Put down the skirt and step away from the checkoutfeatured

Last night Jake and I went out with a bunch of his friends from work for his leaving do. He’s saying goodbye to the world of retail and starting his first graduate job on Monday. Having had very little of a social life recently, I decided I’d make an effort and wear something nice. It’s not often I get an excuse to dress up fancy these days! A few weeks ago, after landing two new jobs, I treated myself to a pretty white blouse with bunnies on it from H&M, but as I finished work yesterday I realised I’d need a black skirt to go with it. So back I wandered to H&M, my go-to place when I urgently need something simple and don’t have time to rummage through a charity shop and pray for a lucky find.

However, after trying on 5 different black skirts in at least 2 different sizes each, I was more than frustrated. None of them fitted properly and I seemed to be in between sizes.

But, fearing I’d have ‘nothing to wear’, I actually found myself contemplating buying one of the ill-fitting skirts just so I had something to go with the blouse.

It was then that I had to stop and have serious words with myself. I recently wrote an article for Alt Mag called ‘The True Cost: How Can We Stop The Fast Fashion Cycle‘, looking at the impact fashion has on both the environment and the garment workers who make the clothes we wear.

Having written that article less than a fortnight ago, I started to feel like a massive hypocrite. Not only was I shopping in one of the shops responsible for using low paid garment workers (They say they’re working on improving this), but I was also considering buying an item I will barely wear. This very attitude is one of the primary causes of the fast fashion mess we’re in.

We need to buy things that we will love and cherish until we literally cannot wear them any more. Giving things to charity shops when we’re done with them is all well and good but as the documentary The True Cost shows, more needs to be done.

Standing in the changing rooms I reminded myself that this very skirt I was holding in my hands could well have been made by a woman who gets paid just a few pounds a week, only sees her children once a year, and may even be risking her life every day to make money. After all, in 2013 a factory in Bangladesh called the Rana Plaza collapsed and killed more than 1000 garment workers. Many of the workers had already complained about cracks in the walls before the collapse, but after a brief evacuation, bosses forced them to return to such dangerous working conditions.

After having a quick think about all the awful things I’ve read about the conditions of underpaid garment workers, I handed the skirts back to the changing room attendant and headed to Jake’s house to see what I could make do with.

Sure enough, when I got to Jake’s I managed to dig out 2 charity shop dresses to choose from. Does it matter that I didn’t wear something new on our night out? Of course not!

I saved myself £20, avoided using up vital space in my wardrobe, and stopped myself pumping more money into the fast fashion industry.

You could argue that someone else will buy that skirt anyway and the cycle will continue but I’m hopeful they’ll at least wear it, love it and make good use of it. If I’d have bought it I probably would have worn it once only for it never to be seen again.

So how can cutting back on new purchases help stop the fast fashion cycle? It’s certainly a tricky one because our economy greatly relies on the fashion industry. If everyone in the UK was to quit buying new items of clothing for the next 6 months, the first thing that would probably happen is our own shop staff would lose their jobs. We don’t want that.

As I wrote in my post for Alt Mag, rather than completely boycotting these companies we need to support those who sell ethically sourced garments. Praise good behaviour instead of punishing the bad.

Perhaps, by making an effort to spend our money with ethical retailers we can show the not so ethical ones that we care about the people who make our clothes.

I’m hopeful that over time, more high street retailers will take note and strive towards creating clothing that is ethically sourced. Maybe one day ethical clothing will be the norm and garment workers around the world will be paid fairly and provided with safe working conditions.

Thankfully, sustainability and ethical style is already gaining momentum in the fashion world. Despite being one of the biggest fast-fashion culprits, even H&M has jumped onto the sustainability train. They’ve introduced a new initiative which allows shoppers to receive a £5 voucher every time they bring in a bag filled with old clothes. But while this may seem like a great way to recycle clothes and save shoppers money, if anything it’s just making us poorer while still upping the demand for fast fashion! With the £5 voucher only eligible on shops of £30 or more, we’re still being encouraged to buy more clothes that we probably don’t really need and might not even love.

But hey! At least in another 6 months time we’ll be able to stuff them in a carrier bag and return them to H&M so we can save another fiver off our next fast fashion fix.