On Avoiding vs. Living with Fast Fashion
This is the third post in a series of three posts that are all related. There’s a lot in these three topics, and I want to go deep into them.
On Fast Fashion
On Greenwashing
On Avoiding vs Living with Fast Fashion
Since my last blog post, a lot has changed. My life has changed! I’m a mom now, and that means sometimes the most convenient option is the right option. I’m actually glad that I hadn’t written this post yet because I think I have a new perspective on this topic. I don’t necessarily have advice on how to make these choices anymore, but I want to share how I’ve been coping with my eco-anxiety.
Eco-Anxiety is a real thing.
Chances are, if you’ve been on the internet in the last couple years, it seems like everywhere we look, there’s a new reason to worry. Even just this week, the UN’s Climate Report tells us what a lot of us already knew - climate change is here, and it’s here to stay. There is also a new focus from fast fashion retailers such as Zara pushing their “sustainable lines” and cosmetics products using “clean” and “green” to make consumers feel better about their purchases.
It’s hard to not feel overwhelmed by all of these choices, and deal with the cloud that’s looming over our heads that is global warming.
Curate a wishlist.
I honestly haven’t bought many clothes during the last year, because I’m not really going anywhere. I have a few things in mind that I want to buy, but no firm ideas yet.
I find that really having a wishlist helps me curb impulse spending. If I know that I want a white button down, I don’t go buy the first one I find. I will usually look for a few different options, read some reviews - and maybe the one at Target ends up being the one I buy, but giving myself time to explore other ideas and options gives me time to say “Hey. maybe I actually don’t need a white button down shirt.”
There’s a pandemic.
If you’ve been taking the pandemic extremely seriously, or if where you are still has strict lockdowns in place, online shopping might be your only way to get new items into your wardrobe. Of course, this means you can’t try things on and you might want to go with a brand where you already know your sizing and you’re comfortable.
If you feel like going shopping (hello retail therapy), you might feel like picking up a couple things that you’re certain you will wear, and not wait for shipping is the right thing for you.
Basically what I’m trying to say is - there is room here for grace and giving into impulse because [insert standard blurb about the pandemic and how the world is not a normal place.]
The Simple Take: Don’t overthink it.
Sorry if you came here for actual advice. I’ve been running to Target if I need things for the baby or the house, but I don’t think a global pandemic is the most fair time for us to be putting so much pressure on ourselves.
On Greenwashing
This is the second post in a series of three posts that are all related. There’s a lot in these three topics, and I want to go deep into them.
On Fast Fashion (Read here)
On Greenwashing (read on!)
On Avoiding vs Living with Fast Fashion (coming soon)
If you get the basics of fast fashion, you’re probably wondering well okay, I’ll make sure to not buy from those retailers - H&M, Zara, Forever 21. Easy enough, right?
If only. Unfortunately, the lack of regulations around the fashion industry’s supply chains, manufacturing practices, and materials means that there’s a lot of room for brands to market themselves as more sustainable than they are. This is what is known in the industry as Greenwashing.
What is Greenwashing?
From Investopedia:
Greenwashing is the process of conveying a false impression or providing misleading information about how a company's products are more environmentally sound. Greenwashing is considered an unsubstantiated claim to deceive consumers into believing that a company's products are environmentally friendly.
From CorpWatch:
Disinformation disseminated by an organisation so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.
Where do we see Greenwashing?
My favorite example: boxed water. If you’ve been in any airport in the last few years, you’ve probably seen it. “Boxed water is better”, claims the label in bold letters contrasted on a stark white background. Better… how? Their branding is great, and reading their website really makes you feel like they’re making a difference. They plant trees! Wow! Recycled materials? Cool. They even have an initiative to clean beaches. Who doesn’t love pristine beaches, am I right?
Okay, let’s get real for a second though. A few clicks away from their homepage, you come to this image:
What do you notice? Did you notice that at the very bottom in tiny cramped writing it says “3% plastic film”? This material is also known as layered cardboard is really hard to recycle in most places. So while all of their marketing says that they’re better, you have to ask yourself - “Better than what?” Better than throwing away plastic bottles? Better than reusable water bottles or even refilling plastic water bottles? You can answer that one.
