Now that we’ve talked in depths about the problems of the fast fashion industry, it goes without saying that everyone should try and incorporate sustainable living into their clothing. I started learning about this topic a few years ago, and since then my fast fashion consumption has dropped to almost nothing. You can still love and experiment with fashion without buying the trendiest pieces from H&M once a month. If anything, learning about sustainable practices within my own consumption has made me think harder about what I wear and developing my own sense of style.

5 Steps to a More Sustainable Wardrobe

      1. Reworking what you already own

This doesn’t necessarily mean wearing the same clothes you did in middle school. Think of ways to upcycle and rewear old pieces in a new way. Crop that old tee shirt and make it into a matching crop top and headband. Turn a pair of shrunken jeans into shorts. There are so many tutorials you can find on youtube depending on your level of comfort. Also, experiment! No one taught me how to use a sewing machine, but one day I hauled up my grandma’s old 1950s machine and started messing around until I could figure it out.

      2. Borrow for Special Events

I know it’s tempting to buy a new dress for every wedding or school dance you are invited to, but try swapping with your friends. I personally love stealing clothes from my roommate, so I would 100% recommend it (you might want to ask first though).

     3. Shop second hand

Okay I get it, in the highly consumerist culture we live in, buying a cute shirt might be the only ounce of serotonin you get all day. While a minimalist wardrobe is ideal, sometimes you want to expand. Try shopping second hand for any pieces that you want, but don’t need. Thrifting is as close as you can get to guilt free and affordable ethical shopping. (Not to mention, it’s a fun thing to do-by yourself or with friends.) Also, thrift online! Depop, Poshmark, Facebook Marketplace, Thredup, Ebay, Etsy- all these places can be wonderful platforms, especially when you use the filter features to narrow done what you are looking for.

     4. Think really hard before purchasing something

This applies to second hand shopping too, but even more so to buying fast fashion. Sometimes, it is the only option. I understand that, and it’s not constructive to tear down others for buying what they need from stores that are accessible to them. Not everyone has the time or resources to sort through an entire Goodwill to find a nice white button down. On the other hand, I can not tell you how much clothing I’ve bought over the years on a whim because it was cheap and trendy only to wear it once. It was really a mindset shift when I started thinking about what I was buying.

Ask yourself these questions before buying something from a fast fashion brand:

• Do I love the item or just the price?
• What is the quality-is this material going to fall apart after two washes? (If you are purchasing a basic you know you are going to wear a lot, this question is especially important)
• How does this piece integrate with my existing closet? Do I have multiple things to wear it with?
• Do I already own something like this?
• Am I still going to need/want this in a few days? A few weeks?

     5. Invest in Sustainable Brands

There are a ton of articles out there listing environmentally friendly and fair trade clothing companies. These brands do tend to be more costly. It makes sense, they pay their employees fair wages and use durable and environmental fabrics. Consider checking out places like Pact or Patagonia for great quality basics and outerwear. They may cost more than places like Shein, but they are going to last. For more affordable options, trying patronizing small artists. (If you like cool earrings like me, I highly recommend looking through Etsy).

Thank you guys for following my ramblings on the issue of ethical fashion, and I hope you consider taking some of these suggestions with you the next time you look for new clothes 🙂

You pick up a sweater and the tag says “Proudly made in America.” You think of this as a plus, that this sweater was made ethically through American labour. Occasionally, that may be the case. But not always. 

The other day I finally watched the documentary 13th, which has been on my to watch list for a while. The overall theme is racial injustice and how American slavery was never abolished, it just transitioned from a traditional sense of the word to mass incarceration. I would highly recommend this to anyone who hasn’t seen it (available on Netflix) although fair warning it does get graphic.

This week I was planning on writing more of a guide to ethical shopping, but I thought this was more urgent to talk about in our current political climate. In a previous post I briefly wrote about the existence of American sweatshops that rely on undocumented laborers, but I would argue that prison labor is just as evil, very literally a legal form of slavery. 

Some Background

[All statistics not linked are sourced directly from the documentary. Loose transcript linked here.]

