Why I’m Choosing Conscious Fashion
Thrifted Blazer and Zara floral pants from last year.
The Backstory
It’s hard to recall the exact moment on which I crossed over to the dark side of consumerism. Growing up as a third child of struggling immigrant parents, my childhood wardrobe consisted almost entirely of secondhand scraps from more fortunate family friends or threadbare finds from the local thrift store. The notion of buying something “new” was a foreign concept for my family, even after both of my parents found decent full-time jobs and my father no longer needed to work multiple part-time minimum wage jobs.
Until I obtained my first real job in university, I did not have any spending money for clothes or socializing as my parents also did not believe in providing us with an allowance for “fun” activities (as well, my parents discouraged us from getting jobs earlier since they did not want us to be distracted from earning straight As in school). As a result, recreational activities such as going to movies or on shopping dates with friends were the stuff of fiction for my brothers and myself.
Note: Don’t get me wrong, I actually had a very good childhood despite all of these monetary setbacks. I usually filled up my time with art, reading a ton of books at the library, watching an innumerable amount of movies with my family, and spending time out in nature. Rather, the issue of not having much spending money only became a concern as I became a teenager— which was when it became normal to have money to buy things.
As my eldest brother so poignantly described in this CBC prize-winning story, growing up as immigrants of colour in the 90s was not an easy task— especially if you never felt like you could keep up to your peers in terms of material possessions. With that particular perspective in mind, it’s not actually that surprising that both I and my brothers became quite fashion-obsessed in later years.
When I finally had the money to spend on myself and clothes, I quickly lost all reason and started to become an impulsive consumer, slave to the capitalist call to buy unnecessary things that would quickly lose value or need to be replaced in the near future.
What Changed My Mind
While 2020 has been a year of turmoil and fear, I am genuinely grateful for how it has forced me to open my eyes and acknowledge ugly realities which I had long ignored out of convenience.
Buying a cheap dress or shirt was more convenient than acknowledging that the people who had made those items were most likely working long hours in dangerous environments and being paid despicably low wages by incredibly rich corporations.
BLM
However, the reemergence of the Black Lives Matter movement following the brutal murder of George Floyd forced me to reevaluate my apathetic stance on social justice issues. If I genuinely supported BIPOC groups, I also had to care about whether they were being treated fairly not only in North America, but all over the world.
Uighur Forced Labour Camps
The last straw dropped with a thud when I became aware of Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic minority group, being persecuted by the Chinese government and kept in detention camps in Xinjiang. While the atrocities being committed in those camps may seem far away from western society, I learned that many large corporate retailers, such as H&M, Google, Amazon, and Zara, were profiting from the forced labour of Uighur camps.
In fact, an Instagram post by Maggie Zhou (@yemagz) informed me that a human rights coalition made the disturbing assertion that one in every five cotton products worldwide is tainted with forced Uighur labour. Maggie’s post also asks its readers why we only seem to care about social justice issues when they are forced “right under our noses”; she answers this question with the following statement: “the uncomfortable truth is that our prioritization of Western countries is rooted in racism.”
After becoming aware of these issues, I found that I could no longer in good conscience buy clothes from fast fashion brands. While I wish I could live my life in an entirely sustainable manner, I am focusing on my clothing shopping habits as they were pretty darn atrocious until not long ago.
The True Cost
Following this, I starting educating myself on conscious fashion practices by following several inspiring slow fashion accounts. One major source of education was watching “The True Cost” documentary (2015) that gives a very eye-opening and informative overview of the devastating impact of fashion fashion on the entire world.
In one particularly thought-provoking portion of the documentary, Richard Wolff (a PHD-wielding economist) posited that improving the working conditions and wages of third world country garment factory workers provides only a temporary respite from our problems. The true root of the issue is our consumer capitalist economic model and the way in which it constantly encourages us to be materialistic and constantly buying new things.
Since the consumer capitalist economic model requires our buying appetites to be unlimited and the world only has a finite supply of human and natural resources, we cannot keep going the way we are going without our world becoming irrevocably damaged. Also, as someone who greatly enjoys the great outdoors, the thought of our world being poisoned by our consumerist habits and corporate greed is disturbing yet very real.
Another part of the film talks about how even the rich consumers of western society are also negatively affected by consumer capitalism. For instance, many younger generations are encouraged to keep constantly buying the latest shiny object and go into debt so in order to appear successful. As well, psychologically, we are told that we cannot be happy unless we consume— and after we consume, we are often that we are still not enough and need to buy more to fix the issue.
What I’m Going To Do About It
If you have bothered to read all of the above, I would hope that you are also considering changing your shopping habits— I mean, how can you know all of that and not feel that something needs to be done?
While some have already expressed that they think I will find this task difficult, I personally feel very excited to challenge myself with being more sustainable and ethical with my clothing shopping habits. After being inspired by several wonderful slow fashion Instagram accounts, I am now happily confident that my personal style does not need to be sacrificed just because I am no longer buying from fast fashion brands.
These are some of my main steps towards being more conscious with fashion:
Wearing what I already have (#RemixYourWardrobe).
Mending my clothing instead of throwing them out.
Thrifting or buying secondhand when I have to itch for something new.
Choosing sustainable, ethical, and BIPOC-owned brands when I want to purchase an investment piece.
Holding clothing swaps when it’s safe to do so again.
Upcycling (once I figure out what DIY projects I can actually do myself).
Only working with non-fast fashion/ethical/sustainable/BIPOC-owned brands.
Instead of making this post any longer, I will expand on these methods once I have had more experience with them. If all goes well, I will be sharing my favourite thrifting tips and slow fashion brands with you in the near future!
How about you? Have you considered buying less fast fashion lately?
Cheers,
Debbie (a.k.a. The Stylish Wordsmith)