Simple Style vs Fast Fashion
Quick, see if you can answer these questions without looking at your closet or doing any counting! How many shirts do you currently own? How many pairs of pants? How many sweaters? How many pairs of shoes? Dresses?
Were you able to answer any of these questions? I asked these questions of myself for the first time several years ago and was shocked to realize that I owned so many clothes. I had no idea how many pairs of shoes I had. No number I could quote for the dresses or the sweaters. And that led me to consider this very important point: if I already had so many clothes that I didn’t even know the number, did I actually need any more?
What started this line of questioning for me? That’s an easy answer. It was one documentary, a 2015 piece of film titled “The True Cost”. You can watch the trailer on Youtube or rent the full documentary on Amazon. It introduced me to the reality behind many of the clothes I had thoughtlessly purchased: the men and women working in overseas sweatshops where conditions are often so unsafe and wages so underpaid that the work itself becomes extremely dangerous.
Fast fashion is the term for the way that the overwhelming majority of players in the clothing and textile industry currently operate. It used to be that designers created four new lines of clothing per year, one for each season: spring, summer, fall, winter. Today however, most clothing companies release as many as 50 lines of clothing a year, that’s almost one entire new line of clothing a week! It’s estimated that up to 100 BILLION new garments are made every year! That’s almost 14 new items of clothing for every person in the world, and that doesn’t account for the items they already have (Mikolajczk, 2019).
Clothing is no longer viewed as a necessary tool, instead, it’s primary purpose has become an expression of personality, opinion, or style. But would you choose that shirt on the rack if you knew the conditions that many of these individuals work in every day and the sacrifices they make to do so?
Simple style means slowing down. It means refusing to use the act of buying another outfit as a quick way to cheer ourselves up. Using shopping as an emotional fix has devastating global consequences. And yes, our decisions can make a difference. The more we talk about issues like this, the more we care about our brother or our sister who happen to live on the other side of the planet and speak a different language than us, the more we will begin to see the importance of our own daily decisions. Real, lasting change has to happen in the legislative world so limits are set on companies, but until then, we can do our part. We can care (Mikolajczk, 2019). And we can opt for a wardrobe where we know the answer to the question: Hey, how many shirts do you have?
Reference: Mikolajczk, C. (2019). Six things you didn’t know about the true cost of fast fashion. UNDP. Retrieved from https://www.undp.org/blog/six-things-you-didnt-know-about-true-cost-fast-fashion?utm_source=EN&utm_medium=GSR&utm_content=US_UNDP_PaidSearch_Brand_English&utm_campaign=CENTRAL&c_src=CENTRAL&c_src2=GSR&gclid=CjwKCAiAgbiQBhAHEiwAuQ6BkttR3HfpiEZz0XPpVYnNWXYAx7F3CIwJUSk88GAlUrSOe9jjlu2V0RoCd_4QAvD_BwE.
Challenges/Points:
Fast fashion is the trend of releasing as many lines of clothing a year as possible to raise profits. This deviates from the previous model which was scheduled around the seasons.
The negative effects of fast fashion are far reaching and include greenhouse gas production, pesticide poisoning (used on cotton plants and others), and unsafe working conditions.
We can look at our own closets and decide not to use buying clothes we don’t need as a pick me up. We can make fashion choices that benefit men and women we’ll never meet.
Questions:
How do you make decisions about what to buy or not buy when it comes to clothing?
Do you think you have enough clothes right now for your needs?
Have you developed a habit of relying on clothes to influence your mood or feelings?
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