You can probably think of other examples: food from Pepsico/Nestle that is repackaged to look like it came straight from a farmer’s market, Keurig K-cups, Dawn dish soap. Aw, but the duckies! I know… And so do the people behind those genius commercials.
How to spot Greenwashing in Fashion
I hope you understand the harm that can come from marketing something as being more green than it is. People who aren’t doing their research (unlike you, smarty pants!) are likely to fall into these traps laid out by people who get paid a lot of money to set them. I don’t blame you if you’ve fallen for these tactics before, you’re one person against an army of people who are dedicated to figuring out how to make people who care about the earth buy things that aren’t necessarily-100%-guaranteed-absolutely-positively good for the planet.
In the fashion industry, we see this very commonly, especially in the last few years with all of the attention on this issue. It can be hard to spot, but if you’re looking into a brand, there are some ways to spot greenwashing. Once you practice looking for these signs of greenwashing, you’ll start seeing it everywhere.
Initiatives to reduce carbon emissions
A brand that is talking a lot about what its corporate office is doing to reduce carbon emissions might be trying to distract from the fact that their supply chain isn’t being evaluated in order to reduce their carbon footprint. Their Instagram and website might be filled with pictures of happy people working surrounded by a forest of plants, biking, or cleaning up local parks. If they’re not focused on their manufacturing practices, sources of their raw materials, and shipping and transportation emissions, they’re not focusing on the right thing.
Spotlighting eco-friendly materials
Bamboo, cotton, rayon- All sound better than they really are. While the raw materials might give us the warm fuzzies, the process of making them into wearable and usable fabrics can be extremely water-intensive, contribute to water pollution, and ecologically damaging including deforestation.
If you’re curious about the impact of materials that you see on your clothes, you can check out this index: https://msi.higg.org/page/msi-home
Look out for certifications such as GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) and OCS 100 (Organic Content Standards) on certain raw materials.
A sustainable “collection”
This is to me as good as McDonald’s (in America) saying that they’re vegetarian-friendly. So you want me to eat a tiny salad and french fries and call it a meal? Similarly, what good is one H&M collection when the rest of their line is the same old? Brands that hope that one small line of organic cotton t-shirts or clothes that “give back” are 100% guilty of greenwashing and hoping that their efforts in one area can cover up their lack of movement or progress in others. Beware!
Overall vagueness in statements, claims, and goals
Like I said above, words like “sustainable,” “ethical,” “green,” and “eco-friendly” have no official meaning in the industry, so there’s nothing stopping brands from using these words to try to make themselves seem better than they are. Even statistics and data that they provide should be scrutinized - look closely at the timeframes that they’re comparing, their company size, and when the data was last updated. If their goals seem really squishy or only attainable because they moved manufacturing locations to somewhere with tighter regulations, that might be a sign that they’re doing the bare minimum and just paying lip service to sustainability.
Brands known for Greenwashing
Brace yourselves, this might sting a little. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of brands that are known to boost their eco-friendliness through PR initiatives and marketing content.
H&M
Zara
Fashion Nova
Nasty Gal
Everlane
Nike
Asos
Calvin Klein & Tommy Hilfiger - This is an interesting one. Comment below if you can figure out why I’ve listed them here!
The Simple Take: Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
Do your research, and make sure that you’re comfortable with the amount of data that you’re seeing on the brand’s supply chain and labor practices.
My favorite resource for researching particular brands is Good On You’s brand directory: https://directory.goodonyou.eco/ I love the way they break down each brand by environmental impact, labor practices, and animal rights. This way you can choose what matters most to you, and how much!
Remember, you don’t have to be perfect. If you’re reading this and curiously research a bunch of brands that you’ve made purchases from, don’t feel bad! We all start somewhere, and I encourage you to vote with your wallet moving forward.