The 13th amendment did not abolish slavery completely. It was abolished “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” This clause was immediately used as a loophole by previous slave owners to find any excuse to incriminate black people, in particular black men, to push back into exploitation. They pushed a narrative that black people were dangerous criminals in order to maintain their economic system built on free labor. Even today, prisoners are paid cents on the hour, and in some states they aren’t paid at all.

The United States, despite making up 5% of world’s population, is home to 25% of prisoners globally. That comes out to a prison population of 2.3 million. 

It’s super important to note that laws were set up to be racist, especially our drug laws. Almost 80% of people in federal prisons for drug offenses are black or latino. Black people are almost four times more likely to be arrested because of marijuana offenses, despite using the drug at the same rates as white people.

The Republican politicians who designed the laws literally admitted to targeting people not in their voter base. Take this quote from top Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman, for example:

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

And it worked. One in thirteen black people of voting age are not able to vote because of a past felony conviction.

Remember this the next time you hear a person subconsciously push the notion that black people are inherently more prone to crime. You have to realize that the stereotype of the African American criminal was not created to match black crime statistics, but rather to rationalize the continuation of their oppression.

Prison labor and fashion have a long and intertwined history. Some brands have made steps to distance themselves from prison labor after backlash in the past few years. Jeans for JCPenney were at one point sewn by prisoners in Tennessee. Victoria Secret lingerie and underwear have also been sourced from US prisons. 

(Just Some) Other Companies that use Prison Labor

Personal Care Products

Home Products

There should not be a loophole to practicing slavery. We must amend the 13th Amendment to erase this clause. You can not call yourself a “family values” politician if you allow the continuation of a corrupt criminal justice system destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of POC families. As rational and human as this sounds, it isn’t an easy fight. It requires going against the prison industrial complex and all the companies that benefit from cheap prison labor.

-just realized I never actually pressed publish on last week’s passion blog oops-

Raising Prices due to Resellers?

Over the past few years, many thrift stores have been raising their prices, defeating the purpose of being an affordable place to shop for lower income people. I’ve watched the prices at goodwill slowly climbing, shirts have gone from $2 to $6, making the prices rival that of a lot of new clothes from fast fashion brands. 

Many believe this is due to the surge in resellers, mostly well off teenagers, buying clothes in thrift stores and upselling them on online platforms like Depop or Poshmark (if you are unfamiliar with those sites think Craigslist-but for clothes). I will admit that it has become a lot more mainstream, the amount of sellers has skyrocketed. While these platforms may have originally been intended for people to make a dollar on items of their closet they no longer use or have grown out of, a lot of people have turned it into a business opportunity.

A lot of criticism falls on girls like those pictured below, selling kids tops as “vintage y2k baby tees” for $50. I joke with my friends every time we pass the children’s section in Goodwill that there is a girl out there willing to shell out a lot of money for something made for an 8 year old. In moderation, this genre of reselling, while ridiculous, is pretty harmless. Kids are constantly growing out of old clothes, and as a result new clothes are always in pretty good supply at thrift stores. (However, like stated in my previous post, be conscious of  what your thrift store carries a lot of. If they have limited options for children, don’t buy something that an actual child needs.)

That being said, if you sell/buy baby clothes as y2k vintage for large amounts of money, I will make fun of you. Also putting it out there that  in order for a piece to be vintage, by definition it has to be pre-2000. (It isn’t shown in the screenshot but these are all hashtagged vintage, despite the fact that they look like they were made in 2011.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, reselling second hand clothing has been around for decades, so it wouldn’t make sense to blame it as the sole catalyst for climbing prices. (There’s even a recent autobiographical Netflix show based off an of a woman starting a reselling business in the early 2000s.) I would argue that major thrift store chains like Goodwill have other incentives behind raising prices. Increased operating costs, inflation, as well as just plain corporate greed can attribute a lot to the spike in prices.

