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5 Reasons to Switch to Slow Fashion Today

Just over a year ago, I was still buying my clothes from H&M, Forever21 and Zara. I was a self-proclaimed fashionista–I still am–and would buy new clothes every two weeks to keep up with fashion trends. I’ll admit it, I rarely wore the same outfit twice. I was pretty much the perfect example of everything I am against today.

At that point in my life, I was still trying to fit in and unaware of the environmental, societal, and economic problems caused by the fast fashion industry. So, today I’ve put together five reasons that you should join me in the slow fashion movement.

Reduce Waste & Save Water

Most of your unwanted clothes, or clothing that does not sell ends up in landfills where it does NOT decay. According to Manuma Style, it takes over 2720 liters of water to make a SINGLE T-shirt! That’s enough water for you to drink for three years! With places like Flint Michigan not having access to clean water, this is a big deal. The water used to make one T-shirt could go to places like Flint who are in NEED of water.

Lower Your Carbon Footprint & Reduce the Amount of Toxic Chemicals

According to the same article from Manuma Style, a third of the world’s carbon footprint comes from the way we treat our clothes. In other words, a lot of clothing items say “dry-clean only” on the tags, but this is not always true. There are tons of ways to clean your clothes at home without taking them to the dry cleaners.

The amount of toxic chemicals that are in clothing items is crazy. When you dry clean your clothes, those toxic chemicals get into our water and can cause serious problems down the line. Not only this, but the people making the clothes are exposed to these chemicals every day.

Support Fair Wages & Working Conditions

Not only are these laborers–who are mostly women–exposed to these chemicals, they are also paid very little and work in horrible conditions. In my blog in early April, What Everyone Should Know About Fast Fashion, I mentioned some of the harassment that these women face, but there are so many more issues with the working conditions in these factories and your favorite brands are not being honest about it.

It’s our responsibility to start advocating for better working conditions for these women.

Support Small Businesses & Develop Your Own Sense of Style

Switching to slow fashion can be tricky, I still struggle with trying not buy from fast fashion brands, but finding small businesses that sell ethical, trendy clothing is important. Take time to research what businesses in your area do so and check out my blog Six Online Stores to Love and Six to Avoid to start shopping ethically.

Of course, you don’t have to buy NEW. Thrift stores are a great way to support slow fashion and there are a ton of online thrift stores you can shop right now. I even have my own. Personally, I think thrifting is a great way to develop your own sense of style. Check out my post from March, How Thrifting Gives Rise to Individualism to see why so many college and high school students prefer thrifting!

Save Time & Money

Obviously a big factor when it comes to buying clothes is the cost, which is why so many women choose to buy from fast fashion stores like H&M and Forever21. But, you can find even cheaper clothing through thrifting and even from local brands near you.

It’s time to make the switch today!

Why Choose Slow Fashion?

When I mention the words, “slow fashion” people typically don’t follow. Slow fashion according to the Good on You blog is “an awareness and approach to fashion, which considers the processes and resources required to make clothing, particularly focusing on sustainability. It involves buying better-quality garments that will last for longer and values fair treatment of people, animals and the planet.”

The slow fashion movement opposes everything about the fast fashion industry. The movement is growing and is necessary to close the loop in fashion. Brands like H&M who have recently come under fire for burning close to 60 tons of new clothing in spite of their “efforts” to close the loop.

Brands like H&M are trying to advocate for the planet, but behind the scenes, the statistics are staggering.

According to Zady, seventy to one hundred million trees are logged every year to make clothing. The chemicals used in the clothing, phthalates can be absorbed through the skin causing fertility issues, asthma, and birth defects.

The fast fashion industry is also the largest employer of slave and child labor, according to that same article. Two hundred and fifty million children work in the textile industry.

The planet and the people living on it are seriously at risk if we don’t start practicing slow fashion. In order to be more aware of brands that advocate for slow fashion be aware of these characteristics:

The Clothing is made from sustainable materials.

The quality of the product is high.

Find the clothing in small, local stores rather than large chain stores.

Only a few styles in every collection.

The collections are only released two to three times per year.

The slow fashion movement is rapidly growing and now that workers are still being asked to work amid the COVID-19 outbreak, there is even more reason to boycott fast fashion. To help fight fast fashion and keep essential workers safe, visit thereformation.com to help the brand donate medical grade masks to those who need them.

Six Online Stores To Love and Six To Avoid

I love shopping and since staying inside for the past month, I’ve been having some serious withdraws. I miss sifting through clothes racks in thrift stores and visiting my favorite local ethical brands.

