Fuck Fast Fashion

On industry, materials, and résistance

What (not) to do with discarded clothes in Barcelona: Percentil

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A disclaimer: I wanted to try one of the ‘we’ll resell your garments for you’ services just as an experiment. I have never been attracted to reselling as it seemed more hassle than gain, but these services keep popping up and Percentil was recommended to me as the ‘next big thing’ by reasonable people. So I wanted to have a first-hand experience, expecting only mild disappointment as it should be when trying to resell fast fashion stuff to consumers who already have it all.

However, as you will read below, now I have an impossible-to-close dispute with Percentil and, convinced of their wrongdoing, would not recommend using it. But let me explain it…

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August 25: Signing up

One creates an account and says ‘give me a bag’, then this comes:

You also tell upfront if you will want your rejected stuff back. The obvious answer: no! Once it’s out, it’s gone. I don’t care if the Percentil sorting ladies wear them instead of discarding them. They boast about donating to NGOs the stuff that they reject but I’m not impressed with such claims… you know my stance on the garment abundance.

August 30: Package and instructions

I applied for the bag on Saturday, and had it in mail next Friday, so on 5th working day it was with me. It is small and fits neatly in any letterbox.

And there are additional instructions in there:

A) The general how-to with a couple of annoying points. This thing of ‘once we charged 5.95€ for this service but now we don’t’ is ridiculous. Or the clear contradiction between ‘really fill the bag’ and ‘take it to a pick-up point on your own’. I wouldn’t risk dragging it around public transit when that bag is even half-full.

B) More specifications of the garments to be sent. To me the insistence on ‘we are very picky’ only ignites the wish to fuck with them. Also, I’ve looked around what they sell and it is by no means spectacular. Also, I’ve seen enough stuff there without a brand name. Even ‘with a slight defect’, so, please… Providing measurements in cm instead of the brand sizing would be more helpful. And singling out certain shops as beneath them while accepting others is very ugly (why would CnA be worse than HnM?) just to then sell them anyways. Yeah, I checked that by browsing their merchandise.

C) And they’ll include you in a special club if you do refrain from fucking with them and provide at least 20 items with at least 16 of them being in acceptable condition. As I’m explaining below, I couldn’t refrain from messing with them just to try out their rigor (and to imagine that I’m a normal person who does not organize regular swaps; imagine I just pruned my wardrobe and want to get rid of all I’m discarding in one bag): I’m sending 12 things and expecting 3 to 4 rejections, i.e. 25-33% rejection rate. Sound about right after all I’ve seen at swaps.

That leaflet is also your contract with Percentil. A contract that you send them and do not get to keep any proof of what you put in the bag. As you will see later, this is the biggest problem of such system…

The bag is big, though. Very big.

Selection

They want a full bag, but what does a minimalist do to just try their service? Accumulate from other people! I’m sending 12 items. 10 is the minimum. (Although, if you think about it, how are they going to enforce that? Suspend your ‘membership’?) Only two of those 12 have been mine. I did a thorough soul-searching and spreadsheet reorganization trying to find the superfluous items in my wardrobe. Two is the answer.

There are three garments from C, and we are both very curious about how it will go with the Nudies. A new pair costs between 100 and 200€, and these are in a great condition.

Most of the 12 are from Giulia who moved in August, and left some of her stuff with me for the next swap. I was too lazy to go sort through the swap seed suitcase which is at the Ateneu, so I’m sending her stuff. It’s all in the name of proper research, pupsik!

Below you have my full list with all info, my expectations for their selection process and the result of it.

Men’s

1. Nudie Jeans. Thin Finn Black Ring. 99% organic cotton, 1% elastane. Made in Italy. W31 L32.
Should be accepted. Got lost, more on that below...

2. Levi’s shirt. 100% cotton. Made in Bangladesh. M.
Should be accepted. Accepted. Price to buy 18.95€. Gain for me 4.70€.

3. Cheap Monday shirt. Air Short Sleeve Denim Check. 100% cotton. Made in China. M.
With a hole! Should be rejected. Rejected as too worn out.


4. Suit shirt. 100% cotton. Made in China. L.
Should be accepted. Accepted. Price to buy 23.45€. Gain for me 5.81€.

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Women’s

5. Zara top. Cut off fabric composition tag. Made in Turkey. S.
Should be accepted. Rejected as stained.

6. No brand shirt. 100% cotton. Made in India. No size.
Should be rejected because of lack of size tag. Rejected as too worn out.

7. Zara vest. Shell 100% lyocell. Lining 100% cotton. Made in China. M.
Should be accepted. Rejected as stained.

8. Poncho. No tags of any kind. Wool.
No idea, we’ll see. Accepted. Price to buy 9.95€. Gain for me 1.65€.

9. Coat. No tags of any kind. Loose buttons.
Should be rejected because of lack of a sizing tag. Rejected as too worn out.

10. Vibram hiking boots. Dakota XCR. Made in China. 42 1/2.
Should be accepted. Rejected as type of footwear they do not sell.

11. Asos blouse. No fabric composition tag but plastic alright. No country of production tag. 38.
2015. A hand-me-down from Kristīne. 53 wears since I started tracking, 10 wears in the first 8 months of 2019.
Should be accepted. Accepted. Price to buy 9.95€. Gain for me 1.65€.

12. HnM skirt. 95% cotton, 5% elastane. Made in Bangladesh. M.
2017. Swap find. 31 wears, 4 wears in the first 8 months of 2019.
Should be accepted. Accepted. Price to buy 4.95€. Gain for me 0.82€.

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September 3: Pick up / drop off

Ugh… I made the mistake to check the drop off points. They do this with a ‘logistics solutions’ company and that mean’s quite few points in tobacconists, stationery shops, etc. I have two nearby, at 10 and 11 min walk from my place. And my 12-piece bag could be brought there without too much effort. And I was so attracted to the idea of somebody just picking it up from my place! But now my conscience is against it.

My bag was small enough to fit it into one of the big reusable grocery bags and carry it… so I did walk down to a tobacco shop for a drop off. However, from what I gathered from the conversations between the shopkeepers, receiving a Percentil bag implies them asking for a special pick-up while I had assumed that it would be picked up as part of a general Celeritas package run. So the impression I got was that, even if you take your bag to a drop-off point, it is likely that it will require a special pickup anyways, i.e. my walk to the tobacconist doesn’t mean that I have prevented a truck trip across Barcelona. Hence the only benefit of doing it yourself (if you have a empty-enough bag which shouldn’t be the case) is that you do it on your own time instead of waiting around for a pick-up.


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September 6: Confirmation of reception

I dropped it off on Tuesday, September 3rd and received an email on Friday confirming that they’ve received it. The somewhat shocking thing is the estimated turnaround: 3 weeks (!!!) or even more if they get many more bags in the upcoming days. Ugh. Not cool. OK, it’s sorting, pricing and taking photos, but 3 weeks do not feel adequate for that. I am not impressed!

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Then, on September 20 (two weeks later), they had sorted it out… but found only 11 items! And my experience goes downhill from this point…

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Selection explanation

Apparently I have to be grateful for them even showing me reasons for discarding garments, only because it’s my first time. However, the selection seems almost reasonable. I am really surprised only about the Vibram boots.

Pricing

As you would expect, peanuts. And all that, of course, hinges on somebody actually buying them.

I’m not sure if it’s an automatic smile-file email once you have sent your first bag in, but I received en email next day (September 21) congratulating me (?) that now they’ll be paying double on garments…

And they included a table of the percentage of the price you would get before…

…and now!

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The lost item

So they had found 11 garments in the bag I am convinced I put in 12. And, curiously enough, exactly the most expensive one is the one missing… Well, I sent an email on 21st specifying all the details and encouraging them to look for it:

As I had sent my inquiry in on Saturday, they responded on Monday that they would look into it:

On that Friday I got a response that they had revised my bag and had found no error, i.e. no Nudie jeans. For some reason they remind me about their high selection criteria – as if I had complained about something they had discarded – but offer no way to proceed with this:

Starting to doubt my own sanity and – this being the only scrap of paper involved – I asked them to look for my filled out leaflet:

As it again happened to be Friday, I got the response on Monday:

And one more week later – on October 7 – I received this:

And this:

And this is where the whole thing stops… as there is no way to close this dispute. I am convinced that somebody at their reception chain has stolen that pair of jeans, be it the Percentil policy or individual initiative of an employee, while they claim that there were 11 items when they opened that bag.

I have been going back and forth in my head thinking about ways to possibly prove it but there are none. Even if I had taken a video of myself counting and describing the garments and then closing the bag, that could still be questioned as in if you really closed it, if that was the bag, etc.

And meanwhile they kept sending me emails asking for feedback before having resolved my problem and telling that they have made new, better photos of my items… And asking for feedback. So here you have feedback alright. And those poor garments up there are getting discounted already. And then come more emails urging me to ‘share my wardrobe’ on my social media so that people would buy it… Ugh.

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So six weeks after I had the brilliant idea that I should try Percentil, I am exhausted and pissed off at them. You see, I am a very trusting person and hadn’t even considered that something like this could happen. Curiously enough, though, I did receive a message commenting on me telling IG that I’ll be trying Percentil out to count well how many things I’m putting in my bag… so maybe they already have this fame but I’m slow to catch on? Although the person n question was doubting if the supposedly discarded items aren’t getting sold too.

All in all, a shit experience where I expected only a mildly annoying one. The key, of course, is the model of ‘you send us and we’ll tell you’ that – turns out – can easily lead to such impossible-to-solve disputes. I won’t be trying any of similar services soon and I don’t recommend buying from them. Fuck ’em, organize a clothes swap instead! How? This and this. Or establish an old-school consignment store where a staff member evaluates your stuff at the moment (while frowning at your fast fashion wares). Having seen a couple working very well in New York, I think there would be enough space in Barcelona… Maybe there already is one? I shall Google.

The urge to acquire

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Sometimes the urge to acquire knocks at your door and says ‘hey, you really really need something new… no, you *deserve* it… how could you possibly go on without a mustard cardigan’, and your shopping fast goes out of the window. Sounds familiar?

Since I started pruning my wardrobe in 2014, I’ve mostly observed others going through these dynamics: friends telling that they just *need* to buy something new every month, seeing how some wardrobes fill up immediately with new things once the old ones are edited away, people digging through swap piles frantically to take away something, anything. And, no, I am not immune. It happens rarely but I had a recent flare-up that got me thinking…

Let me set the stage for you: September, Porto, late afternoon, vacations. After lunch C went back to the apartment for a siesta and I went to see an exhibition on Frida Kahlo photo archive. Nice. After coming out of the museum I just walked around and ended up in front of a Humana, suddenly having it very clear that I was going to buy something there.

After a short mental scan of my wardrobe for possible need, I proceeded to meticulously review every top and dress in that shop to select my winners. As after the September swap, I touched the garments, looked at fabric composition tags, scoffed ‘ugh, 100% polyester, of course’, looking for something nice in at least 100% cotton or viscose. While linen or silk would have been nice, Humana in Iberian peninsula is not that kind of place; as with the swaps, what goes around, comes around. And after several trips beyond the fitting curtain I had two garments that made sense for my wardrobe for €12.78. Both of them can be assumed to be functional replacements of a ‘beyond repair’ garment I said bye bye this summer, like so:

To make it even funnier, both are Zara, made in Portugal (the black one) and Morocco (the white one), and the black one even had its tags on: from the original €17.95 to €7.59, even less than the price tag said because in Humana they do all kinds of ‘sales’ – all for €4, all for €1 – and that day it was the -20% day. And on top of that – just to make fun of my fabric composition obsession – none of them has that information. The tags on the white one have been cut off, and all the intact tags on the black one does not reveal the material… my guess would be a cotton and elastane mix + synthetic lace for the black one and no clue for the white one, except for the synthetic lace panel.