The CEO of Goodwill Industries, Jim Gibbons, is a millionaire, are there have been multiple reports of regional CEOS making salaries upward of a million dollars a year while paying disabled workers under minimum wage.  (This is a reminder to support local thrift stores over chains when possible!!)

People calling individual resellers unethical should remind themselves that the companies themselves are rarely any better.

The gentrification of thrift stores is a very complex topic, with a lot of nuances to keep in mind. It’s important to be thoughtful when shopping second hand, but don’t let people on the internet make you feel guilty for thrifting because in reality the stock is overflowing, and reusing the clothing we already have is the most sustainable thing we can do.

I’ve been buying clothes at thrift stores since middle school, even before learning about fast fashion. When I did finally learn about sustainable fashion, I decided to stop buying as much as I could from retailers and buy almost solely second hand. 

I’m going to be honest,as a 13 year old in 2014, I didn’t want anyone to see me in a thrift store, I thought it would be embarrassing (which exhibits an extremely classist attitude both internally and socially). But in the past year or two, it’s become trendy to shop at thrift stores. When your friend compliments your outfit and asks where you got it, it’s kind of fun to say that you found it second hand.

Keeping it real, this fits the textbook definition of gentrification. Our generation has taken an outlet used by mainly lower income people and turned it into a hobby for upper middle class teens. 

However, I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing when approached correctly. 

The problem with gentrification comes when things meant for poorer people are no longer accessible to them due to raised prices and lower stock. (I will talk about raising prices in the second part). Thrift stores are not running out of second hand clothing, quite the opposite. Only about 20% of what is donated to thrift stores is sold. The other 80% stays in the store until it is inevitably thrown into the lan

dfill, or sent to markets in developing countries, disrupting their local textile market.

Size accessibility 

Another big issue comes with size inclusivity. There’s a trend of smaller girls (especially on TikTok) buying plus sized clothes to alter and make smaller, leaving little left behind for people that actually need those clothes. 

Personally, I think this should be addressed on a case by case basis. As someone who fits into straight sizes, I recognize my privilege when it comes to finding my size in stores, so when I address this keep in mind that I’m not necessarily the most educated on the topic, and the last thing I want is to sound ignorant. 

This being said, it’s important to take a mental picture of what your local thrift store has in stock, because all stores are different. If your thrift s

tore only has one rack of plus size jeans- leave them alone!!! Plus sized people deserve to have more options than a small rack of clothes in their size!!! However, if it’s the opposite, and you can’t find anything in your size, I don’t think there’s a problem with buying a few sizes up and altering the piece to your body. In fact, altering old clothes is one of the most sustainable things you can do in terms of fashion. 

For example, the only pants I can find in my size at Goodwill are low rise jeans from 2008 Hollister(you will NEVER catch me wearing low rise jeans, I could write a whole essay on how much I hate low rise jeans). I do have things that I have bought bigger and then taken in on my sewing machine. There have also been points in my life where I sized up because I felt uncomfortable in my body, and wanted to hide it with baggy clothing. 

For this reason, I don’t think it’s constructive to blindly attack girls online for buying big clothes to use for sewing projects, or to just wear oversized. But that doesn’t mean to not be mindful of other people when shopping second hand!!!  For the same reason, I also don’t think it’s appropriate to insult bigger girls for buying from fast fashion brands (especially if they aren’t participating in the overconsumption of that clothing), because I understand that thrift stores don’t always carry inclusive sizing, and buying from sustainable brands can be expensive. 

And honestly, we really shouldn’t be focused on attacking people, but on educating them. Yeah it makes me a little upset when I see people buy hundreds of dollars worth of clothing that they don’t need from unethical stores, but if I commented “you’re supporting child labor :(“ that won’t make them stop! If anything, people get defensive when they feel like they are being bashed online. That’s one of the main reasons I wanted to write this blog, because yes, the industry itself is clearly to blame, but as consumers we can have a say if united enough. 

If you ever find yourself complaining that the quality of your $3 shirt from Forever 21 is less than great, keep in mind that it was probably made by an impoverished 10 year old.