Sources:
https://www.vogue.co.uk/news/article/greenwashing-in-fashion
https://goodonyou.eco/how-can-you-tell-when-a-fashion-brand-is-greenwashing/
My last post in this series will be on how you can reconcile shopping fast fashion and also I’ll include some of my personal favorite brands if you want to dive in and explore some sustainably made clothes and home goods!
On Fast Fashion
This is the first post in a series of three posts that are all related. There’s a lot in these three topics, and I want to go deep into them.
On Fast Fashion (read on!)
On Greenwashing (coming soon)
On Avoiding vs Living with Fast Fashion (coming soon)
Once you start going down the sustainable fashion rabbit hole, it’s not long before you come across the term “fast fashion”. It’s unfortunate that it’s become such a buzzword, but it’s an important concept that is central to a lot of conversations around the sustainable fashion movement.
What is Fast Fashion?
From Investopedia:
Fast fashion is the term used to describe clothing designs that move quickly from the catwalk to stores to meet new trends. The collections are often based on designs presented at Fashion Week events. Fast fashion allows mainstream consumers to purchase trendy clothing at an affordable price.
From Lexico (Oxford Languages):
Inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends.
"the high-street leader when it comes to fast fashion"
From Good On You:
Fast fashion can be defined as cheap, trendy clothing, that samples ideas from the catwalk or celebrity culture and turns them into garments in high street stores at breakneck speed.
History can give us some context about why this phenomenon became prevalent in the first place.
Fashion before the Industrial Revolution was by nature slow. “High fashion” as it was called was really something for only the wealthy aristocratic classes, and they set the trends for the current season. Most people though, dressed within their class, and didn’t have the means or access to get custom-fitted garments. This didn’t mean that they didn’t care about fashion, but they would have accessed trends late, or had to make modifications to their own clothes to fit with the emerging styles.
As the Industrial Revolution picks up steam starting in the 1800s, we start to see a natural boost in production capabilities with the invention of the loom. From then until about the 1960s, more and more fashion houses took measures to standardize and industrialize their production capabilities. WWII also impacted this, as many fashion houses devoted resources to creating uniforms and other materials for the war efforts.
And then come the 1960s. Along with the Civil Rights Movement, counterculture, and angst about the Vietnam War came a resistance to old social norms. Fashion, being one of the best ways of self-expression, became something that the younger generation of the 60s really tried to make their own. There was a strong desire to move away from the fashions of the older generations, and fashion retailers began to realize this. The search for cheap and new fashions led them to the first wave of “fast fashion” retailers who realized they could open up manufacturing centers in other parts of the world, where we still see a prevalence of sweatshops today: Central America, China, India, and other parts of South America and Asia.
A few factors then led to what we see today as trends change literally as soon as you feel like you have a handle on the latest styles: technology (being able to buy something from your phone with a couple taps), marketing (in some ways, retailers are all in a rat race, trying to beat each other to come out with next season’s hottest thing), celebrity culture (magazines telling us what to wear/what not to wear, celebrities never being shown repeating outfits).
Why is Fast Fashion so bad?
If you go to H&M, Zara, Forever21, or any other major retailer in a mall or shopping complex, you’ll likely see prices that are tantalizingly low. $3.95 for a tank top, $12.99 for a dress, $10 for 2 blouses. How do these retailers manage to sell these clothes for so cheap, while staying in business? The answer comes pretty quickly if you think about their supply chain: cheap labor and materials allows them to price low enough to keep the demand going. Constantly changing the trends also allows them to really market products to make people feel like they need them. This is where our consumerist culture got out over its skis.
Environmental Impact
To keep up with the demand for cheaply made “trendy” clothes, the industry inevitably started cutting lots of corners. Cheap dyes and textiles are often the most harmful to produce and shed microfibers and toxins into our water supplies. Greenwashing efforts have made us think that even cotton is good for the environment, when in reality it has an extremely water- and pesticide-intensive production process, leading to droughts and biodiversity problems in the areas it is farmed.
