By now, you’ve probably heard of the slow movement. There are many offshoots, from the slow food movement to the slow reading movement. The general idea is to take more time, be thoughtful about the product or process, savor things slowly, and make them last. It is something that, in this day and age, when everything is open 24/7, on all the time, and constantly vying for attention, eyes, and pageviews, I can really appreciate. It is in this spirit that I propose the Slow Clothing Movement.
One thing I took away from my high school economics class is that clothing is a nondurable good, which means it is immediately consumed in one use (like food) or has a lifespan of less than 3 years (like clothes, makeup, etc). Because I was a thrifting queen even back then, I remember thinking “3 years? That doesn’t seem like very long at all. There are a ton of cool clothes out there that are way older than 3 years!” I’ve thought this for a long time now, obviously, and my love for thrifting is well-documented. It didn’t really bother me that people said they “just couldn’t wear used clothes” or “didn’t like to shop at thrift stores” because I figured hey! more for me!
And then I started to read stuff like this, which is a fascinating article about what really happens to donated clothes. You know how sometimes you’ll get a wild hair to go through all the stuff you own, pare down, and clear out your closets and dresser drawers? And then you happily bag it all up and drop it off at Goodwill so someone else (hopefully someone like me) can buy it and take it home to a happy new life? Well, according to this article, that only happens to about 20% of donated clothes. The rest...have a different ending. The U.S. market “can’t absorb” (read: people won’t buy) all of the donated clothes out there, so the remaining clothes get cut up and re-purposed for industrial wiping rags, recycled into fiber for reuse as stuffing and insulation, or continue life as clothing on a different continent, usually one comprised of mainly third-world countries.
The thing is, in order to use clothing for industrial wiping rags, it needs to be cotton, light colored or white, and in fairly good condition. Like those t-shirts they hand out on college campuses to get you to sign up for a credit card. As far as stuffing and insulation goes, I think using clothing scraps in this way is genius, and I’m really glad it’s done, but there’s only so much insulation that’s needed. The rest probably just gets tossed. The remaining clothes, stuff that’s not used for rags or insulation, heads overseas to be sold again if it’s not bought by someone here in the U.S. These companies, called “processors,” buy overages from charities like Goodwill and Salvation Army, sort it up, and ship it out. Processors used to recycle garments for their fibers, but with the decline of fabric quality, this kind of recycling isn’t done much anymore. So instead, our cheap and poorly-constructed clothing get sent overseas to be sold again, this time to someone who’s wearing it out of necessity, not because they’re interested in the latest fashion from Forever 21.
Before I read this article and thought a bit more about clothing consumption in America, I was content to let others plow through clothes and trends at breakneck speed because I greedily figured it meant more options for me at the thrift store. Heck, I still kind of feel this way. But I’m also now a bit distressed at how many more clothes people own than they did 50 years ago, how quickly those clothes wear out or are discarded for other reasons, and about the resources required to continue at this alarming rate. The resources part especially scares me. These fabrics and dyes are not generally natural and nontoxic, and the energy required to make and produce them has to come from somewhere. I imagine that in the third world countries where many garments are made, the energy available goes to making garments that will be sold to the wealthy and clothing-hungry U.S., not to powering generators or supporting other necessities that would improve the living standards of the people who live there.
So what can we do about it? Well, I’m not an expert, but in the spirit of the Slow Clothing Movement, I’m committing to doing the following things:
1. Buy fewer clothes in general. Let me get this out there right now: I love shopping. Love it. I love the sport of finding the best item, for the best price, etc. Oftentimes I’ll want to shop when I don’t have anything else to do. But, for the past few months I have bought almost no new clothes. Instead, when I’m bored and want to go shopping, I’ll pull a bunch of stuff out of my closet and make up new outfits to wear. This often satiates my desire to go get something brand new, and I usually discover something I haven’t worn in a while and have forgotten about. Also? I’m not spending money on clothes I don’t need.
2. Buy the majority of clothes from thrift stores and consignment shops. You’d be surprised what people get rid of. I know that I myself am guilty of sometimes buying stuff, never mustering up the enthusiasm to wear it, and then giving it to Goodwill with the tags still attached. I’ve found some real gems, often with tags on or like new, that are now in heavy rotation in my closet. Cost per wear? Pennies.