Sweatshops define the labour behind textile production. Paid far less than a living wage, workers in sweatshops have to survive tedious hours and hazardous working conditions, as well as systemic abuse from those in authority. 

Some sweatshops consist of not just underpaid labor, but modern slavery. The garment industry is a huge in terms of jobs, employing more than 60 million people globally. Forced labor is absolutely an issue with a significant amount of workers, who are forced into excessive overtime hours, unpaid.

Other cases include:

“children being forced to pick cotton by the Uzbekistan government when they should be in school, women being threatened with violence if they don’t complete an order in time and workers having their passports taken away until they work off what it cost for their transportation to bring them to the factory, their living quarters and food.”

I also want to point out that sweatshops aren’t some foreign concept that only exist in third world countries. A “made in America” tag doesn’t automatically equate to that item being ethically made. Sweatshops exist in the United States too, especially in places like California and New York-where companies can easily take advantage of undocumented workers who can’t stand up for themselves without fear of deportation. Or, their legal status is dependent upon their employment, so if they were to quit, they would lose their legality to live in the United States. (Yes, that does sound like blackmail).

One of the most tragic events in garment sweatshop history is the Rana Plaza Collapse. On April 24th, 2013, a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed, killing over 1,100 people and injuring thousands more. Bangladesh is a hotspot for sweatshops in the garment industry. On this day, the blatant disregard of safety regulations became more than apparent when the structural cracks in the eight story Rana Plaza building gave way. There are stories of people having to amputate their own limbs to escape the rubble.

This incident came only months after over one hundred people died in a factory fire in the city, where they were trapped in the burning building due to managers locking the doors of rooms to prevent workers from taking breaks. Even when the fire started, they were told not to evacuate and to keep working, that it was just a drill.

A primary dangers of fast fashion is that it will do anything to increase its profit margin, even at the cost of worker safety. They don’t care that they have young children working 70 hour weeks in dangerous settings to create the clothes as long as they can do it cost efficiently and quickly.

This is a humanitarian crisis that is yet to be addressed in mainstream media. And when it is discussed, it’s talked about as a reality of life we should just get over. This is in part due to the fact that the general population is rewarded financially by the existence of  sweatshops, and the forced labor of marginalized peoples. Some people look at the industrial revolution of the United States and argue that sweatshops are a necessary evil of industrializing one’s economy.

Companies won’t put lives over profit because it goes against their core principle of financial gain over all else. The only way they stop exploiting cheap labor is if we make them. We make them either by law or by using consumer pressure to threaten their bottom line. H&M and Forever 21 don’t care about you and they don’t care about their workers. Corporations are not designed to be altruistic entities, but we can be conscious consumers.

The impact of fast fashion is environmentally devastating. Before I get into how to be a conscious consumer, I want to take some time to explain exactly how bad the problem is in the first place, beginning with it’s damage to the Earth. 

The mass production of clothes in factories has led to massive pollution and chemical waste. Textile production is one of the worst industries in terms of environmental impact, producing between 4 to 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year, and accounting for approximately 8-10% of total global emissions. As well as producing over 92 million tons of waste and consuming 79 trillion litres of water.(I highly encourage you to click that link to read through more of those outrageous numbers).

Many people believe that donating their clothes to thrift stores counteracts the damage done in production. This mindset has led second hand stores to receive more items than they can handle. In fact, only about 20% of the clothing donated to thrift and consignment centers are resold, meaning that the majority of it ends up being thrown away, sent to landfills, incinerators, or developing countries. In total, over 10.5 million tons of clothing end up in the landfills annually. I will do a future post addressing valid concerns about the gentrification of thrift stores, but for environmental purposes, reusing what we already have is the most sustainable option.

Sustainability is a key issue among the members of younger generations, so much so that it could even be considered “trendy” to use your reusable straw or wear a 4oceans bracelet. But while the importance of an ecologically friendly lifestyle is often emphasized in many aspects of life, fashion isn’t usually one of them.