People Impact
To maintain those door-buster deals, the people hired to make those clothes are often hired at extremely low wages and in dangerous (or just downright unpleasant) working conditions. The documentary “True Cost” goes into a lot more detail on this: https://truecostmovie.com/
On the side where we sit as consumers, there’s also an unfortunate side effect of this that comes in the form of a ton of angst and FOMO. Constantly seeing new trends and designs reinforces a culture where we are never satisfied with what we have, leading to a lot of wasted time and money, if you’re throwing away or even donating clothes.
Is Fast Fashion Getting Better?
Changing an entire industry that has been rooted in near-instant gratification, the next Big Thing, and putting profits over planet is going to be slow. We’ve started to see more and more brands call out what their sustainable initiatives are, in responses to media outcry like “True Cost” which had notable fashion icons like Stella McCartney, Vandana Shiva and Livia Firth speak out against what mainstream fashion brands have been getting away with. Pulling the curtain back has made a lot of brands go on the defensive. This is where things can get a little shadey. It can be really hard to tell if a brand is actually taking steps to improve their practices, or if they are doing the bare minimum and “greenwashing” their brand.
What is Greenwashing?
Greenwashing is a marketing tactic that brands use to make themselves seem more environmentally responsible than they really are. An example of this is bottled water that markets itself as natural and organic. Isn’t that obvious? What they’re really trying to make you forget is that their bottles are plastic and most likely won’t be reused or recycled. The same concept applies in fashion when a company markets themselves as “green” or “eco-friendly”, but then doesn’t really provide any data or facts around how.
Like I said, I’ll have a whole post on greenwashing so this is just a bit of a primer. In the meantime, here’s a great article from Vogue UK about ways to watch out for Greenwashing: https://www.vogue.co.uk/news/article/greenwashing-in-fashion
The Simple Take: Nobody is winning by playing by Fast Fashion rules.
British journalist Lucy Siegle said it best:
Fast Fashion isn’t free. Someone, somewhere, is paying.
As consumers, the best we can do is to make informed choices that will last. The less we buy overall the better, and when necessary, we should try to make things last as long as they can. This is a sound philosophy for most things in life - invest in quality over quantity.
Unlinked sources:
Fashion History Lessons: The Origins of Fast Fashion, Fashionista: https://fashionista.com/2016/06/what-is-fast-fashion
What Is Fast Fashion, Good On You: https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-fast-fashion/
Stay tuned for my next post about greenwashing: what it is, how you can figure out if a brand is greenwashing, and brands that are known for that practice (and better alternatives!)
On My Essentials
Wardrobe essentials is one of the first things that personal stylists will ask you about. This is because figuring out what your essentials are is a practical question. Think of your wardrobe essentials as your building blocks. The pieces that are foundational in your closet, that you reach for on a rushed morning, a lazy day when you still have to look a little put together, what you might bring on a weekend trip somewhere.
Figuring this out for me was so empowering - and yes, I’m using that word for a reason. Let me explain.
Essentials are empowering.
Think of a celebrity or real person whose style you wish you could have. Got one? Pull up some pictures of your favorite outfits from them. What do you notice about all of their outfits? Do they have amazing power suits? A hat for every occasion? Jeans + white tee and then a statement shoe? Obviously, if it’s a celebrity you’re looking at, they have stylists that think about this stuff for them and chances are they don’t actually own all of their clothes. But the principle remains the same! When you figure out what you can throw on without thinking too much and you know you’re going to look and feel like a million bucks, that’s Your Look.
I have a really hard time getting out of bed some mornings. Okay okay fine, most mornings. Knowing that in my closet I have the building blocks for an outfit that’s going to make me look more put together than I feel is a great feeling when I spend the next 3 hours at my desk wishing i was still at work! Funnily enough, these are some of the days when I get the most compliments on my outfits, because I’ve stuck with what I know works for my body and personal style. Even though I didn’t get creative with the outfit, it would be something that I feel totally myself in and I’m a firm believer that if you look good, that can help you feel good.
How do I figure out what my out what my Essentials are?