Although I can rationalize this episode of the urge to acquire much better than the previous time I heard the the little voice of ‘oh, you are so buying something here’ in the WAG shop in Cape Town last year which cost me €160, I am still curious about that voice and where it came from. I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t need a lift-me-up. But I needed a garment, and I needed it now.

I can think of two different but resonating dynamics for this. First, food cravings! Assuming that food cravings can be similar to shopping cravings not only in the good way of ‘my body is smart and wants natural yoghurt / comfy shoes, so I shall provide’, but ‘my body is weird and wants pickles in ice cream / a giant pack of chocolate chip cookies / another supermini dress I’ll never wear…’

The cravings story I like to tell has a morality subplot to it – as does garment acquisition after you have learnt enough about the harmful ways of the fashion industry – and involves anchovies. I’ve been an ovo-lacto vegetarian since 2006 and mostly vegan since 2011, but there were episodes in late 2000s when I just wanted a can of anchovies (always when it was already sitting in my mom’s fridge, never in shop). So I would eat it and move on. With no remorse, btw. And nowadays I act similarly around cheese and ice cream. If it feels like a good idea, enjoy it and relax. If it happens rarely enough – and only you can feel what’s rarely and what’s bingeing – just do it. Relaxing your standards occasionally to improve your quality of life is a good idea. And helps to not get too caught up in the purity politics of holier-than-thou. Note to self: Nobody needs another judgemental and suffering martyr.

I considered a photo of anchovies to illustrate my point but that somehow seemed too triggering. Here, look at this moldy piece of milk robbed to calves instead:

Second, selecting from a fixed set. Contrary to Clarissa trying to expand our horizons thinking beyond the given – look up her smorgasbord analogy; in a nutshell, even if you are presented with a multitude of readily available options to chose from, think about what you want without looking at the buffet as your true wish might be on another table – we tend to treat the given set as final, even in fleeting situations. I’m sure I’m not the only one who, when unpartnered and open to encounters, would enter a bar/party/class and without even thinking about it, do a hypothetical potential mate selection along the lines of ‘if this bunch of people would be the last bunch of people on earth, who would I…’ Why? It’s ridiculous. If you are somebody doing this with garments at shops or swaps, play the game, but try to keep in mind what you already have in your wardrobe. For example, when you have selected a winner at a swap, ask if you would swap anything out of your wardrobe to bring this one in. If the answer is no, reconsider taking it.

I keep reassuring people that it’s fine to bring their swap finds back the next time. The frantic buzz of the swap – as in shops during the sales – alters our decision making and sends it into a post-apocalyptic mode of thinking. Relax! Just shrug and bring it back on December 1.

As for me, I think I’ve found the perfect pastime that allows to open a safety valve for wanting things and prevents me from the scarcity-mentality browsing: sewing magazines! I stroll to my local libraries, fetch a pile of Burda and Patrones, and leaf through, annotating via phone photos and sketches things I like. As I’ve taken up learning to sew, these are fantasies that could be made reality but not immediately. The results look like this and may or may not turn into real garments, but I had my hour or two fantasizing and evaluating along the lines of ‘oh, this is nice… yuck, who thought that that was a good idea? …wow, I could totally enjoy one of these…’


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What’s your relationship with that little voice? Do you have it? Do you indulge it or ignore it?

Book review: Second Skin by India Flint

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Reading has been an important part of my life since I understood the superpowers it conferred and proceeded to read through the whole local children’s library in the 1990s. And since I got hooked on minimalism and sustainability in 2014, great part of my readings have been around these topics, both on-line and off.

Second Skin: Choosing and Caring for Textiles and Clothing (Murdoch books 2011) by India Flint came my way through Julie who had talked about it for ages and had brought it along for the Fix it! workshop. She kindly lent me her copy and I dove into a very different sustainable fashion book than I had got used to.

And maybe that’s my already squared mind, but was very grateful that I had previously read the sustainable fashion books of the Kate Fletcher circle (1, 2, and especially 3) which – while much more prone to being out of date as fashion industry practices are a moving target, especially when it comes to sustainability claims and attempts in last ten years or so – give a comprehensive overview of the life cycle of garments in late capitalism and the efforts to make it more sustainable and ethical. Flint’s stuff is a labor of love, and the most gorgeous book I’ve read in a long-long time, but that’s the thing: she is not a sustainable fashion scholar or industry insider, she’s a fiber artist, a maker, a natural dyer, a radical mender…

So, I’ll give you reasons to read this one…

It’s a beautiful artifact! The illustrations and text are weaved together into a work of art. There is no way this can be made Kindle-friendly because it shouldn’t be.

Herstory! Flint traces her family history through a lineage of women who knew how to make and mend for their families, both for festivities and during duress, throughout her childhood’s amazement of the magic of stitching and up to her daughter’s textile projects. Also, of course, I’m biased because – surprise, surprise! – it’s WW2 Latvia that her grandmother escaped from, sewing machine in hand.

If you ever wanted a little big push to appreciate natural fibers (and learn that cotton is not the best one by far) here you have it. Flint loves her linen, hemp, silk, and, especially, wool, and the whole book is a love letter to them. My special additional kudos for her suggestion that first textile making – felting – might be an unintended side-product of fucking. Also, the very sensible suggestion that people working with fire hazards should wear wool protective clothing. Cute! Be careful, though, with the power of suggestion: I had two episodes of a very suffocating synthetics-panic while reading the book and those were garments I had had for ages.

She is pushing the ugly mending revolution, and I love it! Flint is a great inspiration to let go of conventional notions of perfect dyeing and invisible mending. She advocates for visible layers of customization, appropriation, evolution, and it’s liberating.

Career inspiration! She is a great example of person just doing her thing and truly pushing the boundaries of what ethical fashion on an individual level can be. It’s authentic and it’s beautiful, and beyond the conventional notions of pretty at the same time which gives her work even more power.

And reasons not to start your sustainable fashion journey with this book!

The biggest one for me is that her life – that she implicitly sets as an example – is a very marginal anecdote. Yes, in her life wool is super sustainable and ethical because it comes from her own sheep, she travels the world in her overdyed and self-made uniform giving natural dyeing workshops and dyes in her hotel rooms (giving advice how to avoid smoke detectors, no less), and she has spent all her life developing the skills to be as sustainable and autonomous in her use of textiles as one can be. It’s inspirational and frustrating at the same time! While baby steps of the spirit of her work can be incorporated in our daily lives as urban, semi-formal people with limited skills, the position from which she is speaking is frankly unattainable unless you drop whatever else you are doing. (Well, Julie is an example of such switch, though, and is doing great!)

She has clear preferences and giving a comprehensive vision of the textile industry is not among her priorities. While her love for natural fibers is cute and makes perfect sense for her lifestyle, all synthetics get just written off as shit unworthy of even engaging with. Yes, it’s does not mend or natural dye well, but this generalized position ignores the fact that synthetics can be recycled back to their virgin quality if designing or at least sorting post-wear is done right with a fraction of energy required to make new and no water, and that we have a shitton of polyester and nylon laying around, so turning a blind eye to it is not a solution and, due to the nature of the material, not much can be done about it on an individual consumer level. Flint has this frontier woman flair of textile autonomy which is very attractive but could be as well from 100 years ago when we weren’t all drowning in cheap polyester.

The same ‘this is not an issue because I do it in my backyard’ logic is applied to ethics and animal products. While I don’t like to engage in wool and silk vegan debates, because they shift the focus away from more urgent issues, Flint brushes off any such concerns with a mix of ‘but if I can do it well, we all can’ in case of wool and leather (+ the leather is just meat industry by-product’ argument – 1, 2, 3) and an esoteric elevation of the ‘but we use plants’ argument that every vegan has heard too many times for silk (basically saying that silkworms are shit animals with no quality of life anyway) and coming this close to talking about natural cycles of everybody feeding everybody else in one way or another. As with fiber preferences, Flint’s views on animal agriculture and usage of parts of dead animals in human apparel is a bit too much Little House on the Prairie for my taste.

The repeated eye rolling about the notion of organic cotton. While admitting that labeling something organic has a narrow meaning that doesn’t include water use or posterior dyeing, Flint is baffled that a synthetically dyed garment with whatever trimmings (remember that 100% synthetic thread is the industry standard) would still be labeled as organic cotton. D-oh! It’s ‘organic cotton’, not ‘organic garment’, unfortunately, but that label does not lie.

And just an example of how unfortunately blasé I am about all the pollution that surrounds me (and I think you could use a first person plural there), my reaction to her synthetics dye outrage because skin is a large and absorbent organ was along the lines of ‘buah, not even everything I put inside me (stomach and intestinal linings are much more absorbent surfaces) is pesticide and other poison free, so…’ My bad, but I relativization is the only mental tactic that keeps me sane.

The radical mending that sound so well as a manifesto is hard! Even achieving a moderately acceptable level of reasonably functional fix requires skill. I’m learning it the hard way. The same goes for dyeing and garment-making described in this book. Coming from a person who has spent all her life playing with textiles, practices she describes meditative and empowering can get frustrating very quickly. With the additional rub that you’re failing at fugly mending…

So I suggest you read it when you have already covered the general textile and fashion industry basics, at least I’m happy that for me it happened in this order.

My takeaway inspirations (and caveats) are:
(a) to be more serious about phasing out the pure synthetics from my wardrobe and bringing in natural fibers (though I already failed at that miserably during the May swap),
(b) to take a second look at threads available at my local mercerías in an effort to move towards cotton ones (although I also have my mother’s sewing treasure box in Rīga with rainbow synthetic threads that could last me a lifetime; ugh the awful choices between ‘use up what you have’ and ‘purchase better’),
(c) to maybe dip my toes in some very basic avocado or onion skin dyeing for my stained whites… I’ll let you know!

What interesting sustainable fashion books have you read lately? Is there any one book that changed it all for you?

How expensive is an ethical wardrobe? 2017 second half money talk

Luīze 2 Comments

What can I do? Money is part of the essentials. So let’s talk about it!

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Money is almost always a tricky social issue, especially so when it comes to niches – like ethical fashion blogs – where people tell other people how they should spend their money. Blah-blah-blah, voting with your euros… and then sponsored posts and things-things-things! I already wrote a detailed post in July about my overall money-spending goals, so this one is an itemized update on last six months. The order of preferences has stayed the same: (1) intensively using up what I have, (2) incorporating mainly pre-loved garments, (3) ethically sourcing the ones I have troubles finding second-hand (underwear, hosiery, footwear).

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This is what January-June looked like:

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And these are the last six months in a nutshell:

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Two observations jump at me, and they are connected: (a) despite my July intentions, I’ve spent significantly more money on getting dressed than in the previous six months which already almost twice as in each of the 2016’s six-month chunks, and (b) I allowed myself to buy a set of two new main garments I did not need; without those 160€ my spending list would look much better. Here comes a complete run-down through each item:

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The birks: I was after a pair of vegan birks for a long time, remembering my knock-off footbed sandals ~2007 as the comfiest summer shoe ever. In July my trusty 2014 Crocs broke beyond repair, so now I have a pair of street sandals and the same model in EVA for the swimming pool. I’m very happy with both, despite the fact that the street pair is unfit for both cycling and long walks (Oh, feet blisters!). The swimming pool ones haven’t touched the street, so technically I could even exclude them from this list.

Verdict: Nicely invested 95€. Would repeat.

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SiiL knickers: Liisa made it possible for me to switch from LuvaHuva knickers – extremely comfy and well made but quite pricey – to ones made three street blocks from me. From organic cotton mixes bought in Barcelona and made by a friend = best ethical fashion! Also, these six pieces allowed to retire some worn out knickers, always a good idea. Although this pattern turned out to be better for winter than for Barcelona summer (the rubber band leads to chaffing), they’ve been great from October till now.

Verdict: Great! Mil gracias, Liisa.

