Today’s high-speed buying and disposing is a relatively new phenomenon. And with the growing sustainability issues caused by the fashion industry, we may need to go back to old fashions soon.
“I’ve been to four weddings since Christmas,” writes a user of the online forum Mumsnet.
“I wore the same clothes to three of them… My cousin said I was being disrespectful, that it was rude, and that if I didn’t want to go I should have declined, instead of showing up dressed inappropriately. I took a big step false?”
“[Entrei em um] challenge where people wear the [mesmo] dress 100 days in a row,” says another user, now from the Ask a Manager site, about professional advice.
“I got called into my boss’s office and he said he needed to talk to me about my presentation at work…Can I really get into trouble if I keep wearing my dress every day?”
In the western world, there is an unspoken rule that you shouldn’t wear the same clothes too often.
The aforementioned wedding guest and employee was reassured by others who said he had done nothing wrong. But the feeling remains.
People expect us to change our clothes every day, or at least every few days. Even if we work in an office and not in a hot factory or in the sunny countryside. Even after the invention of the washing machine.
And we always need to update our wardrobe. Even the green initiatives that try to help us be sustainable, such as clothing swap fairs and clothing rentals, always carry the same idea: what we already have is not enough.
The immense supply of cheap clothes has led many of us to use only 20% of the clothes in our closets. And in the meantime, the clothing industry harms the planet and us humans.
But it wasn’t like that. Today’s high-speed buying and disposing is a relatively new phenomenon. And with the growing sustainability issues caused by the fashion industry, we may need to go back to our old ways soon.
One way to combat overconsumption is to cut back on what you use. In jobs that don’t require a uniform, the need to vary the look is a luxury granted above all to men. They are pretty much the only ones to adopt the habit of wearing identical clothes every day, from Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs to just about every professional in the world who wears suits.
Jennifer Logan lives with her husband and two children in California, USA, where she works as an osteopath.
About 10 years ago, she and a friend talked about how cool it would be to have a uniform so you don’t have to think about what to wear. She then made a wool dress out of hand-me-down sweaters and wore it almost every day until she shrunk in the wash.
Logan then went back to choosing his clothes in the most common way, until he got tired of always having to decide what to wear. He ended up buying a new dress: black, knee-length and sleeveless. And three years later, it’s still pretty much the only dress he wears.
“I use it for everything,” says Logan. “Date nights…all I do. I’m wearing my suit to a conference at work this week.”
She only wears alternative clothing — such as pajamas or borrowed sweatshirts and sweatpants from her daughter — to clean or for her pottery class.
Logan built his wardrobe around the dress. He sometimes adds wool pants or a shirt with sleeves if it’s cold. She used to spend most days wearing jeans and a t-shirt, but now she says she always feels well dressed. And no one seems to notice that it’s the same dress as hers.
Quality before quantity
Fighting overconsumption by simply reducing what you wear comes with some complications.
Fashion has a function. What we decide to wear on a given day tells something about the world we live in.
While Logan adds accessories to the outfit to make him look more or less well dressed, he also says that recently she’s started to feel a little tired of wearing black every day. Now she is thinking about changing her black dress for a colorful one.
There is also the quality issue. Logan explains that his practice can be adopted on any budget. People may use second hand clothes or have a small wardrobe with just a few clothes so they don’t wear out all of them.
But the fact remains that many modern clothes are not meant to be worn every day. They are not durable investments and in many cases you have to buy new ones.
“In the 17th and 18th centuries, clothes were among the most expensive items a family could own,” according to Professor Beverly Lemire of the University of Alberta in Canada.
The value of the fabrics was so high that, in 18th century London, a quarter of the thefts prosecuted involved fabrics and clothes.
“[As roupas] they could last for decades,” Lemire says. “They were used until they turned into rags.”
But that hasn’t stopped people from changing their looks. The variation and individuality emerged in the details.
