Fashion Buying
Less than 2% of clothing workers earn a fair wage—while many of us have wardrobes full of unworn outfits. Here’s how to break the cycle.
It’s the toxic relationship too many of us can’t quit. An
impulse purchase here, a pick-me-up there. A quick scroll, a flirty
click, a casual add-to-basket. Who are we hurting?
News linking the budget fashion giant Boohoo
(which also owns Coast, Karen Millen, and now Oasis and Warehouse) to
claims of “modern slavery” in one of Leicester’s garment factories has
served to remind us of the sobering answer to this question. Not only is
fashion one of the world’s most
wasteful and polluting industries, but
it’s also one of the most exploitative. Less than 2% of clothing workers globally earn a fair living wage,
with most trapped in systemic poverty at almost every stage of the long
and shadowy supply chains. While we enjoy the ease, speed and
abundance, it’s they who are paying the price.
Although that word, “enjoy”, is debatable, let’s be honest. The
past few months have given us pause to take stock, literally in the case
of many overflowing wardrobes, and confront our consumerist urges. Do
high street hauls make us happy any more? Did they ever? Life on the neverending treadmill of trends is a tiring one, and there’s nothing like a pandemic to shift your priorities.
But as lockdown eases how do we walk away?
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution – we’re each working with
different lifestyles, different tastes and different levels of
privilege. And while some people would have you believe that the only
way to dress ethically is to spend £500 on a linen boilersuit and wear
it every single day, there are plenty of other solutions.
As Paul Simon sang, there must be 50 ways to leave your lover. Here are 20 ways to ditch fast fashion for a slower, fairer style.
1. Have a Clearout
This might sound counterintuitive, but nobody can make the most
of their clothes if they have to wade through a sea of crumpled
polyester each morning. It pays to do a regular audit of everything you
have, so you know exactly what you need – and what you don’t. Plus,
you’ll find treasures; clothes you’ve forgotten you have and clothes you
don’t (hello, post-cocktails Zara trip) remember buying. As the global campaign group Fashion Revolution likes to remind us, the most sustainable garment is the one already in your wardrobe.
2. Play Dress-Up
Who says the makeover montage is just for teen romcoms?
A good old-fashioned dressing-up session is one of the best ways to
tackle wardrobe ennui, and remind yourself just how many options you
have. Most people wear 20% of their wardrobe 80% of the time, and the waste charity Wrap says
that extending the active lifespan of a garment just by nine months
could reduce its carbon, water and waste footprints by as much as 30%.
So dedicate an evening to experimenting with different combinations
and mastering new styling tricks. Try dresses over jeans, shirts under
dresses, vests over shirts, scarfs as belts. Put a jumper on over that
sundress, and congrats! A new skirt.
3. Learn From Your Mistakes
Go through each item in your wardrobe and ask: “How many times
have I worn this?” If the answer is in single digits, ask why.
Interrogate those unloved garms, and be honest. Is it the colour? The
shape? The length? A fabric that has you sweating like old lettuce by
lunchtime? Did you buy it for an invitation that never arrived, or a
lifestyle you don’t lead? Is it emotional collateral, bought out of
insecurity, sadness, hunger or boredom? Learn to identify your most
common shopping triggers and it becomes so much easier to resist the
lure of the quick-fix purchase.
4. Wear and Repeat With Pride
Wearing the same outfit to two different parties should not be a
revolutionary act, and yet a Barnardo’s study found that 33% of women
now consider clothes “old” after wearing them three times. In 2019, UK
shoppers spent an estimated £2.7bn
on clothes we wore only once. We have confused clothes with disposable
items. Let’s stage an amnesty and make outfit-repeating a source of
celebration, not shame. I like to think of it as “playing our greatest
hits”. If Paul McCartney still gets a standing ovation for Hey Jude,
then your three-year-old dress deserves a few more nights out.
5. Aim for #30Wears
In the immortal words of Dua Lipa, you need new rules. The
#30Wears rule coined by Livia Firth, founder of sustainability
consultancy Eco-Age, is a benchmark to help you make savvier choices and
give your clothes the lifespan they deserve. Before buying anything,
ask: will I wear this at least 30 times? If the answer is no, don’t buy.
6. Order, Order
As Joan Crawford once advised: “Care for your clothes like the
good friends they are.” Something’s gone wrong when buying a new outfit
in your lunch hour feels like an easier fix than trawling through your
floordrobe for something that isn’t covered in creases, food stains or
both. So take more time to organise your clothes, hang them up at the
end of the day (Crawford also condemned wire hangers), and if ironing is
your bete noire, consider investing in a handheld steamer.
I also swear by storing winter and summer clothes separately, if you
have space. It helps calm the “new season, must shop!” panic and feels
exciting every time those old friends reappear.
7. Become a Borrower
If you know you’re unlikely to wear an item more than once,
don’t buy it – borrow it, whether that’s from a generous friend or a fashion rental service such as Hurr, ByRotation, My Wardrobe HQ or Rotaro. Some specialise in statement pieces for special occasions, while others, such as Onloan and The Devout,
run a subscription model that refreshes your wardrobe with trend items
for a month at a time. Ideal for the conscious commitment-phobe.
8. Go #Secondhandfirst
If a total ban on shopping is too big a leap, try this gentler
approach. Before buying anything new, endeavour to find it secondhand
first. This could mean rummaging in a charity or vintage shop,
buying a preloved version from a resale platform, or even just
borrowing something similar from a friend. If we all #chooseused more
often (there’s no end to the pithy hashtags), it could reduce the demand
for new manufacture and landfill.
