Call me a hippie, a tree hugger, maybe just a true millennial – yikes. A little less than two years ago I could have been called anything but. In fact, I was gearing up to launch an online boutique. Like the rest of the world, I had gotten a little bored during the pandemic. I was working from home, had a lot of time on my hands, and I was doing quite a lot of online shopping, so I thought I would try my own hand at setting up something small that I could run in my spare time. To be honest, I had no clue what I was doing, but figured it couldn’t be that hard, right? True. It wasn’t that hard, but it was a lot of work. The initial business setup, creating a website, sourcing inventory, product photography and content creation, and the biggest time-suck of all…social media. Was it worth it? Absolutely. To hear that first “cha-ching” notification letting me know that I had my first sale meant that all of the work was worth it. Someone was supporting a business that I had built entirely on my own. So then why, just a few months in, did I halt marketing activities and stop buying product?
Let me put this statistic in front of you – the average American generates 82 pounds of textile waste each year (yes y’all, 82 pounds), and we are purchasing 400% more clothing than we were twenty years ago (True Cost Movie) – and these are numbers from 2018. Imagine how much worse it has gotten in just the last four years. So, okay, the fashion industry has evolved immensely in the last few decades; we’re able to shop online, trends change practically on a daily basis, and influencer marketing took over just about everything. I’m the first to admit that I get it. I’m that girl that buys the newest version of those tan suede booties for Fall that 99% of the world would say looks identical to the pair I bought last year… But what’s so bad about being passionate about fashion and wanting to keep up with trends? Well, as it turns out, kind of a lot.
How bad is it, actually?
Fashion, a $2 trillion industry, is responsible for 10% of all carbon emissions and is the second-largest consumer of the world’s water supply. People are keeping and wearing clothes for just half as long as they were in 2000 (World Economic Forum). I could go on about how most textiles end up getting burned as a means of elimination, or how even just washing certain types of clothing can send millions of pieces of microplastics into the ocean, but I’ll save that for future posts. As I kept doing research into the industry, it became clear that this was a problem I was now personally contributing to, and from which I was attempting to profit. I didn’t quite know how to reverse the damage I had done but I knew I could immediately decrease the demand for additional products, even by the minuscule amount my audience would have continued to purchase in the grand scheme of things. I mulled things over… and over… and over again, trying to figure out how to be part of this industry in a way that could have some small positive impact.
First things first, I had a lot of inventory on my hands that I didn’t feel good about selling. In an effort to exchange this environmental wrongdoing for a positive social impact, I decided to continue selling the remaining inventory, but with 100% of my profits (plus 10% of my costs) benefiting various charities.
What’s next?
At this point, I was pretty set on just cutting my losses, moving on to the next venture, hopefully with less negative impact. I wasn’t really keen on making major changes in how I purchased my own clothing, mostly because I was afraid I’d have to switch to wearing all bamboo t-shirts and denim made of cornhusks or something. The more research I did, the more I learned about the major transformation that is happening in the industry, albeit on a small scale. There are a number of brands devoted to producing not only quality products made of sustainably-sourced materials, but beautiful, on-trend, and classically versatile pieces that are meant to be worn, and loved, for years. However, fast fashion still reigns and the majority of marketing and advertising in the industry is focused on trendy, affordable brands that intentionally turn ten or more collections each year (some, a whopping 24 – looking at you Zara 👀) to create the notion that you, as a consumer, should be purchasing clothing this often. That top you wore last month or even last week, is now a cast-off. Did you wear that dress in a recent social media post? Oof – into the donation pile before someone sees it again! Time to trade up for the piece that’s making the rounds on Instagram today. It’s hard to look past the posts and the ads and not want the next newest thing, but I’ve begun to make a shift in my mindset on how I can be more intentional in my purchases.
My goal for this blog is not only to document that shift, but to curate those options that allow us to continue appreciating fashion and aesthetics without compromising values around ethical fashion, sustainable materials, and purchase intentionality. I invite you to follow along and I welcome constructive criticism as I’m certainly no expert in this space. Here’s my cheesy ending – we can actually make a difference if we all make some small changes. Call me naive, but I think it’s worth trying.