Honestly, I feel like there is some hypocrisy to saying you are a big eco-friendly person, but then posting a $400 Shein haul on Tik Tok, and I wonder if it is because they are unaware of the issue, or if, when push comes to shove, they don’t actually want to take individual action. (I am not coming after the people who can only afford to shop at low end fast fashion stores and don’t have access to a reliable second hand market, but I will criticize those who do have other options but choose to blatantly engage in overconsumption of these products for no reason). 

One important term to know when it comes to sustainable fashion is greenwashing. This term refers to how companies using the image of “going green” to promote their products to people who care about environmentalism, while actually doing very little to reduce their footprint. In this way, they are basically deceiving the customer to appeal more environmentally conscious. This can be seen in initiatives such as H&M’s “Conscious Collection”, that gives little transparency and still supports a company that is overwhelmingly fast fashion.

Obviously change has to come on a large scale, and the fault lies almost entirely on the industry, but saying “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” and then doing whatever you want fails to recognize that not all consumption is equally unethical, and if you can purchase things consciously, you absolutely should. Under a capitalist society we vote with our wallets, and the fast fashion industry isn’t going to have any incentive to change their practices unless people who are able to can stop blindly supporting them.

Fast fashion is everywhere. The term refers to the mass production of inexpensive and “trendy” clothing by most name brand retailers like H&M, Forever 21, Urban Outfitters, Target, etc. Their business model relies on over consumption and a disregard for the environment and their workers. But despite this, the garment industry is one of the most profitable in the world, with a worth of $3 trillion dollars.

The idea that clothes are meant to be cheap and disposable is a fairly new one. For most of recorded history, people made their own clothes, or had them made by a seamstress, tailored to their exact measurements. Because of this, most people had few clothes, and they lasted long periods of time.

This changed in the early 1900s, with the demand for millions of uniforms to be issued to soldiers fighting in the trenches in Europe. Suddenly, a process that was fairly personal needed to be replicated on a much larger scale. With the support of the sewing machine that had been invented fifty years prior, ready to wear clothing made in factories was produced in huge quantities to be distributed to troops. When the war ended, the production model turned to the general public, and people began buying ready-to-wear fashion. You can read more in depth about early ready-to-wear here. 

This being said, fast fashion as we know it today can be traced back t0 1975, when the launch of Zara revolutionized the industry. It added an element to ready to wear fashion that was never before considered: speed. The chain once claimed it “needs only two weeks (as compared to up to six months traditionally needed by rivals) to produce and distribute new stock” The ability of Zara to keep up with such rapid changes in style and design led to massive profits. It paved the way for new retailers like Forever 21 and Hollister, while forever changing the business models of preexisting clothing brands like H&M. 

Designs go in and out so quickly that a consumer must buy now, or else the clothes they want will be gone. On top of this, garments are replaced almost as soon as they are sold, creating a revolving door of customers in search of the newest items.

There is a preconceived notion that these trends are consumer driven, and that retailers are only supplying the demand. In reality, businesses develop and push new trends through advertising as a way to sell more clothing, and therefore make more profit. This can be seen through the fashion season, initially split into Spring/Summer wear and Fall/Winter collections. Today, companies are churning out more than 52 “microseasons”. More seasons are equivalent to more garments, and at the bottom line, more sales. 

However, the speed of production led to a problem: the speed of disposal. The clothing isn’t meant to be good quality, because the business only makes a profit if people are constantly buying new clothing. Businesses rely on consumer overconsumption, and we routinely deliver. When it comes to clothes, the lines are blurred between wanting something and needing it, and the low

prices often justifying buying things we don’t need.

I’ll talk a lot about how to be a more conscious consumer in future posts, with the basic philosophy that although there may not be a path to complete ethical consumption under capitalism, there are certainly ways to reduce your impact while fighting for systemic change.

Fast fashion has many flaws, but it’s most glaring faults come in two main categories: humanitarian and environmental. The production of this volume of clothing is detrimental to the Earth, and to the sweatshop workers making them. Throughout my posts, I will be going in depth to what exactly we can see happening, and asking one fundamental question: what price are we willing to let others pay for our clothes?