9. Get Stitching
The best way to understand how much work goes into one garment? Make it yourself. The Great British Sewing Bee
has helped to herald a new generation of home-stitchers over the past
few years, while John Lewis and Hobbycraft both reported surges in
sewing machine sales during lockdown. If you haven’t threaded a bobbin
since school, I recommend seeking the tutelage of Tilly Walnes, AKA Tilly and the Buttons.
Her online guides are friendly and foolproof, while her book Make It
Simple is full of versatile patterns for wardrobe staples, from a
jumpsuit to the perfect white tee.
10. Make New and Mend
Even if you’re never going to start making dresses from scratch, you can expand your wardrobe horizons
with little more than a YouTube tutorial and a hotel sewing kit.
Clothes are sometimes abandoned for the tiniest of reasons, such as an
awkward neckline or a scratchy label, so don’t be afraid to get the
scissors out. Learn a few basic skills and you can replace buttons and
zips, turn up dragging hems, patch up the worn-out crotch of your
best-loved jeans and alter secondhand finds to fit you perfectly. It
doesn’t even need to be neat – you can join the visible mending
movement, which turns your rips and holes into beautiful design
features.
11. Give Vintage a Chance
Vintage shopping has had a makeover,
with a new generation of cool Instagram traders leading the way. While
1970s Laura Ashley is this summer’s hottest property, anything older
than 20 years is considered vintage, which means 90s minimalism and
minidresses from 2000 are circling back. Monthly events such as @AVirtualVintageMarket
round up the very best sellers, while the Gem app allows you to sift
out the best vintage treasures from across the internet – especially
those elusive larger sizes.
12. Rescue the Rejects
If you are squeamish about wearing a stranger’s hand-me-downs, deadstock is a sustainable compromise.
Usually clothes that were never sold because of small defects or
oversupply, searching “deadstock” on sites such as Etsy and eBay will
return great items from across the decades that might have been destined
for the bin or incinerator. Likewise, end-of-line clothes are an all
too common sight in charity shops (you can spot them by the snipped-out
labels). Until the brands stop producing too much, it’s better to give
excess stock a loving home.
13. Swap, Don’t Shop
Peer-to-peer rental app Nuw
launches a new swapping feature this week, allowing subscribers to list
clothes in exchange for virtual credit and use it to “buy” items from
other people. Swopped.co.uk works on the same principle. Or there’s always the luddite version: gather a group (at a safe social distance) and trade cast-offs. Warning: seeing your old threads on your most stylish friend may induce regret.
14. Call Your Agent
The UK has more than 500 dress agencies
– also known as consignment stores – which sell people’s unwanted
clothes, shoes and accessories in exchange for 50% of the profit. Stock
is usually in pristine condition and only a few seasons old, making it a
great way to save money on premium labels and shop the high street at
one remove. Meanwhile, luxury resale sites such as Vestiaire Collective
are overflowing with worn-once wedding-guest outfits for half the
original price. If you buy new without checking online first, you’re a
chump.
15. Just Stop Shopping
It’s the cheapest way to downsize your fashion footprint. And
yet for many of us, the mere idea of going cold turkey is enough to give
us the shakes. I pledged to buy nothing brand-new for 2019, and
documented the results in my book How to Break Up With Fast Fashion
– but if a whole year is too daunting, start smaller. Challenge
yourself to three months, or even just one. It takes time for your brain
to break the cycle of positive association, and your fingers to stop
twitching for the Asos scroll. But after a few weeks, it gets easier.
Promise.
16. Remove Temptation
Just like deleting your ex’s number and blocking their Facebook
profile, a fast fashion breakup involves admin. So go through your inbox
and unsubscribe from all shopping emails – even those from the golfing
supplies outlet you bought your uncle’s Christmas present from in 2012.
Then, fillet your social media feeds. Unfollow all the influencers whose
pastel-hued grids exist to seduce you into buying things, and replace
them with slow fashion advocates such as @ajabarber, @venetialamanna, @theniftythrifter_, @enbrogue and @styleand.sustain. Cute baby animal accounts would work, too.
17. Shop Small
If buying new is the only option, relax – the roll call of great ethical fashion brands
is expanding. Where utilitarian hemp once ruled all, there’s now fairly
made fashion to suit pretty much every personal style, from slick
streetwear to prairie ruffles and maximalist prints. But beware brands
that are all mouth and no trousers; the best ones should give details of
their factories, suppliers and wage commitments online. Kemi Telford,
Sika and Mary Benson are among my favourites, while Gather & See
does a great job of curating the bunch.
18. Do Your Homework
As fashion brands cotton on to consumer demand for more ethical
production, it’s getting harder to see through the greenwash and work
out where we can shop with a clear conscience. Luckily, there’s an app
for that. Good On You has rated
more than 2,000 brands on their treatment of people, the planet and
animals, providing an at-a-glance verdict from “great” to “avoid”. If
only Tinder did the same.
19. Switch to Pre-Order
Brands such as Olivia Rose, Birdsong and By Megan Crosby prove
that patience is a virtue, and made-to-order fashion is the future. By
only making what customers demand, they can minimise waste and manage
their labour more effectively – the antidote to fast fashion’s need for
speed. Plus, it’s a good way to test your own commitment to a trend. If
you can’t wait a few weeks for that new outfit, maybe it wasn’t such a
must-have after all.
20. Ask #WhoMadeMyClothes?
Fashion Revolution’s rallying cry since 2013,
this simple question can be a powerful weapon in the fight against
exploitation. If we’re ever going to trust big brands again, we need
answers. Where were our clothes made? In which factories? How much were
their workers paid, and how much is lining millionaire pockets as a
result? Full transparency is the only look to be wearing this year.
Metaphorically, at least.
Lauren Bravo is a freelance journalist and digital editor living in
London. She writes mainly about pop culture, modern life, food, fashion
and feminism.
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