So you’ve moved on from fast fashion. Congratulations! You started buying secondhand, started shopping local, and replaced polyester with EcoVero viscose. Despite all the valuable steps, the climate is still in crisis and there is more that can be done.
I once thought sustainable fashion meant clothes I couldn’t afford, in shapes I would never wear and in shades inspired by vintage fabrics. I believed that having an ethical wardrobe meant surrendering to life in a porridge hemp sack dress. But over the last decade the industry has grown with a new wave of designers determined to prove me wrong. Suddenly new brands emerged for every style; All of them used cleaner, greener, fairer production methods.
At the same time, secondhand was emerging as the guilt-free alternative to shopaholics; whether it’s “true” vintage items from bygone eras or last season’s unloved items through rapidly increasing resale practices. The second-hand clothing market is expected to surpass fast fashion by the end of this decade. Fortunately, as awareness increases, so do our shopping options.
It’s ironic because if there’s one thing researchers, activists, and advocates agree on, it’s that we can’t shop better. Quite the opposite. The next stage of the fashion revolution is waking up to the truth: that it will never be “sustainable” to produce new clothes while the planet groans under the weight of our waste.
The Kantamanto market in Accra, Ghana, has become a symbol of both the problem and the solution. Approximately 15 million second-hand clothes come to the country a week, mostly from Europe and the USA. Skilled local artisans are combating the avalanche of waste by repairing and upcycling what they can; but about 40% of them cannot be sold and end up covering the beaches like seaweed.
Back home, the discourse shifted to focus on what we didn’t buy, rather than what we bought. How do we keep our clothes in use and make them last longer? How can we stay in love with our eyes instead of letting them wander?
While brands still have a big role to play in creating a better system, bragging rights no longer belong to brand new issues, but to something storied, well-worn and lovingly preserved. As people push back against fast fashion’s culture of planned obsolescence, visible repair is becoming a badge of honor.
Fashion activist Orsola de Castro recently updated her much-quoted message on Instagram that the most sustainable clothing is the clothing you already have in your wardrobe. “When it comes to clothes, caring for, maintaining, and repairing your own clothes is the most sustainable thing you can do,” she wrote.
This is a democratizing approach to a system that has long been criticized for its elitism. We may not all be able to afford a £300 pair of trousers, but we can try to take good care of the ones we have. We can invest our time; Repairing zippers when they break, replacing them when our bodies or tastes change, and caring for them on a daily basis.
This brings us to the next frontier: washing. This may not be the most glamorous part of the sustainability discussion, but it’s time to examine our laundry habits.
According to appliance manufacturer AEG, up to 25% of a garment’s carbon footprint comes from the care we give it. If you’re one of the many people who throw everything into the laundry basket every night, by all means take note. Beyond the environmental and financial cost of all that heating and spinning, there’s another reason to use the sniff test. Excessive washing also damages our clothes.
Take a moment to reflect on your own laundry tragedies. We all have them; A film shot very early in memory of the wardrobe heroes. The sweaters you lost when you were downsized, the white shirt you lost when you wore red socks, the skintight dress that never sagged the same way again. A 2021 study found that each of us loses an average of 95 items of clothing in our lifetime due to washing disasters.
Reply? Wash less and wash better. It’s time to make the clothes scattered on the “re-worn chair” in our bedrooms a source of pride, not shame.
Of course, this will always be subjective; One person’s mustard stain is another person’s “decorative” motif. And let’s agree that anything worn privately should always be washed anyway. But for everything else, stop and ask yourself: Does it really need a full immersion, or is that something a spot wash could fix?
Relating to: Longer-lasting clothes and less wrinkling: Why is it time to start washing at lower temperatures?
When the answer is “no,” cooler temperatures and shorter wash cycles can also reduce stress on fabric and help your favorite clothes last longer; This is a win for your pocket and the planet.
Wrap, an NGO dedicated to tackling the climate crisis, estimates that by extending the life of a garment by just nine months, you can potentially reduce its carbon, water and waste footprint by 20-30% [pdf]. Not to mention saving precious hours by swiping for replacements.
But if all this is going to work, then we may need to get rid of a few social norms that persist. Is it time to reinvent “too flashy to wash” as a TikTok aesthetic for a resurgence of indie vulgarity? To popularize the adult apron? Or is it just to adopt the mindset of previous generations, which meant committing to buying clothes for the long term?
Because there’s no point in “responsible” fashion unless we, too, are ready to accept responsibility. We need to love our clothes loud and proud. Repair them, handle them with care, wear them over and over again, and make skipping laundry day normal. In fact, it may be the cleanest option.
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