I’m sure I’m not alone, so I’ve put together a list of six online stores to entertain your shopping needs and six stores that you should avoid.

Stores to Love While Online Shopping:

GoodFair.com

I just recently discovered this online gem. Goodfair is passionate about ending fast fashion and they believe in creating #nonewclothes. This company offers you variety packs of used and vintage clothing based on your personal size and taste. Their site is also a great place to read about the benefits of second-hand fashion.

I recently subscribed to their newsletter and ordered three variety packs.

ThreadUP

I’ve mentioned this online thrift store before, but it is the largest online thrift store. You can find all your favorite brands and styles available on their site or in their app. You can even sell your own clothes through this company.

TheReformation.com

Reformation is an eco-friendly clothing brand that puts sustainability at the center of what they create. They outline all of their efforts on their website and are super passionate about the environment and their workers.

Right now Reformation is partnering with city of L.A. to manufacture masks that you can buy or donate to essential workers to help fight COVID-19.

Patagonia

Patagonia is an outdoor brand that is very passionate about our environment. They also offer facts about the fast fashion industry here. The brand is fighting for ethical and sustainable clothing that won’t end up in landfills in less than a year. According to their website, 72% of the materials they use in their clothing is made from recycled fibers. Now that’s a brand worth supporting.

The RealReal

The RealReal is a luxury consignment shop. This company is a little costly, but you can buy and sell luxury brands on their app or on their site. The company wants to revolutionize resale and make fashion circular. You can find sustainability calculator on their site to prove the positive impact of consignment on the environment.

You can find brands like Gucci, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Chanel and more for men, women, and children on their site.

UO Vintage

While Urban Outfitters is not a sustainable brand, they are partnering with Urban Renewal to offer used and vintage and recycled clothing for conscious shoppers. They travel the world to find vintage pieces for their customers and offer clothing and home products.

Stores to Avoid While Online Shopping:

Shein

Shein is a very popular online store and app that offers shoppers cheap, fashionable clothing. However, these clothes come at a cost. The brand has gotten in trouble for copyright issues–stealing from other brands–and not releasing any information on their impact on the environment.

Zaful, Fashionova, and Romwe

I’m grouping these three online stores together because their issues are very similar. Like Shein, these brands have become very popular in the last couple of years. The brands offer cheap, fashionable clothing that is constantly changing. Most of their clothes are cheaply made and never show up how you expected, so they tend to end up in landfills quickly.

Boohoo

Boohoo is a UK based brand that has been shamed in parliament for their encouragement of throw-away culture. Like the other brands on this list to avoid, Boohoo is constantly creating new fashion trends which encourages consumers to throw out their old clothing. The brand is TERRIBLE for the environment.

Zara

Growing up, Zara was one of my favorite brands, but like other fast fashion brands, they are creating cheap, poorly-made fashion trends that expire in two-four weeks. The brand has been accused on several occasions of having slave-like working conditions. This brand should be avoided at all costs.

These brands–to avoid and to love–are obviously not the only brands out there, so do your research and become a more mindful shopper!

What Everyone Should Know About Fast Fashion

I created this blog to educate women and girls on why they should boycott fast fashion and start their slow fashion journey. I started my journey about a year and a half ago and it is not always easy. However, the more I educate myself on the fast fashion industry, the harder I try to be a more conscious shopper.

To help you understand why it’s important to fight fast fashion, I have complied a list of things that you should know about the industry.

What is ‘Fast Fashion’?

The first thing that you need to get yourself familiar with is what exactly fast fashion is. Does it mean I can only buy secondhand clothing? No. Should I stop buying from my favorite brands? Well that depends. According to the Good Trade, fast fashion is “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.”

Clothing companies like H&M, Zara, and TopShop all run on this type of format. Up until about the middle of the twentieth century, clothing was only made for the four seasons, but in order to stay trendy today, clothing is made every two to four weeks—quickly and cheaply.

How Fast Fashion Affects the Workers in the Garment Industry.

Making clothing cheaply and quickly means that companies skimp on a lot of safety issues and they tend to create clothing factories in third world countries where they pay workers very low wages.

According to Good on You, “1 in 6 of the world’s workers are employed in the fashion industry and around 80% of those workers are female”. A McKinsey and Company study found that since 2000, there has been an increased demand for fashion. To meet these demands, the fashion industry has moved their labor to developing countries where they can pay low wages to the laborers.

