One question that I've been asked on Instagram is: 'What is the most sustainable way to buy clothing?'. So I want to break down my thoughts on the different possible ways of buying clothes.
Option #1: Low Cost Fast Fashion
During my secondary school years I was given an allowance and the freedom to spend it how I liked and I spent most of that money on clothes and beauty products from high street shops. Therefore, I can understand why people are drawn to this option. To me it seemed like the acceptable way to spend my money so that I could keep up with trends and explore my style.
However, about the time that I started university I began to learn about the true cost of fast fashion.
Fast fashion has one of the worst track records when it comes to ethics and human rights. Most of your favourite high street brands choose to produce their clothing overseas, in less economically developed countries, where they can pay their factory workers tiny wages and where overhead costs are extremely low.
Many of those workers only make enough money to live day to day and are unable to create a financially secure lifestyle for themselves where they can invest their money, send their children to school or afford to take time off during personal hardships.
When the pandemic hit, many brands refused to pay for garments that had already been made as they knew they would struggle to sell them. This left workers unemployed and with no clue when their next wages would come.
We often believe that at least we are supporting those workers when we buy the products they make but this isn't exactly true. Yes, if garment factories shut down overnight there would be awful consequences; 2020 has shown us what this would look like and that is not what I am advocating for. But to believe that fashion fast will end overnight is absurd and there are no signs of this happening. Therefore we should still advocate for change as it will inevitably be gradual. These workers deserve far better wages and far better working conditions than they currently have. For sustainability reasons (which I will get to in a second), these factories should also diversify away from making garments. There are many more jobs that people can be doing to earn money that would not put such a ridiculous strain on the environment. (To clarify, I am in no way trying to blame individuals for whom garment factories are often their only available source of employment but instead the system which has created this issue).
When you continue to buy clothes from low cost fast fashion companies, you are not supporting the workers. Instead you are encouraging those brands to continue to pay extremely low wages as the brands sees your purchase and assumes this means that you like what they are doing.
In particular please boycott Boohoo and the other clothing brands that they own. The fact that these companies have been shown to practice ILLEGALLY and UNETHICALLY and yet CONTINUE TO THRIVE is absolutely absurd. If these companies are unwilling to act within legal and ethical boundaries, then they should not be allowed to operate and make a profit.
As awful as this is, this is all before we even begin to talk about sustainably. Fast fashion is unsustainable. Did you know that it would take 13 YEARS for you to drink the amount of water it takes to produce one t-shirt and one pair of jeans? Or that the UK sends 13 MILLION items of clothing to landfill every week? On a planet that has a finite number of resources, I wonder how long we will physically be able to keep doing this?
To learn more about this I would highly recommend checking out the resources put together by Oxfam for their#SecondHandSeptember campaign in 2019.
I also want to remind you that climate change is a human rights issue and if climate change continues, it is going to affect those in less economically developed countries first and foremost. Therefore, while we reap the benefits of low cost fashion, the workers will be victims twice over - firstly of horrible working conditions but secondly of the worst impacts of climate change.
The last point that I want to make about fast fashion is that I hate the way it devalues clothing. My mother will often tell me about how 'back in her day' people bought less clothing because it was more expensive and they simply couldn't afford to. When a t-shirt is sold for only £10, there is no way that the true material and labour cost is being paid.
Not only is fast fashion bad for human rights and the environment but it is also bad for the consumer. I identify as a minimalist and believe that minimalism can have huge benefits for our lives and mental health. Fast fashion brands want you to keep making purchases and so have created a culture where we believe that to be happy and 'fashionable' we need to keep spending money on the latest trends. Not only does this prevent us from ever reaching our desired state of fulfilment but it also means we continue to spend our money that could be much better invested in other areas either for ourselves or for others.
Another issue here is that the devaluation of clothing makes a market for second hand clothing much less viable, but I will discuss this more in the section on buying clothes second hand.
In short, fast fashion absolutely sucks. Please stop buying it.
As I said at the beginning of this section, I used to regularly buy fast fashion clothing myself. However that was because I was completely uninformed. I had no clue about half of this stuff. I can understand that from a position of ignorance buying fast fashion seems like a no-brainer - it’s cheap and easily accessible - but once you understand the true cost there really is no excuse.
Option #2: High End Fast Fashion
I tried to include this in the above section because many of the issues are identical but I had already said so much that I was worried about it becoming cluttered.
When I say high end fast fashion I am talking about any brands from the likes of Jack Wills and Superdry to Chanel and Gucci. That is because all of these brands have the common trait of trying to market their clothes as more luxurious than other brands.
One good thing I have to say about high end fast fashion is that the higher prices can encourage us to take better care or our clothes and wear them for longer. We are unlikely to throw them out after one season as we often see them as investment pieces and even if we do choose to let go of them, we are more likely to resell them and therefore they will not end up in landfill.
This has also led the creation of the vintage market where second hand high end fast fashion can even sell for more than it did in the first place. This is a good thing because it creates a more viable market for second hand clothing but again, I will discuss this more in the section on second hand clothing.
In many cases, buying more expensive clothes also encourage us to buy less pieces overall which is more sustainable. However, if we take Jeffree Star as an extreme example, we can see that often people become swept up in high end fashion and continue to buy far more than they need, despite the large price tag.
