Clothes that don’t cost the earth.

Under the romantic spell that Milan casts upon anyone remotely interested in fashion, I decided during a recent trip to introduce my teenage daughters to the magic of vintage shopping.  So, as a Lonely Planet devotee, I scoured the pages of my Italian guidebook and set off with my girls in tow.  I’m sounding like some kind of professional style guru with a Narnia-like closet containing endless rails of vintage Chanel.  In truth, the whole experience was as much a new world for me, as it was for my daughters, and to a degree I admit, we were swept along with the romantic notion Milanese vintage shopping evokes.  But, underpinning this was the increased awareness that our relationship with fashion is having a detrimental effect on our world, an effect that is unsustainable beyond the next generation.  

I grew up in an era where ‘fast fashion’ was only just appearing on the high street.  My mother would buy me classic wardrobe staples in an ungendered style and colour that could then be passed on to my younger brother.  My Wellington boots would be navy, my raincoat unisex, and the intricate wool sweaters my grandmother painstakingly knitted were designed to punish us both with their classic, itchy necklines.  Jeans would be patched at the worn knees, and once those patches had suffered a similar fate, the legs were cut off to create shorts for the next season.  The reason behind this thrifty behaviour was surely because, unlike today, the garments were more expensive to replace than to repair.

By the time it was my turn to play the doting mother, the global retail giants had made fashion so affordable that my first-born’s closet rivalled my own before she was a week old.  I strategically packed pieces away for her future siblings quite simply because she grew faster than the number of days needed to wear each outfit more than once.  Fast fashion has of course made clothing affordably plentiful and therefore more disposable than ever before.  It’s surely true of most things, that if they are cheap they hold less value in our hearts as well as our purses.  But, as the eco-fashionista Livia Firth rightly says, when the cost of clothes is less than appears right, someone or something will have paid the price on our behalf.  The exploited sweatshop workers churning out cheap clothing, and our natural environment swamped by the toxic production process, are those victims.  So, we find that clothes that don’t cost the earth, are in fact, doing just that.

Of course, like so many causes for positive change, it starts with redefining our attitude.  Fast fashion has led entire generations to believe clothing is both temporary and disposable.  We no longer look for the story our clothes may tell, other than to reflect on their oh so temporary newness which vanishes after the first wear. As my daughters and I swiped through rails of exquisite garments in the little vintage store in Milan, we delighted upon the treasures we found and our imaginations ran wild with the histories they may have had.  Some pieces clearly required a lifestyle my daughters could barely conjure up, but they soon came to think that perhaps expertly designed and crafted garments could last beyond a lifetime.  

But let’s not fool ourselves by the romance ‘vintage’ carries.  We must rethink the desirability of ‘second-hand’ fashion, so that a well-made garment that has had more than one owner, is more palatable than an item made from toxic processes by slave labour.  It’s not an easy attitude to break, and it will take time, but it’s something we need to open our minds to, and realise that slowing fashion down creates a depth of care and appreciation for the beauty of clothes, that ‘fast fashion’ has no desire to imitate.