There are horror stories of what these women go through. In Bangladesh, women tend to have increased rates of bladder infections because of the lack of bathroom breaks and they are also forced to take contraceptive pills, so that they will not need time off for maternity leave. Even if a woman did get pregnant, she would not be allowed to take maternity leave. These women also face sexual harassment, unsanitary work spaces and are underpaid.

How the Industry affects the environment.

Yves Saint Laurent used to say, “Fashion fades, style is eternal”. Today that just is not true. Clothing is not made to last. The fast fashion industry makes cheap clothing that is made to end up in the landfill. According to the New York Times, “more than 60 percent of fabric fibers are now synthetics, derived from fossil fuels”. Which means that when clothing ends up in landfills it does not decay. That goes for the clothing that ends up in our oceans, too.

Ten percent of emissions worldwide come from the fashion industry and the amount of water it takes to make clothing is insane. According to Savvyaf.com, it takes 700 gallons of water to make one cotton shirt.

Jeans are the perfect example of what the effects of fast fashion are on the environment. It takes 2,600 gallons of water to create one pair of jeans—that’s equivalent to 200 showers. The chemicals used to dye jeans are polluting. For one pair, it takes 100 feet of farmland to produce the cotton needed and jeans cause 70 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions—that’s equivalent driving 100 miles in your car.

How You Can Fight Fast Fashion!

It’s time to take action. The fashion industry does not need shut down, but it does need to be revamped. If women were able to have access to the financial resources they need and were offered better working conditions, the fashion industry could be “a tool of empowerment instead of exploitation.”

On the other side of things, the same brands that refuse to give women laborers a living wage, are also producing clothing that ends up in landfills and are made of toxic chemicals. In order to produce ethical and sustainable clothing we need to fight back.

Fashion Revolution’s Who Made My Clothes campaign offers you the chance to act. To find out how you can take action against the fast fashion industry visit their page, send a letter to your favorite brand, and learn how you can be a more conscious shopper.

How Thrifting Gives Rise to Individualism

Since 2012, when Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” came out, thrift shopping has become “cool” again. Instagram and other social media outlets have made the trend even more popular in the following years, especially with Generation Z shoppers.

Generation Z includes those born in the mid-1990s to those in the early 2000s, currently about 18-23 years old. They account for 40 percent of all U.S. consumers and are the most diverse generation. They are labeled as money savers and bargain-hunters. They are also more likely to be vegan, care about the environment than other generations and when it comes to fashion, they choose to be more individualistic.

Thrifting offers this generation of shoppers the opportunity to find bargains, save money, help the environment and find their individual fashion. Thrift and vintage stores today, vary. Some shoppers prefer to spend more money at a vintage and thrift store where the owners have found the best and most trendy clothes to resell, while others prefer to do the work themselves and shop at places like Salvation Army and Goodwill.

Noah Borgdorff, 20, describes the latter, as “cathartic”, saying “It’s like the lottery in these places sometimes, one time I found a 2004 Final Four shirt with frayed sleeves and a huge bear coat for like $10.00, I’m not bumping into anyone else with the same thing. When you find these items, it just feels so good.” Borgdorff noticed the fact that more and more people his age were thrifting for cool finds, “people are trying to be different, people have always wanted to stick out, but now you can show off your individual style like never before.”

He is referring to how social media outlets like Instagram and YouTube have encouraged people to show off their aesthetic, or artistic style, in a way they never have in previous generations. Being able to express your style through social media and see other people doing the same, allows people to be their most genuine, authentic selves.

Borgdorff has been thrifting like this since he was younger. His mother would take him to Value World and he and his siblings would be able to pick out “twelve Nike shirts because they were only $3.00.” His mother would “explain how the more money we saved thrift shopping, the more we had to go out to Olive Garden, or go camping.” That has always stuck with Noah, “I like to get my shirts and pants thrifted, so then I can spend more on shoes and other things I cannot find at a Salvation Army.”

The individualism that thrifting gives to Generation Z shoppers is what attracts them, the money they save is what makes them stay. “I’m willing to search through 100 shirts to find five good ones for the price. I can find stuff that no one else has and it gives me a sense of pride, that’s what makes it special.”

How to Still Participate in Fashion Revolution Week While Practicing Social Distancing

My Spring break has officially come to an end and with it, so has the rest of my senior year. Returning to school is not an option since most schools in the states have suspended in-classroom learning and are asking students to leave the dorms due to the COVID-19, or Coronavirus.

In Ohio and Kentucky restaurants and bars are officially closed and across the nation, people are being asked to practice social distancing. In other words, people are encouraged to work from home and only leave their homes if they need to go to the grocery, but I doubt you could find anything since everyone went crazy and bought out all the food, cleaning supplies, and toilet paper.