The main issues with high end fast fashion are exactly the same as low end fast fashion. Many of these brands will also pay the workers in their garment factories extremely low wages despite the higher prices of their clothing. They also similarly produce an absurd amount of clothing each year and therefore have a big environmental footprint. And finally, these brands can also make the consumer feel bad by making them feel like they need to spend lots of money on designer clothes to be happy.
Option #3: New Clothes From Sustainable Brands
Ok, so now that I have hopefully convinced you that buying fast fashion, whether it is high end or low end, is awful you may be wondering how I feel about more sustainable brands.
As environmental issues become a more widespread concern, many people are choosing to buy clothing more brands who's selling point is that they operate more sustainably and more ethically.
One of the main issues with this category is that is clouded by greenwashing. Many companies who operate sustainably are not operating ethically and vice versa.
One main area to boycott is fast fashion brands who have a greener line. While some people (including past me) believe that this shows the company that you want to support their greener initiatives (and to some extent it does), there is often a lot of greenwashing at play and it also continues to put money in the pockets of companies who are doing incredible harm. The reason that you can buy an "environmentally friendly" t-shirt for cheaper from H&M's conscious line than you can from Organic Basics is because, although H&M may be using recycled or organic materials, they are still not pay the true cost of the materials or labour behind that t-shirt.
My other main concern is that many of these "sustainable" brands are still encouraging us to make regular purchases that we do not need to make. No matter how sustainably made a t-shirt is, it still requires materials, resources and energy to make and therefore it is always more sustainable to simply not make the t-shirt at all.
However, some positive notes are that most sustainable brands charge more for their products and this is so that they can pay more of the true cost of the garments and so that they can create a viable business with fewer sales.
I also encourage you to look out for brands making items from recycling materials and this is even more sustainable than using organic materials as it helps to alleviate the waste issues that we already have on the planet.
Option #4: Second Hand Clothing
Now that we have evaluated the different of buying clothes first hand, lets evaluate the sustainability and ethics of buying clothes second hand.
In my opinion, buying second hand clothes is the best way of obtaining clothes that aren't already in your wardrobe. As I previously said, the UK alone, sends 13 MILLION items of clothing to landfill every WEEK. In other words, there are already enough items of clothing on this planet to clothe as all for a while, if not forever.
Therefore from a sustainability point of view, on a planet with finite resources, the most sustainable way forward would be to stop producing anymore first hand clothing. As I discussed before, I also don't think a gradual move away from clothing production would be a bad idea ethically.
So do I have any issues with second hand clothing? The only problem that I see currently with the selling of second hand fashion is that it is often sold for very cheap prices and therefore this makes a increased market for second hand clothing difficult in a time when it has never been needed more than ever before. I am aware that this is a supply and demand issue and therefore I would like to encourage consumers to think more about the true cost of clothing before they turn their nose up at paying £8 for a second hand t-shirt. We have this notion that second hand clothing is in someway unclean and therefore worth less than it was when it was purchased first hand. However, unless it has become worn, why should it be worth less than it was first hand when it will serve exactly the same purpose for you as it did for it's first owner? When you think about what you pay for other things in your life, such as food and beauty items, I don't think it would be ridiculous to suggest that a second hand t-shirt should cost even more than £8.
For this reason, I really love the idea of vintage clothing because it bases the price of the item on its quality and desirability, not its age or the number of previous owners. I'm not sure that I like the fact that high end brands are worth more but that is a whole other topic.
Option #5: Just Stop Buying Clothes
The last 'option' is to simply stop buying clothes. For the same reasons as I stated when talking about second hand clothing, I believe this is truly the best option environmentally and ethically. (You already own enough clothes).
The most sustainable option will always be the outfit you already have in your wardrobe.
While I don't really expect everyone to stop buying clothes I do think we should buy less and better value what we already own.
I also think it is important that we, as a society, relearn how to repair and alter our clothes for this reason. An item of clothing should not go straight into the bin just because it has a small (and probably easily mendible) hole. I have also started to use tailors for repair jobs that scare me such as replacing zips. Once we start paying the true cost for clothes, tailor repairs are much cheaper than replacing items.
Will I Personally Keep Buying Clothes?
Sadly, the short answer is yes. As much as I am inspired by Cinzia's No Buy Year and although I know that I own enough clothes for the next 10 years I cannot imagine I will not stopping buying clothes altogether any time soon.
For the last year I have felt no desire to buy clothes from fast fashion companies and have purchased most of my clothes from depop or from second hand charity shops.
However, lately I have been thinking more from the perspective of minimalism for personal benefits and have less and less desire to buy clothing altogether. In the last six months, I believe I have only bought 5 times in total, and even that I can't decide how I feel about.
Currently I think I would prefer to curate more of a capsule wardrobe that evolves gradually overtime and I plan to slowly invest in more vintage and high quality pieces to flesh that out. And I will probably turn to sustainable brands for things like underwear and socks that I don't want to purchase second hand but I'm going to try and wait until I actually need them and not just buy them for the sake of it. I'm also trying to get better and repairing and altering clothes so that I can extend their lives.
Our style does change, and fashion is part of our everyday lives and therefore I don't think there is an issue with taking pride and joy in the clothes that you wear, but I would personally like to do it in a way that is slower and more sustainable for the planet and for my own mental health.
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