Hopefully you’re starting to get the idea of what essentials are, and maybe you have some go-to outfits in mind. Let’s take this a step further now. I find it’s easy to do this if you have your clothes in front of you, so open up those drawers and closets and try thinking through these questions:
How do you spend your time?
This question is less about your clothes themselves, but it’s an important one to ask because it’s not practical to have a closet full of fancy clothes if you spend most days in a casual office setting. If you’re a person who goes for runs, hikes, and bike rides every chance you get, then your wardrobe essentials should reflect that. Don’t worry if your list is different than what you find online - that’s the whole point of personal style. It has to work for you and your lifestyle.
What gets worn the most in your closet?
Understand what you have now is key to unlocking what it is that makes your wardrobe yours! It’s also a good reality check - maybe you have a bunch of button-down shirts, but really you reach for your white t-shirts more because you never have time to iron. There’s no right or wrong answer, try to think of this part as objectively as you can.
What colors do you wear most often?
Another angle of the question above, but be honest with yourself. Do you wear that fuchsia skirt? What about that striped blazer?
How do you dress up an outfit?
You figured out that your go-to’s are really your tshirts, leggings, and shorts. Great! Now if you had to modify those outfits in 30 seconds to be a little more dressed up, what would you change? Try to keep this as simple as possible: changing a pair of shoes, adding a blazer, tying a scarf into your hair.
My Essentials
I want to share what my wardrobe essentials are, not because I think this is the perfect set of essentials, but just to show you that they should really reflect your own lifestyle and personal tastes. I deviate from these essentials if I’m really feeling creative, if there’s a special occasion (a wedding, holiday party, job interview), but the way I dress is pretty much the same on an average day, even though the results might look really different day-to-day.
I spend a majority of my time working. Even though that’s at home right now, I still like to dress up as if I was going to the office because that’s how I feel productive. Regardless of the season, I prefer pants over things that reveal my legs, so I have a variety of jeans, pants, long skirts, and even tights that I can layer under dresses and skirts in colder weather (because New England). I also tend to wear lighter sweaters or long-sleeve shirts even in warmer weather because I get cold from air conditioning and breezes very easily!
I like to dress pretty much the same during the work week and the weekend, because I like to feel polished and put together.
I prefer wearing black or white as a base, and then adding pops of colors with a colorful top, blazer, cardigan, scarf, or a statement pair of shoes.
To feel really at my best, I love throwing a blazer over a t-shirt and jeans. If I need to get fancy, I’ll opt for a nicer pair of jeans or pants, and a more dressy pair of shoes.
Here’s my list of essentials, divided into sections based on the type of item. You can scroll through the gallery to see how I’ve styled these various items. Many of the photos happen to be from my travels, because when I travel I have limited space and I don’t want to be worried about what I’m wearing! I can’t always predict my moods, so I need guaranteed good outfits.
Tops
black tank top
white t-shirt
black t-shirt
white button-down shirt
black crewneck sweatshirt
longsleeve navy knit top
cream knit sweater
Bottoms
black skinny pants (bonus: they have an elastic waist band)
dark wash skinny jeans
dark wash straight cut jeans
black chinos
white jeans (maternity)
tights
black floor length skirt
Dresses
knee-length black dress
patterned maxi dress
Layers/Outerwear
mustard cardigan
black blazer
other blazers (I could probably do a whole post on blazers alone… comment below if you would like that?)
vintage silky royal blue
millennial pink scrunched sleeve
emerald green tailored
vintage oversized houndstooth
denim jacket
gray knit open cardigan
camel jacket
black jacket
Shoes
white sneakers
black loafers
rust-orange mules
light gray Converses
black Chelsea boots
Accessories
long necklace with round gold studded pendent (i wear this one backwards as well)
shorter necklaces for layering (3 that I bring with me when I travel)
sunglasses
watch
earrings
This is by no means an exhaustive list of everything in my closet! The idea with this list is to give you a sense of what my wardrobe essentials are. But knowing what my base building blocks are makes getting dressed in the morning easier, and it curbs my shopping impulses (will I really wear a pair of high-waisted paper bag shorts, even though they look so cute on instagram?)!