3. Buy higher-quality items new (or used, if you can find it), and everything else used. For the latest trends, which I don’t much participate in anyway, I hit up Goodwill. For a long term piece that I know I’ll wear again and again? I try to buy something that’s high quality, because I know it’s more likely to last. This extends to shoes too, which is maybe the one place that I’m not a total cheapskate. I also try to buy off-season. For example, right now I’m looking for a new winter coat because those are on sale with winter ending. I hope to find a high quality one, something that will last at least a few years, for a fraction of the price. An added bonus is that you get a new coat, maybe wear it once or twice, and then in the fall when you pull it out of storage it’s like getting a new coat all over again!
4. Sell or swap clothes before donating. Whenever I’m ready to take a load of stuff to Goodwill, I swing by the local consignment store first. I think that when you take clothes to be sold, they curate what they think will be more popular, and then people are more likely to buy those items when they don’t have to wade through 1700 oversize t-shirts. I know that even though I like to hunt through stuff, this is not everyone’s cup of tea and they appreciate clothes that are organized by season, color, and size. Plus if you sell some stuff, that’s a few bucks back in your pocket that you otherwise wouldn’t have! The idea behind organizing a swap is pretty similar, minus the making money part. Pick the nicer things in your donate pile, get a few like-sized girlfriends together, and hopefully everyone goes home with some fun, new-to-them items that otherwise would have ended up at Goodwill with an undetermined future.
5. Keep clothes around for longer. Listen, I’m all about purging stuff I’ll never wear again. I finally had to give up the ghost on several pairs of pants I bought right out of college because I will never again be that small. But, I also try to keep stuff for a long time in hopes that I’ll fall back in love with it after a break, or that it’ll be in fashion again soon. For me, this especially applies to dresses. I almost never get rid of a dress because I know in a year or two (or three) I’ll probably love it again, even if at the moment it feels worn to death. Case in point: the dress I wore to M’s wedding last year was something I was thisclose to giving to Goodwill. I’d worn it to several weddings/graduation/etc, then my friend Kristina wore it to a wedding, and I was just about to retire it when I decided to put it away for a few months instead. When I was thinking about what would work for an Indian wedding that wasn’t a sari, this dress immediately came to mind. I got so many compliments when I wore and even a year later, I’m really glad I still have it. This has happened several times, and I’ve been so glad that I didn’t send something off to a thrift store prematurely. If you're truly ready to ditch an item, get rid of it. If you're just kind of tired of wearing it every week, put it away for a while and then in 6-12 months pull it back out and reevaluate whether you'll truly ever wear it again. Bonus points for reconfiguring it in a way that you will wear it--dress to skirt, skirt to apron, that kind of thing.
One thing I took away from my high school economics class is that clothing is a nondurable good, which means it is immediately consumed in one use (like food) or has a lifespan of less than 3 years (like clothes, makeup, etc). Because I was a thrifting queen even back then, I remember thinking “3 years? That doesn’t seem like very long at all. There are a ton of cool clothes out there that are way older than 3 years!” I’ve thought this for a long time now, obviously, and my love for thrifting is well-documented. It didn’t really bother me that people said they “just couldn’t wear used clothes” or “didn’t like to shop at thrift stores” because I figured hey! more for me!
And then I started to read stuff like this, which is a fascinating article about what really happens to donated clothes. You know how sometimes you’ll get a wild hair to go through all the stuff you own, pare down, and clear out your closets and dresser drawers? And then you happily bag it all up and drop it off at Goodwill so someone else (hopefully someone like me) can buy it and take it home to a happy new life? Well, according to this article, that only happens to about 20% of donated clothes. The rest...have a different ending. The U.S. market “can’t absorb” (read: people won’t buy) all of the donated clothes out there, so the remaining clothes get cut up and re-purposed for industrial wiping rags, recycled into fiber for reuse as stuffing and insulation, or continue life as clothing on a different continent, usually one comprised of mainly third-world countries.
The thing is, in order to use clothing for industrial wiping rags, it needs to be cotton, light colored or white, and in fairly good condition. Like those t-shirts they hand out on college campuses to get you to sign up for a credit card. As far as stuffing and insulation goes, I think using clothing scraps in this way is genius, and I’m really glad it’s done, but there’s only so much insulation that’s needed. The rest probably just gets tossed. The remaining clothes, stuff that’s not used for rags or insulation, heads overseas to be sold again if it’s not bought by someone here in the U.S. These companies, called “processors,” buy overages from charities like Goodwill and Salvation Army, sort it up, and ship it out. Processors used to recycle garments for their fibers, but with the decline of fabric quality, this kind of recycling isn’t done much anymore. So instead, our cheap and poorly-constructed clothing get sent overseas to be sold again, this time to someone who’s wearing it out of necessity, not because they’re interested in the latest fashion from Forever 21.