It seems like life is postponed indefinitely, so here are some things you can do at home to participate in Fashion Revolution week.

It’s Time to Up Your Resell Game

These next few weeks are going to be great for selling your old clothes. If you are already on Poshmark or other resell apps, now is the perfect time to catch up. One of the hardest parts of selling on these apps is finding time to take the perfect image and list the product. It’s definitely not as fun as shopping for clothes.

If you haven’t sold before, now is a perfect time. Take a day or two to clean out your closet and list those products that you no longer want on a resell app. As Marie Kondo said, if it does not spark joy, get rid of it.

For selling tips, check out this Business Insider article.

Stitch/Fix Your Old Clothing

If you’re cleaning out your closet and you find a piece of clothing that you love, but it needs a button sewn back on or has a hole in it, take the time to fix it up. Give life to that forgotten, but loved, piece of clothing.

If you’ve never done any sewing before, this is the perfect time to learn this new skill. It could save you from having to get rid of your favorite items in the future. Plus, you could purchase more pieces from thrift stores and fix those clothes, too!

Make Your Own Clothing

I mentioned this in my last blog, but now is a great time to learn how to make your own clothing. There are several blogs and Youtube videos available for beginners and it would be a great idea to go support your local craft store before they close indefinitely.

If you don’t like the idea of making your own clothing, then try repurposing your old clothes. Turning an old pair of jeans into shorts or cropping an old t-shirt is a fun and quick way to revamp old clothing!

Learn More About #WhoMadeMyClothes

Now is the perfect time to educate yourself on your favorite brands and whether they are ethical or not. Apps like Good on You offer users insight into what brands are doing their part and which brands are harmful to their workers, consumers, and to the environment.

If you are interested in learning more about the fast fashion industry visit my Pinterest page for facts about the industry and tips and tricks to start your journey toward becoming a conscious and mindful shopper.

5 Tips For Starting Your Slow Fashion Journey

With the slow fashion movement picking up speed, more and more women are deciding to take the leap. The fast fashion industry has changed so much over the years and with trends and fashions changing more quickly, more waste is building up. The slow fashion movement is a movement to fight fast fashion through more conscious shopping. For today’s blog I wanted to share some tips with you if you are thinking about or have recently taken the leap toward ethical shopping.

Educate Yourself.

The first step toward shopping ethically is to educate yourself on what brands are living up to their social responsibilities. When deciding if you should buy from a brand, The Good Trade suggests you ask yourself these six questions: Who made this? Is this price fair? What fabrics are used? Is this brand transparent? Do I truly need this? And will this piece last 30 wears or longer? The answers to these questions can help you determine if the brand/product is ethical, sustainable, worth it and if it will last.

Lots of trendy fashion brands today make products that are cheap and last only a few wears. While they are affordable, they usually come at the cost of a poorly paid worker in a third world country and with materials that are harmful to you and the environment.

Buy Secondhand.

If you want to give the ultimate F U to fast fashion, stop buying from them completely. Thrift and vintage stores are an awesome way to shop more ethically. By buying second hand, you are preventing thousands of clothing items from ending up in landfills for the next two hundred years. It might take some time sifting through racks of clothes at the local Goodwill to find that piece that you will love for years to come, but it is so worth it!

Plus, if you love shopping online there are ways to shop secondhand online. Apps like Depop, threadUP, and Poshmark offer a second life to both vintage and trendy clothing and you can do it while binging Love is Blind on Netflix.

Make your own clothing.

Okay, okay. I know not everyone is Alexander McQueen, but it doesn’t hurt to try, plus your grandma would be so proud of you. If you know nothing about sewing or don’t really see yourself as having an eye for design, that’s okay, but if you’re interested in learning there are plenty of YouTube videos out there for beginners.

Buy Locally.

Support local boutiques and stores that make and sell sustainable and ethical clothing. This option is a more expensive one than the previous, however, it’s a good way to find up-to-date fashion you love that LASTS. A few of my favorite stores in the Cincinnati area are: Wolfpack, Grind and Glaze, Pixel 19, and Idlewild. These local brands make it their mission to create, sell, and design fashion that has you and our planet in mind.

Give second life to old clothing.

Repurpose the clothing in your closet that you no longer wear. Organizing a clothing swap with your friends is one way to give your clothes new life, or you can crop that old high school sweatshirt and turn that old dress into a two-piece set. There are endless possibilities when it comes to repurposing clothes and if you need inspiration why not turn to Pinterest.