When about when you are sure you want to buy something new?
Ah! If you think you’ve really identified a gap in your wardrobe, that’s important to make note of. What you don’t want to do is impulsively go buy what you think you need. I’ll have a whole other post on how I manage my wishlist but here are 3 quick thought experiments:
Wait before buying.
So you found the perfect ______. Wait at least 2 weeks before buying it. If in 2 weeks you still feel like you want it, try waiting another 2 weeks. What have you been substituting in place of that perfect piece? Has it been awkward? How often did you think about that perfect piece?
Rent it.
Services like Rent the Runway & Le Tote are great if you want to try something out that is a wardrobe risk, or you want to know what it will feel like to really have that piece in your wardrobe before you make a forever decision!
Borrow it.
Do you have a friend/sibling/neighbor/colleague with great style and you think they might be willing to let you borrow something? Try swapping a couple items, or asking if you can borrow something to see if you like it enough to buy it for yourself. I promise it’s not as awkward as you think, and it’s way better than buying something just for a single ocassion!
A Simple Take on your Personal Style = Wardrobe Essentials.
It’s cheesy, but really your wardrobe essentials done right can be the most representative selection of your personal style! If you love color, then your essentials should be colorful! Love loose and flowy linens, let those be your building blocks. Your wardrobe essentials should reflect you and give you confidence!
Comment below and let me know if this was a helpful guide for you! Leave me questions about building your wardrobe essentials and I’ll answer them!
On Sustainability
Sustainability: Here’s a word that gets thrown around so casually and frequently that I think people have started to really become numb to the actual meaning.
Sustainability: noun
the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level.
"the sustainability of economic growth"
avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance.
"the pursuit of global environmental sustainability"
Definition from Oxford Languages
Can we take a moment to reread that second definition? The avoidance of the depletion of natural resources. This implies that it can still be avoided. Not to be a debbie downer, but reversing climate change at this stage is going to take some serious multi-faceted strategies, time, money, and technology. However, if you think this means that things are beyond hope and we should all just throw our hands up and go back to binge-watching Riverdale, you’ve got another thing coming.
Why is there an increased focus on sustainability within the fashion industry?
Simply put, research shows that the fashion and garment industry is one of the most polluting industries globally. Different sources put it at various spots within the top 5 most-polluting industries, but any way you look at it, it’s not great. Unfortunately a large part of it is due to fast fashion, overproduction, tax breaks for destroying unsold stock, and a resistance to changing business practices.
This $2.5 trillion industry is transforming slowly, however as of 2018, the UN reported that 10% of global carbon emissions are attributed to the production of fashion. Mainstream fashion brands often have extremely long and opaque supply chains and energy-intensive production.
Textile waste is as sad as it looks. Photo source: Fashion Revolution
A few other astounding statistics for you:
85% of clothes end up in landfills around the world. That number was published by a Paris fashion event that wanted to dedicate an event to the 50th celebration of Earth Day.
1.7 billion tons of CO2 are produced yearly, more than international flights and shipping combined, reported WBUR.
Less than 1% of clothes are recycled into new forms of textiles. With polyester (an oil-based plastic) being a prevalent material, what this means is water pollution from microfibers getting into our waterways as clothes are washed and landfills being clogged by materials that won’t degrade for potentially hundreds of years,
20% of industrial wastewater pollution originates from the fashion industry.
How can we do better as consumers?
Organizations like Fashion Revolution, Good On You, and the UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion all do incredible work in researching, raising awareness, and holding fashion brands accountable for publishing more transparent statistics about their supply chain, and reducing their environmental impact.
The good news for us is that this gives us information at our fingertips to make better choices to lower our own carbon footprint. Information is a powerful tool, and there are tons of ways to support these organizations and what they’re doing, in addition to voting with your wallet to support brands that have sustainable practices.
