Ilove fashion. I love going to catwalk shows. I love getting dressed up. I love the illicit thrill of some frippery I can’t really afford, accompanied by the rustle of tissue paper in a crisp shopping bag – a sound bested only by a champagne cork popping. And that’s not even the half of it. More than anything, I love the thrill of the high street chase. I love stopping a woman on the street to ask where her dress is from, and hunting it down and ordering it from my phone at the bus stop. I have been known to go weak at the knees over new suede boots and I will never, ever have enough earrings.
But you know what else I love? Living in a climate that doesn’t fry me alive. Oceans with fish and icebergs in them rather than plastic. Mars is a long way – and besides, Elon Musk? No thanks. Which means I need to love clothes in a way that doesn’t create huge amounts of waste and use a disproportionate amount of the world’s carbon budget. It is obscene that 300,000 tonnes of fashion waste goes into landfill each year. It is the opposite of progress that the average number of times a garment is worn before it is retired has dropped by 36% in the last 15 years. (In China, that figure is 70%.) Loving clothes shouldn’t be a system based on throwing them away. Fashion isn’t rubbish.
However, what this article is absolutely not about is me lecturing you in sustainability. You’re probably much, much better than me, for a start. If anything, this is about me being more like you. It’s about me changing my column for this newspaper so that it better reflects the way almost all of us really wear clothes – which, on any given Saturday morning, is more about styling what we already own than buying a new head-to-toe outfit. So from this month on, I’m going to change what I wear and what I write about: every week’s look will include old favourites from my wardrobe and discoveries from vintage stores. There will still, always, be gorgeous hand-picked pieces that are available to buy. But we won’t pretend that’s the whole story.
From Katharine Hamnett and Stella McCartney to newcomers like Mother of Pearl’s Amy Powney, designers who are passionate about making ethical fashion have helped make sustainability cool and glamorous and newsworthy. (Should cool or glamorous or newsworthy matter? Perhaps not. But the reality is, they do.) Even so, a meaningful conversation about fashion and sustainability needs to include not just those lucky enough to be able to afford expensive clothes, but the average shopper. The woman who would love a pair of Stella’s new Vegan Stan Smiths (£235) but who has, say, £30 to spend and wants to treat herself. (According to the Office for National Statistics, of an average household weekly spend of £554.20 a week, £25.10 goes on clothes and shoes.) There is a very human desire to move with the zeitgeist, an optimistic inclination to keep turning over a new leaf, which drives our impulse fashion buys – and why not? The received wisdom is that you should give up those £30 buys and save for a once-a-year £350 blazer instead; but this is unrealistic, not to mention a bit patronising.
Sustainability needs to start with taking a long, hard look at the psychology of fashion. When I buy clothes, I am trying to buy a better-looking, cooler, more exciting version of me. Same as it ever was, nothing new in that. But what has changed is that the chasm between the reflection in the mirror and our Instagram-fed aspirations yawns ever wider.
Sometimes clothes can bridge that gap. At its best, fashion can be nothing short of miraculous. Do you know when you should buy a dress? When you try it on and start slightly flirting with yourself in the changing room mirror. I don’t mean full-on flirting: that would be a bit weird. I just mean that you look in the mirror and are pleased by what you see and find yourself, without thinking about what you are doing, giving a bit of a hair toss, smiling at your reflection. When that happens, you should definitely buy that dress.
But you know which dress you absolutely shouldn’t buy? The one you try on, then look in the mirror and think, this is a great dress and if I lost two kilos I’d look nice in it, I wish I hadn’t eaten cake. That dress is negging you. That dress is not your friend. Please promise me you will never, ever buy that dress.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