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I bought naked “peinetas” – hair combs – to try to repurpose a pair of feather earrings Marina sent me. I re-crafted the feathers but the result was too exuberant even for me! So I passed them back to Marina hoping she could use them for her pre-Burning Men crafting sessions.

Verdict: Oh, well! Not all repair endeavors end up being successes, I tried my best.

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Swedish Stockings hosiery: I finally made the hosiery upgrade from Calzedonia to Swedish Stockings. The cashmere blend tights are ~3 times more expensive than the Calzedonia equivalent… I keep telling myself that that’s the right thing to do, but the price point still feels uncomfortable for me. I opened the tight season in November and so far have basically worn out three pairs of woolen tights: two Calzedonia leftovers I had from the previous winter and the Swedish Stockings one. That would mean a seasonal investment of around 120€ for three pairs of winter tights. The tights themselves are very nice: a generous fit (higher waist than Calzedonia has), very nice feel, but they clearly do not last forever.
I also bought six pairs of their step socks… Well, those are a complete fail! They are too tiny to stay on my feet, (and probably because of that) break very easily. Did not work.

Verdict: Tights yes, socks no! I keep telling myself that there is no way back to high-street hosiery… My new plan is to take full advantage of Swedish Stockings’ recycling initiative. As they promise 30% discount for those who return stockings for recycling, my three pairs of cashmere blend tights would end up costing around 80€. Much better! The only challenge now is to stretch the hosiery I have until the end of the season, and to save them up to send to Sweden. Taking into account that it’s around 16ºC now in Barcelona and I’m getting rid of my short dresses anyway, seems doable.

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The WAG set: Oh, my! I hadn’t bought a *new* main garment since 2015. But ideas about African prints and find something made locally when visiting Cape Town fogged my mind. The attention to the customer was impeccable, we had a great time, I tried on a million things, and ended up paying a small fortune for an unlined set made of conventional cotton.

Verdict: There is no way back, so now my mission is to wear it again, again and again. I’ll do my best!

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Trench repairs: details of my hand-me-down trench needed repairs, and neighborhood repair shops – seamstresses and the cobbler – were able to take care of it.

Verdict: My trench is back in shape, and I feel immensely grateful for living in a place where there is still access to fixers.

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Bra strap fixers for Laura’s dress: I picked up this polyester dress in September swap and wore it 11 times to understand that it’s not for me. Knowing that the main reason that the previous owner had passed it on was a problem with bra straps, I first used safety pins and then gathered all my bravery and precision to make my first bra strap fixers.

Verdict: I’m so proud of myself! And you are very welcome, next wearer of this dress.

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A new pack of hair pins: I came to Riga knowing that my current go-to hairstyle is a pinned-up french braid but didn’t take hair pins with me. D-oh!

Verdict: Even I could use some better planning at times.

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How do you deal with additional time and money investment that ethical fashion implies? Do you fall for some decision-fatigue buys of “I need this and I don’t care” or “oh my gosh, oh my gosh, it’s too beautiful”? What was your most dubious buy of 2017?

Fashion, sustainability and tidying books I read in 2017

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For the second year in row I’ve had the ambition to read more books than there are weeks in a year, and for the second year in row I’m failing miserably. I ended 2016 at 42/52, so 81%. At the moment I’m at 37/52, so 71%. Disappointing! However, 12 of those 2017 books were blog-related either touching the whys (sustainability, climate change, consumerism), hows (sustainable fashion) and aesthetic pleasures (style!). Here’s the list in the order I read them:

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Tuite, Rebecca C. 2014. Seven Sisters Style: The All-American Preppy Look.

A pretty look-book explaining the rise of the preppy look which I’ll always eagerly repin despite the class bias. The funniest part is that styles that we now associate with arrogance and careful selection to “look the part”, was born out of quest for comfort and were seen as highly inappropriate and rebellious at their time. What can I say, give me a mix of nice knits and emancipation of women any time!

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Black, Sandy. 2008. Eco-chic: The Fashion Paradox.

A bit outdated and avant-garde focused sustainable fashion book. A reminder that less than ten years ago sustainable fashion was an artsy fringe activity nobody expected to become relevant to the mainstream.

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Carson, Rachel. 1962 [2005]. Silent Spring.

Yes, I hadn’t read the seminal book that launched the environmentalism. And now I have. It still is a very powerful reminder of the arrogant recklessness of the industrial management of nature (that tends to bring unintended consequences of colossal scale). Although the pesticides of today are not exactly as horrible as the organochlorine pesticides that Carson was focusing on, we have more than enough toxic messes around the world continuing the proud tradition of human hubris.

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Sontag, Susan. 1977 [1979]. On Photography.

Aha, another classic that I finally read this year! While not neatly fitting in the overarching theme, a recommended read to everybody taking daily selfies. Somehow I do feel relieved that Sontag did not live to see Instagram… Diagnosis? We are all sick, but that won’t stop us from documenting the illness.

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Gilman, Charlotte P. 1915 [2002]. The Dress of Women: A Critical Introduction to the Symbolism and Sociology of Clothing.

Oh, this was such a treat! Gilman, the ultra-rational feminist hero – read her What Diantha Did for a 1910 (!) answer to the still-relevant housework issue! – charging against the stupidity of fashion. Early social scientists just wrote what they thought, interpreting their participant observations from the armchair (OK, like Bauman and other theorists of postmodernity still do / did until they left us). You cannot trust them as describing a representative reality, but they surely reflect certain stirrings of their time. This one is fascinating! I already mentioned this book here and here.

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Corn, Wanda M. 2017. Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern.

I got this gem thanks to Marina who was willing to cater to my “see an exciting book in a museum shop, decide later” whims. For me this book was just the right mix of art and personal style without entering personal life. Bravo! The argument is very convincing, and more so with O’Keeffe than with others: if the artists has spent decades carefully curating (and making) her wardrobe and surroundings, it makes perfect sense to analyze them alongside her paintings.

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Fletcher, Kate and Lynda Grose. 2012. Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change.

Another sustainable fashion textbook, better than Black’s, worse than revised 2014 Fletcher below. In 2017 I was eager to build up an adequate knowledge base to start with, now I think I’m good, thanks! But I have to agree that in the last decade the sustainable fashion industry has moved with an incredible speed.

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Fletcher, Kate. 2008 [2014]. Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journey.

For a still-relevant overview of the sustainable fashion industry from the point of view of design (and lots of optimistic hope about the designer’s power to be an influence for good), read this one! Fletcher is the fashion philosopher of NOW (of, the notion of “craft of use” is irresistible), but if you have other favorites, let me know in the comments.

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And then I went on a Marie Kondo binge you can read about here…

Kondo, Marie. 2010 [2014]. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.

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Kondo, Marie. 2017. Spark Joy.

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Kondo, Marie and Yuko Uramoto. 2017. The Life-changing Manga of Tidying Up: A Magical Story.

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Monbiot, George. 2006 [2007]. Heat: How Can We Stop the Planet Burning.

I read Heat for the first time in 2008, and it was a game-changer for me. I took several small, individual steps to reduce my carbon footprint but didn’t stop flying (bad, bad me…). Not being a home- or business-owner, those were really tiny, but the book cemented my convictions that (1) climate change is happening (I know that in the USA “climate change” is understood to be the doubting term vs. much stronger “global warming”; however, assuming that words have meaning, not only spin, the shit storm that has already started goes beyond warming and is changing the climate in a multitude of ways, for example, when the Gulf stream stops, we won’t see much warming happening)  and we made it happen, obviously; (2) we have enough knowledge since long ago about the causes, so in principle we could have stopped it; (3) but we are shitty animals, our brains cannot deal with gradual and impersonal danger, so deserve to die and leave it to lizard-people to build the next civilization. That third part is not Monbiot’s, he really tries to be optimistic about the whole thing, but re-reading ten years later and knowing that we are even more fucked now, oh, well! Monbiot’s book started my climate change education and nothing has changed my climate pessimism since I read it for the first time.

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What were your sources of wisdom and brain-food in 2017? Do you have any information-consumption goals for 2018? How about less screens and more books?

Stop browsing fast fashion, browse the internet instead

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One of the most powerful tricks up fast fashion’s sleeve is the magic of browsing. If you have time to kill, here you have the carefully arranged – often with the help of up and coming artists – flagship stores and the “I’ll only take a look while I’m waiting”… Especially when it’s cold outside and the idea of a *new* big furry hat seems like a very good one!

So, following the steps of John and Yoko, I’m suggesting a bed-in against fast fashion and physical fashion browsing as a pass-time. Curl up under a blanket with your favorite device and browse the internet instead of badly made and fugly (for real, often the stuff these people sell really offend my aesthetic sensibilities) polyester garments. And for finders keepers and future reference, my not at all revolutionary suggestion is using Pinterest. Especially for hoarding visual inspiration it makes so much more sense than bookmarking stuff in your browser or any other link collector I’ve tried.

So these are my fashion-related uses of Pinterest (+ a wide array of other boards for feminist pins, interesting books and cute animals):

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Gathering my own #wiw pictures

An exercise in vanity and a better overview of the unending repetition in my wardrobe. It has been almost a year now of a weekly outfit post, and my fashion consistencies and inclinations are very clear at this point.

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Visual fashion inspiration for cold and warm weather

Not aspiring to replicate or “buy the outfit”, but when a photo calls my attention as fashion inspiration, to one of the following boards it goes, depending on the approximate (Mediterranean) season it would be appropriate for:

or

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A reality-check exercise of what you feel like wearing

I did this one last December picking out from my cold weather inspo board the looks that I would happily wear, taking account the current aesthetic cravings, weather and lifestyle. Comparing this with what I’ve been wearing both last and this cold seasons, you can see that my leaning towards knee-length patterned dresses or top + flared skirt combos, opaque tights and fun sneakers for winter hasn’t changed:

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Reasonable and ethical show board, because hobbit feet

Something in my heart that has been dealing with footwear struggles for many years has pushed me towards a small but robust shoe board. It is a merged have- and wish-list, and, as always with these exercises, my preferences are clear:

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A fashion-related link-depository

I bookmark in my browser only the links I have to deal with: upcoming Sunday brain-food, Wiki pages I want to read, etc. Reviewed links I want to keep go into a Pinterest board. The two fashion related I have are for news and for taking note of ethical brands. For brands I pin an item or two that both reflect the offer of the brand and that I find most appealing, so that a quick look through the board could tell me where to go for sports bras and where for wax print dresses.

and

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The caveats to all this are that:
(a) Pinterest is clearly for puritan aesthetics, so uploading naughty pictures may make you lose all you boards (repinning is safe, so do that) and the criteria are not really clear. If you want naked people and stuff, get a Tumblr, we all know that, right?
(b) once you are done with your reality-checked desires, real-life browsing might be needed, especially if you are looking for second-hand options (always better than virgin fibres!). So when you have a clear vision and an approximate (un)shopping list, get out of the bed and go visit your community swaps (or organize one) or second-hand dealers!

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Do you browse fashion stores out of boredom? How do you collect your fashion inspiration? And how do you organize your links?

Educational afternoon: The True Cost and Upcycling Barcelona

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Despite some challenges – the Catalan procés has monopolized the attention of many people in Barcelona and people seem to enjoy clothes’ swaps more than brainwashing sessions, even if vegan quiches are provided – we had our screening of The True Cost + an additional perspective on the current fashion revolution from Virginia Rondeel, fashion designer dedicated to upcycling and co-founder of Upcycling Barcelona.

Our beloved audience.

Quiches designed to lure in the unsuspecting.