To create custom fits, to embrace slowly changing fashion trends or even to add some personal touches, clothes have been modified. “Clothes were made to be undone,” Lemire explains.
The expectation was that the clothes would be disassembled, assembled, disassembled and altered. All seams have been done by hand and all garments have been repaired.
People used ribbons and buttons to breathe new life into old clothes. And there are records of young men identified with certain groups wearing their hair in long curls or stockings with a certain type of streaks.
But the world was already speeding up. In the 17th and 18th centuries, people used many undyed fabrics, such as linen and wool, for interiors. But they’ve also developed a taste for new fabrics inspired by originals from China and India, explains Marie Ulväng, a professor of fashion studies at Stockholm University in Sweden.
And, with the industrial revolution, our clothes increasingly became manufactured in factories, in standardized sizes. Cotton and eventually cheap subcontracted labor from Asia and the Americas allowed Western countries to increase production and lower prices.
But Ulväng says the biggest change in our view of fashion came later, in the 1960s, when subcultures emerged and fashion stopped being dictated from above.
“Before a woman could wear a skirt and blouse, a coat, tailored suits… but young women were more interested in keeping up with the rapid changes in fashion,” Ulväng explains. “Fashion changed rapidly… it was the low prices that mattered, not the length and quality of the clothes.”
Sound familiar?
Can we go back to looking at clothes as they once were? Well, maybe we’ve already started this process.
During the pandemic, writer and sustainability strategist Tiffanie Darke had a game-changing idea.
After working in the world of consumer fashion as an editor for fashion magazines, she decided to take a course at the Sustainability Leadership Institute in Cambridge, UK.
Then he read a report from research and debate center The Hot & Cool Institute, which indicated that, to maintain sustainability, the British should buy only five new clothes a year. Darke then started the Rule of Five campaign and others in the fashion world began to follow suit.
“There are different ways to get into fashion: rent, swap, borrow from friends and — like we did when we were kids — renovate,” she says. “I keep thinking about which five items of clothing I should buy this year. It’s fun. I plan everything out.”
Last year she enlisted the help of a stylist to evaluate her wardrobe and redo clothes she wasn’t wearing, like a taffeta Prada dress made into a blouse.
This year, one of Darke’s five purchases will be a wear-at-home coat, produced for her by designer Alice Temperley.
Recently, fashion companies like Net-a-Porter, Ralph Lauren and Mulberry have partnered with alteration services, offering laundering credits and lifetime guarantees, according to Darke. And it doesn’t have to be expensive – you can have the satisfaction of seeing a refurbished dress on the cheap.
“The modification company Sojo has prices starting at 10 pounds (about R$61) for the cheapest reform,” according to her. “And you get a whole new dress for your wardrobe.”
Darke points out that in Victorian times it was fashionable to buy a new band.
There is also a trend towards slower fashion cycles. Darke says people at high-end brands are now talking about “trendless fashion”: timeless, well-made clothes that are meant to last.
The next step should be the production of good quality clothes, like the ones we had in pre-industrial times and today seek minimalist wearers like Jennifer Logan.
The law of fashion (fashion act) proposed in the US, if approved, would make retailers responsible for the entire lifecycle of their products. And, while the new law will raise prices for popular brands, Darke hopes consumers will also change their expectations, seeking better-quality clothes, even among these cheaper brands.
“maybe the fast fashion (fast fashion) is a parenthesis,” reflects Marie Ulväng. “Maybe later we will come back to the smarter vision we had before.” And, perhaps, our brief love fast fashion be at the end.
It would also mean wardrobes with fewer but better quality clothes and slower fashion cycles less focused on selling new products.
It would mean a different kind of traditional brands, with less store space and fewer shoppers perusing piles of cheap, identical clothes on shelves. There would be more fabric knowledge, more sewing, more alterations to clothes, and more creativity.
And people would start arguing on online forums about whether or not to buy a new band.
read the original version of this report (in English) a BBC culture site.
Source: Terra
Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.
