SPRING TIME Eco Fashion for beginners

Slow fashion is all the rage these days and it's no wonder. The world is drowning under fast fashion waste and we in the UK are the largest consumer of fast fashion in Europe. When i was growing up 4 decades ago my parents shared a wardrobe and their shoes fit at the bottom.  Mum also had a trunk of African cloths and that was it in terms of their clothes and it was the same story in all the homes of our family and friends. The change came with the death of C&A and high street clothes no longer being made in the UK.

Around that time in the 80s a big story broke in the news. Emelda Marcos the wife of the president of Singapore was reported to have over 1000 pairs of shoes. We couldnt believe it. We'd never heard anything like before, but it ignited the imagination of.women everywhere to the idea of having many many many shoes. So many shoes that you would need a room dedicated to them.

It wasnt that we didnt have cheap imports in the 70s and 80s. We did ! But you could only find them in the market and they just weren't that fashionable or they were fake designer jeans, jumpers, handbags and trainers. All of a sudden we had New Look, Peacock and cheap clothes being sold in big supermarkets. Then of course much later we had Primark (the king of cheap) We had cheap fast fashion keeping up with designs in Elle and Cosmopolitan magazines.

I remember the first time I went into Mango and Zara in Spain. My best friend and i were dumb struck at the colours, the styles, the layout and the prices !
And we begun to buy like there was no tomorrow!

Sex in the City the TV series taught us the names of the big shoe and bag designers that we should aspire to.  Thoes girls made walking in high heels everywhere obligatory and possessing many many pairs as common as muck.
I wear size 9 shoes so the mountainous shoe collection was never my story, also I'm a dressmaker so buying loads of clothes was not my bag after the initial head rush of Mango and Zara.

My mum was a dressmaker in factories in the 70s and 80s just before the UK fashion production sector relocated to China and Turkey. My own hat business was wiped out by cheap imports and I soon learned the real conditions of factories in Bangladesh, Thailand and China.

Some factory owners in the UK partnered up with factories in those cheaper far East countries but found that the level of profits the big multinational companies wanted to make would make it impossible to achieve high levels of productivity and the high safety practices they were use to in the UK. Many garment manufacturers simply, sold up or retired. Thoes who tried to hang on in the UK found higher rents due to gentrification meant that they just couldnt carry on manufacturing in the UK.

This had a knock on effect on businesses who use to supply the factories. Wholesale trimming suppliers of zips, threads and fabrics also closed down. 25 years later fashion manufacturing in the UK, especially London has totally disappeared.

Today in the UK we have a crisis. a glutton of cheap fast fashion from the far East spending a short time in our wardrobes before filling landfill. This is crazy ! I know loads of people who rent an office while their clothes occupy a bedroom free of charge.

A lot of fast fashion are given away to charity shop and clothes banks. This has led to a huge international secondhand fashion market. I was recently in Kosice in Slokavia and every high street had 1 to 3 second hand 1 euro shops.

In Africa second hand clothes from the west arrives by earth polluting ships by the truck load. Every market has people with tarpaulins spread on the ground and a mountain of clothes being sold for 1 euro. This undemines the local fashion manufacturing trade.  The worst thing is that at the end of the day as the market closes you'll find rubbish skips full of damaged clothes. It's insane to think of the journey of these clothes.

The real cost of fast fashion as waste is astronomical and disastrous for our planet.

So what can we do?
Well I dont advocate buying second hand as a first step. In truth most of us already have too many clothes and shoes. So lets start there. You don't need to get rid of what you have, but you can reassess how to get more use out of it for longer.

What season is coming up where you are?
What do you have that will work for that?
In the UK spring is here so it time to pack away your winter wardrobe and put all your spring and summer clothes on your bed and separate them into groups.

Look at your jackets and light weight coats. How many do you have?
 Which do you love? Keep it and plan to wear it. Put any others that you no longer like or are out of fashion away.
Do the coats, jackets, trouser, skirts and dresses you like need repairing in anyway, taking in, letting out. Sproucing up. Maybe get a trim added to the collar, cuff or edge.
Do you have a posh outfits that you hardly wear?
Get them dry cleaned and plan to wear it for all special occasions coming up.

You can do the same with your shoes, boots and jumpers.

Which parties do you have coming up?
You may not have all your invites in yet, but you'll know if you're likely to go to 3 or 10 parties over the coming seasons.
Look at your party or special occasion wear. Pick out a number, a few more than you will need. Look at your accessories, jewelry and shoes and match them up and put the rest away. Maybe some of these need sproucing up, bringing up to date, making shorter. Adding a border to make longer. Cutting off a sleave. Adding a contrast sleave. Get that flared skirt remade fitted or that dress made into a skirt or that flared skirt remade into trousers.

There are so many ways of turning that nice outfit you dont wear often into something else. If you dont have any ideas of what to do then get in touch and we will discuss your options.

Look again at your shoes. Are there some super comfortable ones that are way past worn, scaftted, the wrong colour and ready for the bin? Get in touch with us. We can recover the top with a new fabric, resole it and return it as good as new giving you another few years wear out of them. We can even revover an old clutch bag to make it match your new shoes.

I believe that slow fashion is about slowing down the rate at which one consumes fashion.

If your familys' wash day often turns into 10 black sacks of clothing then you really do have too many clothes? But the good news is that with a little bit of planing you can turn that into 2 to 5 years of clothes, while spending a fraction of your fashion budget on repurposing and upcycling, giving work to your local tailor, while saving our planet.

So why do I recommend putting clothes you're not going to wear that season or clothes you're a bit bored off away?
For some reason humans get bored, especially of things we see all the.time. when you put away items you hardly wear, you preserve them. You give them a chance to be seen as new at a later date. What you didnt like last year may next year be the colour you're desperate to buy.
Just because you're not wearing it does.not mean that you need to bin it or give it to the charity shop who may stick.it on a ship, send it half way round the earth and then bin it for you.

Upcycling, repurposing, repairing and mending is the new black, so lets all get

on board so that there will be a life supporting earth for future generations.if

Call or DM to discuss Upcycling, repurposing, repairing and mending your wardrobe and shoes