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The True Cost presents itself as “a groundbreaking documentary film that pulls back the curtain on the untold story and asks us to consider, who really pays the price for our clothing?” However, unless you have spent last 15-20 years naked in a hippy/Amish community, you should have at least a foggy idea that garment making is not a local seamstress business anymore and that somehow you can now get garments for ridiculous prices. The True Cost is a well made piece of consciousness-rising that packs into 92 minutes all the basics of what’s wrong with fast fashion. It is well paced and emotionally charged, taking the viewer on a guilt trip across the universe. The perfect choice to start – or restart – the conversation on garment industry and alternatives to fast fashion. And it leaves you willing to take some action, so…

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To give a more local human touch to the story, Virginia from Upcycling Barcelona took the floor after the movie and talked about her way of slowing down fashion here in Barcelona: creating garments from post-consumer shirts and curating a space for other upcycling designers and wannabe upcyclers. In their shop you can find selected second-hand garments and pieces made of tablecloths, inner tubes of bicycle tires,  industry samples, etc. even upcycled bridal gowns + sewing courses for those wishing to take back the power to fix and modify our clothing.

Virginia is also one of the founders of l’Associació de moda sostenible de Barcelona and involved with the Fashion Revolution activities in Barcelona. Here you have a glimpse at the second-hand and upcycled neighborhood fashion show she organized in April, commemorating the Rana Plaza tragedy and reminding that other fashion is possible:

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Not to forget that our very legal screening was made possible by crowdfunding friendfunding. Thank you so much, Kristine, Marina, Jeanne, and Mery + our anonymous tip-jar donors! Unfortunately, their generosity wasn’t enough to fulfill my part of the promise and provide them with so many #fuckfastfashion stickers that they could cover all Cambridge, New York, Salamanca, and Barcelona respectively. I tried to compensate lack of glamour with lots of love, so I got out my magic markers and reimagined my friends as paper dolls… It will have to do this time.


Yes, these are not all. And, yes, I have to work on my scanning skills.

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In this little circle of at least partial converts last Saturday we defined one very important function of events where preaching to the choir is on the menu. It is a way to reaffirm ourselves as not crazy, not marginals, and not alone. And that is already a lot. Because, only if we find the resilience to keep cultivating our own little sustainable parcel, we have the basis to talk to those yet to be educated and convinced.

For the ground I’ve already covered about this topic of converting (your wardrobe) and convincing (others):

Baby steps: Detoxing a wardrobe takes time – on developing a personal strategies of procurement, being honest what sources work for what kind of garments for you; this step will permit you to prioritize your investments.

Persuasion or #fuckfastfashion, but gently – my answers to the most common (fake) arguments in favor of fast fashion. I start the post with a warning that anger and blaming do not help, be gentle.

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What have been the moments / movies / books / people that have quided you towards sustainable fashion? Do you remember the aha! moment? What reassurance in your fashion ethics do you turn to “when you’re weary, feeling small“?

Lessons learnt from the Fashion Revolution MOOC

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Lesson 1: If you are interested in this course, you probably already know all the content.

If you want to learn the nuts and bolts of industry and materials, this will not happen. You will have to go into technical reports and academic literature to do so. Befriend a librarian at your closest polytechnic library and prepare stimulating snacks, because nobody makes entertaining videos out of those books! This MOOC is an inverse classroom of “learn through your own research” and the few materials provided are really low brow. Every piece of journalism about fast fashion industry will provide as much.

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Lesson 2: This is not a course, it’s an activist training.

The course enlisted gazillions of people and directed their actions to press fast fashion makers. Smart! At the center of that training is that individual behaviour change without awareness raising is less valuable than the other way around. But you cannot advocate against what you yourself are doing, that makes 0 sense! Imagine how seriously you would take somebody lecturing you on factory farming while munching on industrial chicken nuggets…

In general these people are worry much more about labor conditions than about the environmental impact (you could have guessed it by now, as the call to arms is #whomademyclothes and not #whatstheecologicalfootprintofmyclothes), even to the point of questioning boycotting out of fear that this may cause job loss and factory closure. And calling that a long term strategy! If we are to shift the whole industry towards better practices, most of those jobs will have to change so radically that we might as well consider them whole new jobs (hence the old ones will have to disappear). In an actual long term perspective, “keep the jobs” leads us towards stagnation. Think of the coal industry as an example: for much empathy you might feel for the individual workers whose already hard lives would be shook up by job losses, a sober assessment of the industry will show that disappearance of those jobs would be better in long term for both workers and consumers. The same goes for children in Bangladesh sewing sequins to fast fashion garments.

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My Pledge = Keep calm and carry on!

I’ve already outlined my wardrobe strategy as a ladder of steps – (1) use up what you have, (2) replace with pre-loved and second-hand, (3) buy new only categories you don’t find second-hand (in my case, underwear, hosiery and footwear), then do your research and buy well made and ethical garments – and my awareness efforts include this blog and regular community clothes’ swaps. You can read more about our communist fashion events here, here and here.

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How are your wardrobes doing? Do you feel like in need of an polytechnic library or are you informed enough? And on what side of the “boycott fast fashion vs. engage and try to change it” debate are you?

Garment makers and fixers, I salute you

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I could’ve done my “creative and empathetic storytelling through our clothes” in the most normative way: “Oh, look at the exploited garment workers of China-India-Bangladesh-Cambodia”. And that would have been very legitimate. I know enough about their average working conditions as to orient my consumption towards patterns that could either improve their working conditions or put them out of work (in its current fast fashion modality). But these are not the garment workers I think about often. There have been so many media exposés that only cognitive dissonance stands between this point of information saturation and a real fashion revolution. I’ve made my boycotting decisions and moved on.

The garment workers I do think about often are the in-between ones. I think about the EU periphery seamstresses in Lithuania and Romania stitching the “made in EU” labels on garments that have been externalized inside the unified market. I think about those that fall between the abysmal wage/hours/rights ratios of overseas fast fashion workers and the top-of-the-game haute couture artisans (and starry-eyed ecofashion employees (1, 2)). I think about the anonymous seamstresses that the up-and-coming designers and “makers” externalize the sewing to. I think about the grandmas who make everyday miracles at mend-and-repair chain stores (especially the part or running around the city and looking for the most similar zipper or buttons to replace). I think about the fact that your fingers and eyes still suffer, even if you are gold embroidering a one-of-a-kind Valentino gown.

The 1960s cellulose disposable clothing didn’t really revolutionize the industry towards relatively simple and fully mechanized. We have an even more complex garment industry where robots haven’t been able to replace people at most tasks (just think about the fact that sequins and beads is usually an indicator of child labor!).

People doing basic maintenance that the rest of us never learned to do and would chose not to anyways… Going away from the basic “but-I-don’t-have-a-sewing-machine” argument, raise your hand if you think of mending when finding a hole in your sock! Raise the other hand if you know how to darn a sock! It’s not a whole forest of raised hands, unless you ask that to a bunch of quite older ladies. Full disclosure here: my grandma darns my socks, but only the woolen (artisanal) and expensive (Bonne Maison) ones. The cheap little ones just disintegrate on their own…

What I’m saying is:
1. Mass sewing/fixing of garments is not a fun activity neither for your neck, eyes, or mind. (In general there are very few things that work well and maintain maker satisfaction and product quality at mass scale. Marxist alienation, anyone?)
2. Even if we manage to radically improve the worst labor conditions in the garment industry (and we should, obviously!), the new improved low won’t be pleasant either.

So instead of the anonymous empathy exercise, I’m covering the closest social circles first. There is a long line of women that have directly and indirectly influenced my relationships with garments. Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg, only the visible part, but these very-close-to-home circles remind me of how personalized garment production and repair can be. Even in industrial societies and big cities. And how much dexterity, imagination and pure magic goes into garments. Each garment. At every stage of production and repair.

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First, some context. Scarcity (or uniformity, or sheer ugliness) of ready-to-wear garments incentivizes creativity and problem solving. Up until the mid-1990s in Latvia obtaining clothing for the whole family and taking care of it was a demanding duty squarely placed on the shoulders of women. While not as essential as obtaining food and cooking it, a varied set of skills was required to keep everybody warm and presentable enough. So women made their own curtains, crocheted baby booties, bartered for a piece of nice fabric, and knew that fashion as form of self expression was hard work. And if your arms grew from an entirely wrong place for sewing, you could establish a reciprocal relationship with a friend, colleague, or neighbor who could do that for you in exchange for another favor or money. In Soviet Union favors mattered more than money. For a glimpse at Soviet aesthetics, see this Pinterest board.

Specialization is bound to happen in such contexts (hi, Adam Smith!), so everybody knew back then that, if you needed to go beyond the basic darning and fixing or got your hands on an especially nice fabric, the neighbor lady of flat Nº17 or Katya from Accountancy department was the ones to turn to.

Hence due to circumstances beyond my control I have always been surrounded by women making and fixing garments. This is my tribute to them and their superpowers (and a sketch of the networks of favors and barters that characterized the informal Soviet garment market):

Jūlija, my grand-grandmother. Garment superpower: making something out of nothing and dressing her six children with that. For example, I still have a crochet needle she made out of an aluminum spoon. It does the job perfectly and is much more ergonomic than the conventional crochet needles.

Milda, my grandmother. Garment superpower: diplomacy and making useful connections. While crafting is not among her talents (pedagogy and cooking are), she knew better than anybody how to make mutually beneficial arrangements with skilled people and obtain the necessary materials. One of her colleagues, Biruta, was known for her sewing skills, so most of my mother’s and her sister’s early wardrobes were made by her. The little blue blouse remains as evidence. Another of her colleagues, Māra, is a lace-making superwoman. She taught me how to crochet, and, when I started wearing the little blue blouse, we assumed it was her needlework at the front. One of my favorite garment-related episodes is her doubting if she had made those embroideries but then turning it inside out and instantly knowing that “no, it’s not mine, I do it differently”.

Anda, my godmother. Garment superpower: access to fabrics. For many years Anda worked at a Supply base. That meant first-hand access to goods that did not trickle down to the shops and made her a crucial point in my family’s fashion options. All the skills in the world won’t help you if don’t have the fabrics!

Erna, my grandpa’s sister. Superpower: surpassing her origins in style. With no formal training in either art or fashion, Erna was a beautiful and stylish women. She sew in her free time for herself and her friends, mostly out of smuggled Burda magazines, that could be purchased in the black market.

Ginta, my mother. Superpower: rational calculus (and being the most stylish mom, obviously!). Ginta started sewing early, learning the basics at school (gendered Home Economics ftw!) and at home. My grandma had changed the seamstress and now was frequenting Drosma (superpower: living a life of Western aesthetics and entrepreneurship behind the Iron Curtain). The most repeated anecdote about Drosma back then is how she ran a clandestine jeans (very scarce merchandise in USSR!) manufacture from her basement, so you get the idea. Drosma was the one who shared sewing tips and tricks with Ginta and sold Ginta her old overlock. Milda managed to obtain a modern sewing machine.

My mom sew not only for herself and her family (one of her pleasures when we go through late 1980s and early 1990s photos is pointing out all the garments made by her), but also for friends and friends of friends who paid for the pieces and became returning customers. Having a trusted seamstress wasn’t considered a luxury back then, it was the only escape from the uniform (and scarce!) industrially produced garments. Ginta made blouses, skirts, dresses, even wedding dresses. My barbies were the best dressed as time by time they received a little copy of whatever Ginta was sewing! I happily slept through the noise of the sewing machine and dreamed of becoming a fashion designer.

But times change and priorities do, too. Ginta developed a successful career unrelated to garments, her sewing machine got packed away and somewhere in early 2000s most of our clothing became anonymous fast fashion. We still maintain relationship with one magic worker – Elita (superpower: saving garments!). Elita does made-to-order sewing from scratch for her loyal customers and then some side gigs for “new designers” unable to make their own designs, but I wear out her patience by bringing my worn-out-but-beloved garments and hoping that she will be able to save the disintegrating fast fashion piece just one more time. An usually she can. Forget Hermione Granger, this is the real magic!

This was Ginta’s submission for a Burda sewing contest ~1991. Both of us are fully clad in garments made by her.