Fashion Revolution Week just passed in April, and is held every year in commemoration of the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh. The main goal of this initiative is to push brands to have more transparency around their labor practices. This event grows every year, and you can check out more here: https://www.fashionrevolution.org/about/get-involved/.
The simple take: there’s a lot that we can do.
The information can be overwhelming, and I don’t mean to make this sound like a lost cause. Is the impact on our planet terrible? Without a doubt. Is it a hopeless cause? Well, as you can see, there’s a lot of room for improvement for manufacturers, brands, and every player along the supply chain process before as an industry (consumers included), we can say that we’ve done our best. I think there’s a long road ahead, and like any effort that aims to create long-lasting change for our little blue dot, it’s going to take a lot of awareness raising, collective effort, and eventually, legislation.
From voicing our concerns, getting involved in events to raise awareness, and voting with our wallet, I’ll be sharing more ways to take action. I’m just getting started here! As I learn about more initiatives that we can support as conscious consumers and global citizens, I’ll be sharing them both here and on my Instagram, so keep an eye out in both places!
Until next time, here’s some great informative entertainment from Hasan Minhaj. His Netflix show has a great episode on fast fashion’s impact on the environment and I encourage you to check it out: The Ugly Truth of Fast Fashion.
Leave a comment below if you have questions or comments on anything I’ve written about! Changing this industry will take a collective force, and dialogue and discussion are a big part of that!
On Beginning
Oh hey there, friend!
This blog has been something I’ve wanted to start for quite sometime. A pandemic feels as good a time as any to start a new hobby. Some people take up sourdough, some take up sewing, and me, well, keep reading and you’ll see!
Sustainability has been something that I’ve been passionate for a long time, and in the last few years, I’ve been down some really deep rabbit holes to figure out for myself the answer to this question:
What can I do to leave a gentler trace on this little blue dot that we all share?
There isn’t a simple answer, which is ironic given the title I chose for my blog. BUT. I think that there are some simple takes on what I’ve learned that are really easy to apply! So easy that I’ve even gotten my husband on board, and friend, he is a creature of habit.
In talking with people in my life, I’ve found that most people want to make better choices. When I mention companies with ethical supply chain and manufacturing practices, innovative fabric technologies, and really interesting things that companies are doing, there’s always a positive reaction. (Or they’re being polite, but I guess it’s too late now!) An area that I find interesting and honestly, fun, is personal style and playing with my wardrobe. So while there’s a lot of sustainable practices that you can adopt in your home and life, I’ll be focusing mostly on what that means for your closet and personal style!
There’s a ton of hype around ethical fashion, eco-fashion, capsule wardrobes, and I think like anything, there are always places to start if you’re able to find ways to break it down. After all, you don’t go from being a couch potato to running a marathon overnight! So don’t be scared, I’m not about to tell you to purge your closet (although it’s a very fun and cathartic process, but I’ll save that for a later date!)
Like anything, I think if you really want to go all in and critically think about every single choice you make in your life, that’s wonderful and please share your experiences with me! However, if you’re a busy person, a parent with kids who need attention, a student who should be studying and not online shopping (it’s okay, I’m not judging, this is a safe space), or even if you’re just content with your wardrobe, and want to know how you can make the most out of it - I think I’ll be able to help. My goal is to help you make the most of your closet and see what you have in a new light, and I’ll be sharing some ways that I’ve made changes to my wardrobe that you can choose to do as well! By the way. I’m not an expert, by any means. If I ever start to sound like I think I am, please for the love of all things green, call me out.
TL;DR, here’s a simple take on everything above: Perfection isn’t my goal, and it shouldn’t be yours either. I’m not tracking my carbon footprint (yet), and I’m not going to judge you for a TJ Maxx shopping spree. Don’t compare your outfit or body to posts you see on Instagram or Pinterest, and don’t worry that you can’t afford some of the brands I might talk about. What matters is that the choices you make leave your heart and soul feeling good, and your corner of the planet a little greener.
Talk soon!
Madhu
If you read this far and have thoughts, questions, comments, please leave them below! I’m eager to know what you want to hear about and what would be helpful! <3