wear the clothes in your closet.

Lastly, I learned that taking care of your clothes by washing them less reduces the carbon footprint greatly. By washing clothes less the fabric doesn’t degrade as fast. It also is important to wash on cold and on a more gentle cycle and reduce the times it goes in the dryer or air dry if you can. Learning to mend clothes can ensure that we are not trashing our clothes over minor fixes.

I want to challenge you to join me in the fashion fast for 30 days that’s your call to action. I hope this blog was helpful to learn more make sure to read The Conscious Closet by Elizabeth L. Cline. Please share this blog f you found it helpful. Till next time.