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The most recent additions to this data base of talent are my friend Liisa who is responsible for both accompanying me during my first steps at the sewing machine and is the author of almost half of my knickers. Another one is the Argentinian lady at my closest fix-and-mend chain shop. She is ready to tell you her whole life, appreciates extravagance, and her smallest granddaughter now wears Marina’s ear headband. I don’t know her name yet but I have a feeling that it won’t take long.

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What are the garment stories in your family? Do you know any people involved in the formal or the informal garment markets? What do they say about their work and the industry as such?

How expensive is an ethical wardrobe? 2017 first half money talk

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My priciest fashion investments of last 6 months: Veja Arcade sneakers, Muroexe Materia boots and 3 pairs of Bonne Maison knee-socks.

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Ethical fashion is expensive. Boom! OK, let’s calibrate that a little bit: newly bought ethical fashion tends to be more expensive than the ridiculously underpriced fast fashion + there are distortions at both ends of the spectrum. On the low side, depending on geography, local artisans might be able to make things for you even cheaper, as you won’t pay the overheads of running a big international conglomerate. On the high end, while couture fashion is mostly Europe-centered and artisan-made stuff (you know that if you follow Emma Watson’s phenomenal success at bringing awareness to ethical fashion via red carpet) that occupies a very slight fraction of the market, the following steps down the fashion ladder (high- and very-high-end prêt-à-porter) tend to care more about brand names and “trends” (whatever that is) than supply chains and labor conditions.

Ethical fashion at the moment is a marginal market where brand-names matter less, yet certainly has its own stars and starlets. And prices. In a world where a beautiful LBD easily costs over 200$ and a discounted winter coat goes over 300$, a suggestion that everybody should pledge to ethical fashion seems very elitist. Ethical fashion activists can run their moth dry about the distorted garment market, investment pieces, buying better and cost-per-wear (me on that, Hannah Theisen from Life + Style + Justice on that), but that doesn’t change the value of a euro.

Apart from just enumerating my wardrobe strategies, I’ve decided to disclose numbers. I have spreadsheets, you know. We are 6 full months into 2017, so I have these data and all the 2016 spending on clothing myself to compare and analyze. Ta-dah! All prices are in euros, the inflation hasn’t been serious, so the values are comparable:

First of all: A lot of money thrown at garments! 2017 is being expensive. I console myself with the clear usefulness of the items and the 2015 data. I don’t have a precise list of what exactly I bought in 2015, but I have the totals: 337.03€ in January-June and 268.13€ in July-December. Apparently, I’ve been in a similar spending situation before…

I won’t do an exhaustive run through all the purchases but here are my thoughts on the overall pattern and several caveats on how my wardrobe is very privileged:

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Observation 1: I comply with my ideal consumption pattern. Going with my ladder of preference, I’m actively using up and obtaining pre-loved items for free. This implies that the purchases – when made – are well researched, ethical (there are still some material and supply chain issues there, I know!) and rather pricey.

Observation 2: Things wear out. I did a great job in spacing my purchases and spending money on apparel every second month in 2016, but that just hasn’t been possible in 2017 (nor in 2015). My explanation is the life cycles of garments: I shred my sneakers mercilessly, tights break and underwear wears out. I’ll be able to confirm this hypothesis by the end of 2018.

Observation 3: I don’t buy second-hand, it usually comes for free. I have two major sources: my mom and swaps. That’s why I’ve made only two second-hand purchases in last 18 months!

Observation 4: I need better underwear (bras! have you ever seen an ethical sturdy underwire bra instead of all those whimsical bralettes?) and, especially, hosiery sources. I’m fine with their “made in” tags, but materials and supply chains are rather dubious. Will look into it!

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Caveat 1: My repair costs are externalized. There should be around 100€ per year in repair costs that so far my mom has been covering. Our seamstress is in Riga, we usually go together, the whole money relationship is a bit weird when I’m in Riga. I’m thinking about this… + there is the occasional gift from her!

Caveat 2: My hand-me-downs are exceptional! They come from my mom and swaps, and they come in heaps! I have been very picky lately, overcoming the scarcity mindset and planning what to look for… I buy all the auxiliaries – underwear, hosiery, footwear, weather gear – but the last serious one seems to have been the ¡No pasarán! tshirt from Red Federica Montseny crowdfunding… in 2015.

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What will July-December bring? Hopefully, less expenses in this segment of my spending. But also SiiL knickers and – finally! – a pair of vegan Birkenstocks if the gods of stocks/sizes will stand by me (after 3 years of intensive wear, the Crocs sandals broke down beyond repair). I’ll tell you in December.

#30wears and 18 months of counting

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Only 5 items have passed a 75 wear threshold in last 18 months: the gray cardigan (80 wears), Hummel jacket (79) and all three pairs of Veja Taua model I’ve owned (92, 154 & 101).

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I sneered at #30wears when I first read about Livia Firth’s initiative. Hah, where’s the merit in that? 30 miserable wears! I do more in few months, let alone throughout the lifetime of a garment… and then I went through my spreadsheets and summed all the wears. You win, Livia!

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#30wears is (yeah, another one!) ethical fashion initiative, in this case reminding that the simplest, cheapest and greenest way to make our wardrobes more ethical is to wear what we already own for as many times as we can. Basic, right? The number is rather arbitrary, but makes an intuitive sense of being a significant number of wears… and less scary than the magic 50 or 100.

It might be the imprint of a (post)Soviet scarcity mentality when hoarding made all the sense in the world, but I find absurd having something just for one wear. In my head that’s some kind of perverse consumption failure. And, no, I haven’t owned an evening gown or a wedding dress. No, I don’t do much red carpet, so repeating outfits is OK. Also, nobody notices what I’m wearing.

Intrigued by a new quantitative threshold (mine is 10 wears per season), the spreadsheet lover in me brought together the numbers for last 18 months. I’ve been counting them for this long, so that’s the available time horizon.

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I went through my numbers, and I am not impressed. They range from 0 (May swap finds waiting October) to 154 (Veja Taua Bahia), and have clear patterns. So these are the lessons learned if you want to wear your items more (and get better cost-per-wear, too!):

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It’s a numbers game. The least items you have, the more likely you are to wear each item. Obvious, yes, but I had an already heavily reduced wardrobe during this period, and less than a third of the garments I’ve worn have reached the magic 30.
Step 1: Reduce the total number of items in your wardrobe!

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This one follows the previous: the longer you have something, the more opportunities it has to be worn. There is a trick there, though. First, some exceptional items – special occasion garments, family vintage, sentimental stuff – work against this rule. If you are keeping something for its sentimental value, admit it and treat it differently. But only after really inquiring with your heart and all the family ghosts. The other mental hurdle is the well known “I’ll wear it someday”. Na-ah, if you are not wearing it now or waiting eagerly for seasons to change so that you could wear it, let it go.
Step 2: Keep only those items that you wear! If even a #30wears challenge can’t make you wear it, find another home for that party dress you wore once.

The same denim jacket from 2003 till 2017. 45 wears in last 18 months, but a scary unknown number since our paths crossed in 2003.

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Very few tears and unravellings are unmendable. Time is your ally in upping the number of wears, and so is mending as it will keep your favorites with you. If you have a “fix” pile that just silently dies in some bag for months, do yourself a favor and get rid of it!
Step 3: Find a seamstress you trust and can afford (or do it yourself if you have those kind of fingers!), and get your stuff fixed.

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Seasonality! Contingent on your location, but throughout-the-year versatility really pushes up the number of wears. Think jeans. Think t-shirts with and without layers. In my case, think necklaces.
Step 4: Depending on your climate, think about ways how you could carry the same garment throughout (most of) the year!

The same Dana Zēberga necklace in February, March, May and June.

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Function, function, function! If you have only one thing for one use and you need it often, you have a winner! I have one winter hat – a hand-me-down from C – and that’s easy, I have six winter scarves and struggle with indecision. And they are all heirlooms, too. Harsh weather garments – bikinis and winter coats – can fall into this category if you manage stick to having only one. ONE IS ALL YOU NEED HERE! (Underwear and hosiery are clearly exceptions to this and the next rule.)
Step 5: Question the function of each garment! Try to bring it down to one per function.

And this is only a half of the scarf-situation.

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Duplicates are bullshit. I’ve done several attempts at this in my life and it has always been a massive fail. Even when two not identical garments have exactly the same function, they are not helping anybody, unless your lifestyle requires it (think uniforms!). There is clearly one item too many between my two pairs of informal short shorts (going at 30 and 13 wears so far).
Step 6: Rethink your duplicates! Chances are that you prefer one to other, so keep your favorite.

My problem here is that the patterned ones are much more comfy but even I’m not ready for this kind of pattern clash. Ugh!

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Verdict: Wear counting is a fun thing to do! It opens your eyes to the very short life of our garments and to how rarely we actually wear stuff. A thought experiment: a garment you machine wash after every use (keep in mind that very few garments need this!) and wear seasonally could get around 25 wears per year (52/2) while a garment worn year-round on every third day = 365/3.
However, counting and the slows progress of numbers will drive you crazy if you start with a very ample wardrobe. My suggestion is a Marie Kondo purge of everything not fitting (the body or the lifestyle) or sparking joy, followed by counting. Spreadsheets don’t lie but they need room to do their magic!

Heirlooms in the age of fast fashion: Do they still make any?

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I’ll be talking about family stuff, so here you have photos from the time my mom was participating in a sewing contest of Burda Moden; it’s very early 1990s and I’m the small person there. I definitely had the most stylish mom. Look at those earrings!

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Most of my garments won’t last. Many of them are poor quality fast fashion that I still pick up as hand-me-downs and swaps. And, due to my excel-driven wardrobe pruning decisions (i.e. unwillingly worn items have to go), my most loved items are worn to shreds and then some. Yes, my seamstress is used to me bringing in worn out jersey garments and pleading for a fix! Also, I’m not very careful with my stuff in general. Fragile and delicate is not really my cup of tea.

An unintended consequence that emerges from this combination of cheap, mass produced and low quality clothing and me cultivating a “here and now” wardrobe approach is lack of heirlooms. I use the notion of “heirloom” in a rather lax manner here, we don’t have much jewelry to pass. But apparently not much quality vintage either. A change in criteria in family hasn’t helped. Unless somebody is hiding stuff (I suspect that my aunt is!), the most interesting garments were cleaned out from family closets some 15 years ago when it became clear that the Soviet (and Post-soviet) need of saving things for a rainy day is gone forever. I did wear some of my grandma’s half-slips as skirt for a while (hey! it was 2003, teen magazines told me it was OK) but that was pretty much it.

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I’m currently holding on to few items of family vintage, mostly accessories. Those seem to adjust better to the passing of time and wear out less:

Grandpa’s ducky tie and rainbow cufflinks. I stole several grandpa’s ties when I was in my teens (and wore them! before Avrile Lavigne did), this is the only one left due to it’s novelty print. The rest of them were geometrical 70s stuff in dirty colors. I know nothing about the history of these accessories but keep fantasizing about the perfect white shirt and full skirt to wear them with. Some day…

The Justina wristwatch, from the other side of the little family I’ve built with C. Having understood the use of a watch during travel and meetings, in 2012 I wanted a wristwatch. It just happened that C was going though his old stuff in his childhood bedroom and showing me an array of wristwatches he had worn. So I got one to wear and take care of, one that he wore before his first communion, more than 20 years ago. Justina is a bit capricious (loves the touch of a watchmaker!) but feels just right.

Grandma’s winter scarves. Again, I snatched these some 15 years ago and wore as scarves throughout the Latvian winters of my teenage years. Even though I’ve been wearing other highly valued scarves lately (see below), these are back in Riga waiting for their renaissance.

The blue embroidered peasant blouse. I know that a colleague of my grandma made this for my mother and her sister. I don’t know which one of them wore it mostly and when. It’s a puffy and very cute garment, though shows sweat and adds a lot of volume to shoulders. Last week for the first time I started doubting about holding on to it. But then I wore it and this little blouse is one of those garments that feels better than it looks. It stays in the drawer!