Before I read this article and thought a bit more about clothing consumption in America, I was content to let others plow through clothes and trends at breakneck speed because I greedily figured it meant more options for me at the thrift store. Heck, I still kind of feel this way. But I’m also now a bit distressed at how many more clothes people own than they did 50 years ago, how quickly those clothes wear out or are discarded for other reasons, and about the resources required to continue at this alarming rate. The resources part especially scares me. These fabrics and dyes are not generally natural and nontoxic, and the energy required to make and produce them has to come from somewhere. I imagine that in the third world countries where many garments are made, the energy available goes to making garments that will be sold to the wealthy and clothing-hungry U.S., not to powering generators or supporting other necessities that would improve the living standards of the people who live there.
So what can we do about it? Well, I’m not an expert, but in the spirit of the Slow Clothing Movement, I’m committing to doing the following things:
1. Buy fewer clothes in general. Let me get this out there right now: I love shopping. Love it. I love the sport of finding the best item, for the best price, etc. Oftentimes I’ll want to shop when I don’t have anything else to do. But, for the past few months I have bought almost no new clothes. Instead, when I’m bored and want to go shopping, I’ll pull a bunch of stuff out of my closet and make up new outfits to wear. This often satiates my desire to go get something brand new, and I usually discover something I haven’t worn in a while and have forgotten about. Also? I’m not spending money on clothes I don’t need.
2. Buy the majority of clothes from thrift stores and consignment shops. You’d be surprised what people get rid of. I know that I myself am guilty of sometimes buying stuff, never mustering up the enthusiasm to wear it, and then giving it to Goodwill with the tags still attached. I’ve found some real gems, often with tags on or like new, that are now in heavy rotation in my closet. Cost per wear? Pennies.
3. Buy higher-quality items new (or used, if you can find it), and everything else used. For the latest trends, which I don’t much participate in anyway, I hit up Goodwill. For a long term piece that I know I’ll wear again and again? I try to buy something that’s high quality, because I know it’s more likely to last. This extends to shoes too, which is maybe the one place that I’m not a total cheapskate. I also try to buy off-season. For example, right now I’m looking for a new winter coat because those are on sale with winter ending. I hope to find a high quality one, something that will last at least a few years, for a fraction of the price. An added bonus is that you get a new coat, maybe wear it once or twice, and then in the fall when you pull it out of storage it’s like getting a new coat all over again!
4. Sell or swap clothes before donating. Whenever I’m ready to take a load of stuff to Goodwill, I swing by the local consignment store first. I think that when you take clothes to be sold, they curate what they think will be more popular, and then people are more likely to buy those items when they don’t have to wade through 1700 oversize t-shirts. I know that even though I like to hunt through stuff, this is not everyone’s cup of tea and they appreciate clothes that are organized by season, color, and size. Plus if you sell some stuff, that’s a few bucks back in your pocket that you otherwise wouldn’t have! The idea behind organizing a swap is pretty similar, minus the making money part. Pick the nicer things in your donate pile, get a few like-sized girlfriends together, and hopefully everyone goes home with some fun, new-to-them items that otherwise would have ended up at Goodwill with an undetermined future.
5. Keep clothes around for longer. Listen, I’m all about purging stuff I’ll never wear again. I finally had to give up the ghost on several pairs of pants I bought right out of college because I will never again be that small. But, I also try to keep stuff for a long time in hopes that I’ll fall back in love with it after a break, or that it’ll be in fashion again soon. For me, this especially applies to dresses. I almost never get rid of a dress because I know in a year or two (or three) I’ll probably love it again, even if at the moment it feels worn to death. Case in point: the dress I wore to M’s wedding last year was something I was thisclose to giving to Goodwill. I’d worn it to several weddings/graduation/etc, then my friend Kristina wore it to a wedding, and I was just about to retire it when I decided to put it away for a few months instead. When I was thinking about what would work for an Indian wedding that wasn’t a sari, this dress immediately came to mind. I got so many compliments when I wore and even a year later, I’m really glad I still have it. This has happened several times, and I’ve been so glad that I didn’t send something off to a thrift store prematurely. If you're truly ready to ditch an item, get rid of it. If you're just kind of tired of wearing it every week, put it away for a while and then in 6-12 months pull it back out and reevaluate whether you'll truly ever wear it again. Bonus points for reconfiguring it in a way that you will wear it--dress to skirt, skirt to apron, that kind of thing.
So, will you take part in the Slow Clothing Movement with me? Help spread the word? Or am I nuts to think we could resist the relentless push forward to buy more, wear more, spend more on clothes? Believe me, I still really like shopping...
