Hello everyone, and welcome back to Not So Fast Fashion! This week is my fifth blog post, and I will be telling you all about the ways that you can decrease fast fashion in your personal life. In my podcast edition of the blog last week, I gave a more in-depth overview of what fast fashion actually is and the true environmental impact of it on the world. Now, this week I’m going to be offering you all just a few tips and tricks to decrease your environmental footprint!
Support smaller businesses!
The first way in which you can help to decrease your involvement with fast fashion is to stop buying clothes from these massive online fashion retailers, such as Pretty Little Thing and Missguided, who are the main culprits of these. Smaller clothing businesses are relatively easy to find all over the internet, especially on Instagram, so it is easy to find something to suit your own style and size! Where the larger companies have a lot of funding and income behind them, so they are able to make their clothing using massive factories all over the world, these smaller businesses aren’t anywhere near financially stable enough to be able to do this. This means it is usually the person who owns the business themselves making the clothing or a very small team of under 10 people. This means that not only are you supporting a business which has a much lesser effect on the environment, but you are also supporting someone’s livelihood and passion, and helping them to make their living.
Below I’ve compiled a very small list of some of the top, up and coming and independent labels in the UK right now for you all to check out.
- Wolf & Badger – https://www.wolfandbadger.com/uk/
- Founded in 2010, Wolf & Badger has become one of the world’s leading online marketplaces for independent clothing brands, for both men & women.
- Indi Clothing Co. – https://www.indiclothing.co/
- This is a very environmentally friendly brand, with them reducing their single-use plastic consumption by almost 100% recently, also offers independently made clothes for both genders.
- Trouva – https://www.trouva.com/
- Offers you products from hundreds of the most stylish bricks-and-mortar boutiques all in one place, with homeware as well as fashion sold here.
Better quality, less frequently
I know buying from these affordable fast fashion companies may seem like the only realistic option when it comes to replacing your older clothes, but when you think about it, buying these cheap replacements means that you’ll most likely be replacing them again in only a matter of months. Another piece of advice is for you to stop buying these cheap items often, and instead, save up this money that you would be spending to be able to use it to invest in a better quality item of clothing. It is true that most designer coats or handbags are very costly, but it is clear in the difference in quality and how much longer they last you, as people can own these for years and years. This might mean that you are unable to have an impulsive splurge on pay day like you usually would do, but it will turn out to save you money in the long run.
Charity shops or thrift stores
The final way that you could decrease your environmental impact is to start buying pieces of clothing from charity shops in the UK, or thrift stores in the US. The clothes at these stores are donated from people who no longer need them or want them, rather than them just throwing them away. As I mentioned in my podcast last week, the disposal of clothing is one of the biggest problems as it often never breaks down, leaving dumps and landfills filled with clothing that no one wants anymore. A charity shop offers a home for these clothes and a chance for these to be bought and worn by someone else. I myself often like to have a look around charity shops to see if I can spot a hidden gem, and still wear clothes that I have bought from these trips. It may take a while to sift through everything there to find something that you actually want, but with the prices often as low as a couple of pounds, it is a hard option to argue with.
I hope I have offered you a few viable options to use in your everyday life instead of resorting to buying from the same usual online clothing retailers! Thank you all so much for reading the fifth blog post on Not So Fast Fashion this week. Hopefully, I have managed to offer information on fast fashion and online shopping that you weren’t as aware of before.
Bye, everyone!