The beaded bag. It is a set of three bags, one big and two small ones. As made for a mother with two daughters, my grandma and her two girls. I “inherited” one of the small ones (see the 1991 pic) and my cousin had the other one (I hope she still has it!)… until I somehow got my hands onto the big one. It’s heavily worn, and velvet + glued-on plastic beads are not the most lasting materials. This is the real vintage and is not going anywhere.

My mom’s blue dress. She made it herself. It was a maxi then, moved so magically and smelled of her. This is my first summer with it, and it feels magical to wear it.

Red wooden beads. I played with them as a child, making necklaces and taking them apart again (and letting somebody else to pick up all those that fell on the floor).

Silver Namēja wristband. This is the real heirloom from my mom.

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And then there are things that are not strictly heirlooms yet but I can see the potential:

Two relatively recent additions to my winter scarf collection are these wool wonders, a Pavlovo Posad shawl and a Cien Colores shawl. My favorite trivia question that everybody fails is asking people to guess where the Cien Colores comes from. Nobody suggests Cáceres, ever. Russians have been very successful in co-opting these kind of patterns in the popular imagination of Europeans.

The weirdest earrings capsule: chocolates and post-modern Lenin (see photo above) are creations of Latvian artists and gifts from my aunt. The virgin earrings – somebody told that that’s the typical depiction of Our Lady of Lourdes – are almost as funny as the Lenin earrings. I found them in a run-down mall of Fuerteventura in January 2008. In a normal accessory store, not one specializing in Catholic paraphernalia. I had newly pierced ears, and found the design + circumstances so ironic that I had to have them. A great conversation starter in inland Spain, too. It still puzzles me that somebody would wear such thing seriously.

The other necklace was a gift from my kindergarten friend Jēkabs when we were still in the kindergarten. He also had a very stylish mom and we were below 7, so I assume that I have to thank her for this very cool piece.

Wooden jewelry from Dana Zēberga, the sad bear earrings (above) and the “Russian” set. I love the “Russian” set very much and hope to keep it forever. Unless I lose it, my chances are good. I’ve had it for three or so years now, and no signs of wearing out.

Swedish army field jacket. Bought second-hand in a military/fishing shop in Riga in summer 2003 preparing for a military-themed summer camp (weird, I know! I did two of these at the ripe ages of 15 and 16, go figure). When I brought it home, together with matching pants and army boots, my haul smelled so bad that my grandma ordered a shortcut from doorstep to washing machine. Those pants and boots have long since disappeared from my wardrobe, but this jacket is probably the most robust garment I have.

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Throughout this post I kept thinking about what makes things potential heirlooms. They have to be unique or at least rare. They have to be aesthetically appealing. The have to be somewhat sturdy and time-resistant.

It’s weird, but I don’t think that my most exuberant adornments – my headbands – will survive for long enough. I’m down to three and… they just don’t feel special enough, despite being carefully crafted by ban.do girls (before they switched to whatever bs it is they are doing now) and Kaley from Little Honey Pies (also before the permanent vacation mood).
The wooden beads I used to play with 25 years ago and my grandpa’s ducky tie will last longer. That’s called selection bias.

Come, fund us! + #whatiwore23

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We – me and Liisa – have reached the moment where our ambition of what can be done around topics of fast fashion and greener wardrobes bumps into financial obstacles. The logical next step after three successful swaps (1, 2, 3) seemed to shift the focus towards the reasons for all this. No worries, the swaps will continue! They are the hands-on education that other ways of doing wardrobes and fashion are possible. But let’s have a hot July night with an ice-cold vermouth and even more chilling documentary about the evils of fast fashion… our selected feature for that is The True Cost.

And this is where the money comes in! To make it all legal and hold an official “community screening” we need to pay 130$ to the distributor, and that’s a bit too much than the usual “I’ll make tortilla, you make hummus” cost sharing we have been doing so far.

Also, we have been talking how something small but material would be nice for our friends and un-customers to have after the events and to promote fast fashion résistance around the town (or world, wink-wink!). Business cards are dead, long live stickers! Yet we are finicky customers and instead of buying bunch of tape and drawing them (ha!), we want them nice, round and professionally printed. The smallest order is a roll of 490 stickers and that’s 180€.

So we have made a crowdfunding page to ask our friends if they can chip in. Those living in Barcelona or nearby will be showered with love, vermouth and stickers during the movie night, while those present only in spirit shall receive a love letter in their mail, filled with stickers and thank-you notes. It doesn’t matter if you have benefited from previous Un Armario Verde clothes’ exchanges or just love the idea of a greener wardrobe, every euro helps! So does sharing, following, following some more, reading, commenting and greening your wardrobes. Baby steps towards the slow fashion revolution!

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Oh, I also wore some garments this week. First in Barcelona, then on a plane where the temperature kept shifting from very hot to freezing and then in so-far-very-pleasant-and-dry Riga.

Finding a spot to do the photos in my childhood home (and using the window sill as a makeshift tripod) was a whole additional creative exercise.

May Swap recap

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Last Saturday was the highlight of my spring. Our third Clothes’ Swap! It seems preposterous that those events bring me so much joy (more than travel) and meaning (more than the thesis), but that’s how it is. I was doing snack-shopping, cooking, going through check-lists not to forget garbage bags, water filter and lemon slices, packing things and carrying them back and forth… And it felt amazing! It’s a quintuple win of happy organizers, happy un-customers, happy Ateneu, increased supply to Banc Expropriat’s Tienda Gratis and decreased supply to textile charities and landfill. So this will clearly continue, and we’ll see you in September to swap again. Meanwhile, here you have suggestions of how to organize one on your own!

Some of our happy un-customers with their finds.

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On top of my previous observations about our Clothes’ Swaps, here are few additional ones:

1. On abundance. This is not new, but strikes me harder each time. We are drowning in textiles! They just keep coming, and I can’t see the end of this. Not much more to add here… These were the leftovers:

2. On the state of stuff. I did already write about this one after January’s Swap, but it just keeps surprising me. There are stains, holes, piling, shaplesness, wacky seams… Yet the Swaps might be the best option for these damaged garments. My heart breaks every time I see a pile of clothing spread on the sidewalk, usually after somebody has either broken a charity container or explored a bag of garments that somebody else had left by the garbage cans (probably feeling ambivalent about sending them right to the landfill and too ignorant or too lazy to take it to the charity containers). It is such magic (a very black one!) how things turn from “perfectly OK” to “garbage” just by changing location. It was “yours” at home, then “somebody could still wear it” when you deposited it in the orange container, then an actual somebody dived in that container, went through the content, left the unwanted pieces on the sidewalk, and now it’s “yuck, don’t touch the garbage”.

I keep fantasizing about a radical “reclaim the garments” initiative that would pick up all that “garbage” from streets and turn it into “recovered/upcycled textiles”. (For a moment ignoring the fact that, unfortunately, most of those extra thin cotton/elastane mix garments can be downcycled to rags only.) This would require some serious infrastructure for picking them up, sorting, washing and mending (or cutting) but it feels amazing in my imagination. And then accompanying it by a sewing workshop to mend and construct new garments. Oh, well, maybe someday…

3. On doubts. My feeling after three swaps is that the decisions to let go are harder than decisions to incorporate. Makes sense: “mine is mine” feels good and acquisition gives instant gratification. During the swap we actually encourage people to adopt things and bring them back next time if those garments are not working for them (and that has happened).

I have recently developed two strategies to override those mental hang-ups, one to fight the outgoing blues and one to resist the urge to adopt garments. For the bye-bye garments I push myself to admit that if I have doubts about an item that I own, I most probably need to get rid of it. Knowing my strong status-quo bias, it makes sense to assume that the little annoying “no, no, don’t give away the precious” voice in my head is just a mind trick. So I do my best to override that voice by turning it on its head: I have 0 doubts about the real heroes of my wardrobe, hence doubts mean that it’s not a top-of-the-pops garment.

It is hard, though, sometimes. Especially if it’s an old comrade in arms. I have always found it funny that KonMari strategy entails taking each thing in hands. Rather counterproductive… Touch activates the emotional attachment! I got choked when writing the post on my departures for this swap and those garments weren’t even anywhere close. But it all went well on Saturday! I saw 3 of the 6 items I brought finding new wardrobes, and others continue their journeys at Banc Expropriat.

For the incomings, I trust the classic: a shopping list! I have a latent wish list in my wardrobe spreadsheet and I revise that before each swap (and I revise it several times, as you can see at the end of the departures post). My list for this time was as follows:

Sandals
Raincoat
Dark leggings
A simple bodycon dress
Summer jersey Empire dress
A winter layer (a short sweater or caridgan)

Yes, those are very specific but I know the exact feeling and function I am looking for. So here is what I got: a ramie/cotton cardigan from Julie and a jersey mini skirt (exactly the same H&M model I used to have in black between 2011 and 2013). They are not what I was looking for – the hemline of the cardigan is too long (and shortening this design would be stupid) and the skirt is only half of a full bodycon – but they respond to the function I was looking for. So you will see those two a lot starting from October.

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As it is such long time from now till September, we might be able to squeeze another activity in-between. A movie night! How about a chilling documentary on a hot July night? That’s what we are thinking about… We’ll keep you posted!

Get to know your fibers (and stop cutting the tags)

Luīze 2 Comments

Without any previous planning last week became the fiber week in my little queendom. I finished Sandy Black’s Eco-chic: The Fashion Paradox which is a dated and sometimes confusing book (and for unknown reasons contains too much love for M&S chain), yet it has a little chart on fiber types which sparked my interest. So I spent half-day on Saturday (while watching code run in R) exploring the internets to organize the existing types of textile fibers in my head. And then I found that also Lucy Siegle at Guardian has been thinking about fibers…

I am far from being confident enough about it to make a complete overview, but I suggest these three blog posts at Eco Fashion Sewing to start with: (1) natural fibers, (2) regenerated fibers, and (3) synthetic fibres (those are the basic categories that author uses, Wikipedia does it differently, so go figure). I will share, however, the most fun pop quiz items I learnt and then a brief “get to know your fibers” exercise I did with my spring capsule.

The Wiki classification of fibers

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My current favorite random facts about fibers are the following (it’s internet, though, so I just cross my fingers that this is truth):
– Dog hair was the main fiber spun on the Northern American continent before the Spaniards introduced sheep.
– People have been making smooth, silky textiles (for kimonos, for example) from banana fibers for centuries.
– Long time ago somebody diving in Mediterranean saw the long silky filaments secreted by a gland in the foot of pen shells and decided to make textiles out of that. Apparently, with amazing result and great success.

And an extra bonus points for wry humor to Wikipedia for including asbestos cloth as “fire-resistant, light weight, carcinogenic” natural fiber.

My first way of expressing rage to fast fashion while I was still buying it (yeah, cognitive dissonance for the win!) was to cut off all the tags, hence symbolically making the garment anonymous. And size-less which helped with my mild case of body dysmorphia. I know that many other people cut the tags, be it for reasons similar to mine or comfort due to the fact that sometimes tags seem to be strategically made and placed to cause the most discomfort to the wearer. And Black suggests that many producers remove their tags when passing the garments to outlets. So many items that you can obtain pre-loved (or deadstocked) won’t have the tag information.

Or you just wear your things for so long that they lose all the info.

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As I develop more curiosity about the production (and recycling) side of the garments, tags gain importance. I already talked about care information that tags contain, and this week I’m on to fibers. So I gathered my spring capsule and took a look at fibres I’m wearing this season. That was a disheartening (so much synthetics and weird mixes!) but also surprising process. This is what I found:

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Pure synthetics:

No surprises and petroleum-based, but at least these things *could* be fully (and ad infinitum) recycled into similar garments when their life is over.

