The True Price of Fast Fashion
This was a *great* article and imagine my excitement when I saw that my homegirl Tennille and her awesome clothing line nakimuli is also featured in it! Yay! Nakimuli is amazing and also caters to lots of different sizes for women; goes up to 3XL I think, but she also does custom orders for individuals who don’t fit into the confines of traditional sizing.
Anyways, I want to say that although I agree with pretty much everything in this article, I don’t want to reserve judgement for the socially/economically/environmentally conscious people who may not be able to afford indie clothing or who cannot sew/aren’t good at sewing/don’t have time to sew. Making your own clothes and buying more expensive indie labels is not for everyone and that’s okay. I don’t think there is a simple solution to shifting our cultural view of consumerist fashion, but having conversations about it is such a great start, and might be the push some of you need to start moving in a new direction. I started sewing in college cause I thought it was so much fun, but the more time I spend doing it, the more I have become critical of my own shopping habits and relationship to disposable fashion and fads, and I started recognizing how my own spending was more often than not fueled by emotions, whether positive or negative. Something to celebrate? Let’s go buy something cute! Rough week? I should treat myself to a trip to the mall (or, let’s face it, to the internet). It’s not a habit I want to continue, and thankfully sewing has helped me curb a lot of it…although now I just spend money on beautiful fabric :/
There’s a very interesting book on this subject called Overdressed, for anyone who’s interested in reading more about this! In the book, the author contacted a bunch of Chinese garment factories as a buyer and I think even visited several. (It’s been nearly two years since I read it so the details are fuzzy.) But anyway, it’s a very interesting starting point for looking at the issues of fast fashion, though I wish the author had gone into the socioeconomic issues mentioned by sugarbooty above. It’s not discussed much in the book, but it’s a very important facet of this conversation.