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Obvious synthetic mixes:

OK, so my stretchy leggings have elastane added to make them stretchy, but still mostly a nicer-feeling material than all-out plastic. 0 surprises. Unrecyclable.

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Unexpected synthetic mixes:

These ones do not have enough elastane to really stretch, so it’s still a mystery to me. My guess is that this additional micro-stretch might help people to get in the garments, yet it is not the case for all of this things. The 1% dress and 3% skirt certainly have no give to them. So I have no idea… Also, unrecyclable.

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A fiber mix I now understand:

So they wanted to make a linen-feeling dress that would crumple less. Viscose to rescue! Both materials are biodegradable on their own, though I’m not sure about the mix… Should be, in principle.

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Random mixes I don’t yet understand:

I really don’t know what’s going on here and why would somebody do this. I’ll let you know if that day comes. Also, “keep away from fire” warnings do not help to inspire confidence in the material

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Pure regenerated/semi-synthetic:

I’m still trying to grasp the eco potential of the regenerated fibers. They seem a bit like Batman Two-Face: the primary source is plant based but then it goes through a whole lot of processing. However, that processing could be less damaging than the conventional cotton industry, so… I’m still reading up on them. What I know for sure is that the touch is very nice, and certainly wins in summer.

The funny part of this exercise came with the little H&M shorts, part of their Conscious Denim line (it’s a hand-me-down, don’t worry!). The *conscious* trick is that it is not denim, at least not in the common “a firm durable twilled usually cotton fabric” way. Hi there, lyocell!

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Pure naturals:

Despite the supposed ubiquity of cotton, there was only one 100% conventional cotton item in my lot. And manufacturers have thought it appropriate to point it out that trimmings are not necessarily cotton. Just to be on the safe side.

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Pure organic naturals:

Yes, from all the heap – and I think that from all the outerwear in general (only my knickers is an exception) – this is the only organic garment. My commitment to adopting pre-loved garments basically precludes buying, and I’m not in social circles where people give away organic cotton items, not yet.

However, the organic credentials of this t-shirt on top of the feminist message are due to the creators of the crowdfunding who did the extra research when sourcing their basic t-shirts for silkscreening. Thank you so much for that, Red Federica Montseny!

We shall swap again

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Get out your agendas and mark in fluorescent May 27! Here in Gràcia we shall spend that Saturday swapping clothing, having drinks, snacks and overall good time. Check in as “going” in the Facebook event, so we can count with your presence, and here you can read all about how we swap and why.

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To give you an idea of what kind of things will leave my wardrobe (and invite you to prune yours before that Saturday), here is a preliminary list of garments that I’ll say bye-bye to during this swap:

1. My red denim jacket. This is one of the oldest garments in my wardrobe, but now, after 15 years or so, it’s time to let it go. There’s nothing wrong with it, apart from some wear and serious fade, but it just does not feel right anymore. I see it as the perfect base for becoming an embroidered statement jacket, so much better than anything hanging on the racks of fast fashion places this spring. Wait, let me think about it…

2. Zara blazer. A hand-me-down from my mom and made in Spain, hence from the days when Amancio hadn’t shipped abroad all their production. It’s summery and nicely shaped (it had shoulder pads originally, but I paid people to get those out), but throughout the last few years I’ve had to *make* myself wear it. When I wear it, I like it… but only when there are no other options around. I guess the problem is that I like the idea of blazers but not the actual garments. Also, I have wide enough shoulders that need little emphasizing, they are prominent enough, thank you very much.

3. Natura linen dress. A hand-me-down from Julie that I had the lining taken out (somebody in fast fashion industry though that it was a good idea to put synthetic lining to a linen dress, the seamstress I brought it to was gobsmacked). It’s the anti-bodycon and I’ve worn it a lot in the eight months I’ve had it for, but feels rather worn-out lately. Plus it’s a bit too short for riding a bicycle and shows sweat.

4. Black blouse. A very versatile garment (on the formal side, though) I’ve worn a little over many years I’ve had it (more than 10), however it somehow never sat very well. My latest adjustment is to wear it with high-waist skirts, but it still lags behind other items in my capsule. So I hope somebody will adopt it and give this little blouse all the love it deserves!

5. Wrap skirt. Another very old item. My mom wore it for years and I’ve had it for even more afterwards. Nowadays it feels too long. So long that it has been bitten by bicycle breaks several times, so not fit for my lifestyle.

6. & 7. My two metallic headbands. Both are gifts, one from Marina and other from C’s mom, and I like them aesthetically. Yet they hurt my head more than I can endure. Well, it’s a big head I’ve got. Hope they find new owners with better-sized heads.

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I have to admit that listing them like this make me sentimental and creates an urge to hold onto them. Yet I know better. If they’ve been marked as “outgoing” in my spreadsheets (all of them form part of my spring capsule), that means that there is some aspect that is not working. And I shall let them go, let them go.

Instead of focusing on the outgoing, I have my little wishlist for the swap. While swapping is like thrift shopping in the sense that you never know what you will end up with, it helps to know which broad categories you are really interested in (try these wardrobe vision-building strategies for that!). So I will keep my eyes peeled for: (a) sandals (unlikely, but hey! a girl can hope), (b) breezy and nice-to-touch shirt with prolonged hemline (similar to this or this), (c) nice wool sweater, Seven Sisters style.

See you on May 27 and happy wardrobe editing until then!

Breathe deeply, it’s clean enough

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I keep observing – and dealing with – several mental hang-ups that hamper access to a more sustainable living. The great taboo of cleanliness is at work! It’s very natural as notions of purity and cleanliness lie at the very core of cultures, separating good and bad, beneficial and pernicious. Even more – and this coming from a sociologist – there is a clear evolutionary need to distinguish rotten and smelly as bad (i.e. inedible; cheese came into being long time after) for our survival.

However, industrial societies have brought the hygiene revolution a tad too far. With the advances of chemical industry, household appliances and the new abundance of garments, it’s all too easy to become overzealous with cleanliness.

Apart from health and overall environmental implications (look those up anyway, please!), I want to bring your attention to two areas where twisted notions of hygiene affect the sustainability of our wardrobes: care of garments and ways to obtain them.

So, first of all, when it comes to basic care issues, reconsider your laundry habits:

When I’m taking off a garment after wear, I check it for smell and stains. If the item can do with just airing, back to the wardrobe it goes. I know this is a hard one to overcome, especially if you come from a “you’ve worn it, put it in the laundry basket” household. For inspiration (and courage!) I suggest you read up care advice from top denim brands. Despite the fact that those are intensely worn and constantly crotch rubbing garments, Nudie Jeans’ advice is “six or more months of daily wear before washing“. Boom!

If you have items that need washing machine to get back into shape after one wear, I suggest you get rid of them. One wear per wash is a very bad deal for anything except underwear and socks.

Work around the care labels. Read them but see if you can hack them. For example, “dry cleaning only” is usually a hoax. The only thing they’ll do is break your buttons, take your money and, depending on method used, might flush down the drain all kinds of nasties meanwhile. If the item is especially delicate (or you need it for tomorrow), wash it by hand, either in the sink or bring it with you in the shower.

Wash with cold water! Unless you have exceptionally dirty clothes (hardcore food stains, mechanical oils, etc.), cold water will do. Upgrade to 30ºC if very dirty and save 40ºC for special occasions. In our household 60ºC is for our grimy tea towels and 90ºC only for very persistent stain treatment (which happens maybe once a year and involves bleach, yuck!).

Working with these low temperatures I’ve realized that separating colors is a laundry superstition. In my washing machine everybody goes in together and only very occasionally the whites come out baby blue or light pink. Learn to recognize possible dye leakers and separate them. Letting go of this separation makes sure you always have full loads.

Upgrade your detergent to a better alternative (inquire with knowledgeable people, like these) and consider getting rid of the fabric softener, it’s offensively smelling black magic anyways.

Line dry if possible. Depends on your dwelling and on your household composition, of course. We are very lucky to be able to line dry on the roof of our apartment building. I feel that only extra laundry needs, like having small children, justify investing in a dryer. I’m biased,  because that’s not a typical household appliance neither in Latvia nor in Spain. The only ones I’ve ever used have been in laundromats when I lived in Brussels. And I don’t miss them.

Rethink if ironing is an activity you want to invest in. I iron only my handkerchiefs. And only in winter, the handkerchief season.

OK, so you’ve let go of many things your mom taught you about laundry. Now we can tackle an even trickier one: the great secondhand prejudice. Making your own stuff last for years and obtaining clothing second hand can be linked with the purity taboo, specially if you find yourself among people that sneer at pre-worn garments.

My sensation is that fear of poverty tends to be at the bottom of the second-hand aversion, much more prevalent among people that have experienced scarcity (hello, Eastern Europe of 1990s!). Seems that the key for embracing second hand is not having fear of being perceived as poor and abandoning the idea of new as intrinsically better.

(A toxicity side note about newness: when dealing with fast fashion, you are much better off with pre-used and pre-washed items that have lost some of possible toxicity of pesticides and dyes that garment might have had when fresh off the shelf, provided that the re-seller hasn’t sprayed it with any new crap. Community swapping is a way to avoid this hazard.)

If the ones mocking your pre-loved outfits are other people, f*ck them. Try, at least. Ignoring what (significant) others say is very hard, I know. However, in this case you have your Values by your side. The next time your grandma asks if you are really so poor as to wear other people’s stuff, let that comment fly over your head knowing that goddesses of sustainability are by your side. I’m sure you are already ignoring other similarly well intentioned but off mark advice. So let go of this one as well.

If the cockroaches are in your own head (we all have those, relax), it might help to think about all the other things in life you share with people. This exercise might be triggering for some, but most (more or less) neurotypicals should have no problem admitting that we share tableware with strangers at restaurants we frequent. We go to hotels and sleep in bed linen many other people have slept before. We share soap and hand towels (and other personal care items depending on household) with partners and family. The logic we routinely apply is that things become as new after a good wash. If you have a hygiene-based aversion to second hand garments, I suggest two things:

First, calm down. As with all subtractions, this is a friendly invitation to review and question certain aspects of your everyday life. However, sometimes it makes sense to keep things the same after that critical examination. And that’s fine. You’ll just know that your wardrobe detox strategy shall be one of replacing with sustainably made new things. It takes google time and money, but it surely doable. As I’ve explained before, for me it makes more sense to buy my underwear, hosiery and footwear new. But here you have an example of how underwear does not have to be bought new.

Second, consider the gradient formed by different strategies of obtaining pre-worn garments. The true thrift shop with certain levels of mess, tackiness and that particular smell is the most hardcore way of incorporating second hand items in your wardrobe. Depending on your personality and mood, it can be an exciting treasure hunt or an exhausting nightmare, especially if you are looking for something very specific. A very basic notion for for thrifting is looking for broad categories (“a full skirt”, “a dress for my cousin’s wedding”) instead of a something exactly as you have imagined. And always keeping your eyes open for unexpected gems. I did a lot of thrifting in my adolescence, but that was stopped first by my incursion into fast fashion browsing habit and then by change in acquisition dynamics via hand-me-downs and swaps. But that’s still the kind of fashion browsing I could get behind.

A more pleasant second hand experience can be consignment stores and curated vintage places, but you’ll pay for the selection work done for you. Usually these places are much smaller and tailored according to curator’s taste. So you might find a shop that’s a match made in heaven for your style, but don’t hold your breath for that!

If your aversion comes from the fact that second hand garments have spent unknown time in containers, trucks and warehouses, and you have no idea where they are coming from… clothes’ swaps could be your thing! Depending on how they are done, those could be events with things from relative strangers, but you’ll be sure that the garment came directly from their homes. So no mystery locations and smells to get rid of. I don’t even wash the things I adopt at swaps, I just wear them and they become mine. Without infrastructure, transportation or money. Pure magic!

If strangers make you squeamish, organize an intimate swap with people you know. Make a party out of that or just casually ask if your friends have stuff they are not wearing (or volunteer to assist them with a wardrobe revision).

The lowest stress option on the pre-worn gradient is shopping your own wardrobe and wearing your stuff. Many times. As long as it makes sense for you. This is why I do the strictly controlled spreadsheet thing: it shows me what’s working for my current lifestyle and what has to go. Those “not for me, not now” pieces then return to the circular fashion economy via my friends and community, and keep wearing and re-wearing my wardrobe heroes.

The #30wears hashtag is going around promoting this exact idea. Thirty seems a rather low threshold for me. Just during the 3.5 months of last winter my trench got 50 wears… I wish there was some mechanism in our apparel counting wears. I’m sure that some of my garments have seen several hundred wears.

Persuasion or #fuckfastfashion, but gently

Luīze Leave a Comment

Liisa threw a post idea at me the other day: “How can we – gently and lovingly – convince our friends and family that fast fashion is an aberration? How can we respond to some of the most common arguments people use to shield themselves from thinking about the conditions their garments are made in?”

The idea is an excellent one, especially as adoption of more sustainable fashion practices (very similarly than becoming a vegan) leads you to exclude certain groups of products from your consciousness. Your wardrobe is build as if the big cheap retailers would not exist, and you get shocked every time you hear that somebody still goes there. This trick our minds play with us leads to less capacity for empathy for those who still continue with *the habit*.

Empathy is key in messaging, because the substance of all our “fuck fast fashion” speeches is no other than dividing garments in “good” and “bad”, and telling people that by purchasing “bad” garments they are directly responsible for oppressing people and destroying ecosystems. Nobody wants to be part of that club, so denial, defensiveness and anger are only natural reactions.

So both with veganism and sustainable fashion, unless people are really trying to provoke me (I wish I’d received a euro every time I’ve heard a variation of “what about the pain that carrots feel?”), I adopt the “every step counts” approach and never tire of celebrating the smallest changes that people are willing to make.

However, there are some common illusions that people use to shield themselves from the inconvenient truth of fast fashion. Be gentle and firm when addressing these, imagine you are unraveling a knit: you have to be careful during the process, but this stuff’s gotta go.

A: Fast fashion as employer. Sounds like something along the lines of “but these people are happy when the bad garment industry jobs come, they would be even more miserable without them”.

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The fallacy is assuming that if it could be worse, it cannot be better. Also, unfortunately the fact that people making fast fashion garments in most cases are far away from the consumers reduces our empathy. In many cases labor, social justice and feminist activists would fight for similar issues at home but do not see the links with struggles thousands of kilometers away. There are exceptions, of course, but the geographical divide is clear. In Spain – the birthplace of the Amancio’s empire – Zara started by relying on Galician seamstresses, but then the price squeeze came, and now time by time we get TV segments lamenting death of the industry as all production jobs have been moved overseas. However, rarely it gets connected with “be ready to pay more if you want the industry back”.
The rawest point that unravels this falacy is that current garment workers do not envision happy future in the garment industry for their children, instead they face alienation from the final product that they are creating and hope that their daughters will have much better jobs. Being in favor of smaller but local garment industries has to do with less carbon footprint, but it is easy to imagine a better garment industry both in Cambodia and back in Galicia. But not at the actual rock bottom price point. And that leads us to the second fast fashion illusion…

B: Fast fashion as a cheap option. “But I’m poor/looking for the best deal, the price is very important to me, that’s why I go to fast fashion places”.

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Two issues are at the root of this reasoning. First, we have learned that cheap garments are possible, and the assumption that follows is that they *should* be cheap. That is not true. For most of clothing’s history garments were scarce and very expensive. Everybody had very few items, and those were mended, upcycled and worn to threads. The abundance we live in is very recent and has clearly diminished the value of each garment. And the same logic has worked the other way around: pressure for cheap garments have propelled use of worse materials and worse stitching. So, on one hand, people want cheap stuff. On the other, they know that the cheap stuff won’t last, and are ready to buy another one very soon.
Second issue are hidden (i.e. unpaid) costs. As with other industries that rely heavily on a global production chain, many negative environmental and social impacts of garment industry go uncounted and unpunished. Due to strategic placement of operations, they are likely to pollute in places with lax environmental regulation and bully labor union activists in places where governments prefer foreign investment to organized labor force. This is a major trick for making the final garment cheaper: you just move your production to more savage capitalism and avoid Western regulations.

C: Fast fashion as as easy and ubiquitous. “I’m busy and need a pair of flats now!”.

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Garments are not drinking water (or potatoes, if you are Eastern European). There are very few real clothing emergencies, i.e. you have only one bra and the fastening broke. Or it’s -30ºC and you have no garment that would cover your legs. I doubt that any of you, my friends, have been in a real emergency of that kind.
Our fake emergencies tend to be more along the lines of “I cannot wear this dress to this wedding, I already wore it last year to common friends’ wedding” or “this purse is several tones off from the shoe color”. Meh. Nobody cares, believe me. Not even if you’re the bride.
These fake emergencies stem either from the ubiquity of fashion and meaning we assign to garments (“I need new stuff for this event”) or bad past decisions (“these shoes are killing me, let’s pop in H&M for a 5€ pair of whatever”). The alternative is pruning, planning and knowing your stuff intimately. And letting go of many preconceived reasons for shopping.

D: Fast fashion as the amplest choice. “I like to see the biggest possible number of things in one place, and then chose from them”.

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It’s like if you’d enter a bar, choose the least unattractive person there, and decide they are your crush now. While all you actually wanted was a glass of water.
In a nutshell, fast fashion moguls decide for you and then you browse their badly made stuff that won’t last for even one season knowing it’s either this or nothing until the next “update” (that happen at least weekly in most of those places). And even if the garment would last, you don’t even like it enough to wear for one full season and make it your signature item.
I admit that hunting down something specific in the ethical or second-hand market is hard. But internet exists. Seamstresses exist. Learning to sew is a possibility. And letting go of twisted fantasies about the perfect dress too.

E: Fast fashion as a pastime. “But it’s fun to go an browse, and then be able to buy at least some of it (or make a *haul* of it)!”.

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Get yourself another hobby! If it has to be fashion-related, do the more exciting (and funny too!) thrift-store browsing. Or try to swap with your friends. If you want it fashion-related and being even more selective (and without spending any money), I suggest turning to Pinterest. Curate your own collections, capsules, editorials… Make collages and share them on the internets! (Like this person.) The gratification should be at least on par with spending hours indoors listening to chunda-chunda music and going through racks of poorly made polyester garments.

F: Fast fashion as “fast”. “Fast fashion is like fast food: After the sugar rush it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth”.

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This is a bonus one, coming from this post that undoubtedly had best intentions. It’s only partly correct, though. It’s spot on about instant gratification and lack of long term benefits. However, despite the fact that industrial food production has a lot of issues going on in oh! so many fronts, fast fashion is worse because it has a bigger impact while being made and that stuff lingers…
While with food we have to worry (and rightly so!) about recycling the wrappers, it’s harder with garments. You have the bags and boxes, and the thing itself. Yet most cities don’t run a textile waste program. And charities that accept donations are overwhelmed by the quantity of badly made and worn out fast fashion garments nobody wants. So they ship containers of unwanted textiles to (mostly) African countries where they dynamite the traditional textile markets. And even if your 3€ novelty t-shirt end up becoming a cleaning rug in Ghana, there is still uncompostable waste at the end of all the moving and shipping that piece of mixed fibers has experienced.

OK, so I’m not sure how gentle this turned out to be. Not much, I suspect. However, here you have at least threads of conversation to use – more gently and lovingly, preferably – to advance the conversation in your community. Remember that you never know when just a one phrase you utter might make that *click!* in somebody’s head. I cannot promise converts, but at least you are prepared for the conversation now.

Baby Steps: Detoxing A Wardrobe Takes Time

Luīze Leave a Comment

Downsizing a wardrobe has one negative social effect… negative for us, social animals that look for recognition and pats on the back from our inner circles. Your friends will notice something new and flashy while they won’t know that, starting from now, you will treat your wardrobe differently. Unless you post that in all your social media, of course.

I want to assure you that every little step you make is good. I want to confirm that your effort is real, even if it means resisting the fast fashion advertisments green washing your brain and telling that they have changed just this one time. I want you to know that habit formation takes time. I want to promise that – after the initial resistance and adjusting – there will be a day when fast fashion will stop being a viable option in your microcosm. And that moment takes you into a whole new world.

My strategy of wardrobe detox is three-fold, slow and invisible. That’s fine. Relax and do your thing. Actions matter more than appearances. You will know that you are evolving, and that’s enough.

1. Use up what you have! Despite the temptation to start anew, our wardrobes are already full. I prune and edit, but keep living with things I have had for a long time. I still have some stuff from when I went to fast fashion places to browse. This first rule of sustainability sometimes leads to paradoxical situations. I might be lecturing you against the evils of fast fashion dressed in items I bought first-hand from the very same brands I viscerally hate today… well, I bought that garment in 2012 and its life with me is not over yet. At the moment I have few such items left, but it has taken me 5 years of not buying anything from those people to get here.

Denim jacket from 2003, black blouse ~2006, paisley pants from 2010, romper from 2012.

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2. Replace with used whenever possible! Yes, there are vintage gems and sewn-by-familiar-hands items in the second-hand and hand-me-down circles, but they are a minority. Most of the stuff that is going around come from the same fast fashion brands. Reusing a fast fashion item is obviously much-much-much better than purchasing that stuff new, but the tag doesn’t lie. Those things were made in poor conditions and, unless you explain to everybody you meet that this fast fashion garment is reused, i.e. redeemed, it looks like you are wearing fast fashion. A lot of my wardrobe falls into this category, and I treat them like adopted shelter animals: the whole situation is not their fault and I’ll make sure I give them the best possible life (a lot of wear!) until the natural end of their lives.

And these are not even all of my adopted fast fashion wonders…

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3. Buy well made only when new is your only reasonable option. For me the buy-new categories are very clear. So far in 2016 and 2017 I’ve obtained brand new underwear, hoisery and shoes. Underwear and hoisery are categories that do not invite reusing, those are intimate garments that many of us wear to shreds. Also, these are the things that wore out sooner than the rest, gets the most washes, etc. New items have to come in and replace the worn-out ones, hence there isn’t that much second-hand market even if you’d want to!

My leggings are ZIB and Amoralle (Latvia FTW!), my stockings, tights and pinkie socks come from Calzedonia (carefully selecting made in Italy items), my knee-socks are Bonne Maison (made in Portugal). I’m not sure about the supply chains of any of them,  so these are mid-term solutions. Google on your own for better ones! GoodOnYou, although Australia-centered, is a good place to start.

My knickers are Luva Huva (UK) and SiiL (Barcelona), my bras are Lauma and Rosme (unclear supply chain but made in Latvia) + a Luva Huva bralette and a fast fashion sports bra (a 2015 slip-up that I’m owning up). I like to have moderate to high amount of support, so the flimsy bralettes that most ethical producers throw at me do not cut it. I’m still looking for a responsibly-made solid underwire bra. So far those seem to be as elusive as unicorns!

Footwear is another category (and whole another post) that in my case invite to buy new if I’ve found something that fits my needs. I have very wide feet and use them a lot (walking! cycling!), so my shoes have to be wide, comfy and securely attached to my feet. Adding another layer of requirements when it comes to responsibly sourced and ethically made (and vegan!) makes buying shoes an impressive challenge. The whole trope about women and shoe shopping is something I’ve never understood! So second-hands do not tend to be my option (there have been exceptions, though), but after years of footwear struggles I currently have a set of favourites: Veja sneakers (currently I’m impatiently waiting for my fourth pair in two years), Muroexe boots and Arcopedico pumps.