Sustainable fashion, eco fashion or whatever you want to call it, is as I believe, a topic worth talking about.
Clothes are something we can't live without, yet we don't seem to pay enough attention or seem to care who made it, how much money he got for making it, did he do it willingly, how much CO2 was emitted into the atmosphere when that goddamn H&M shirt got shipped from Bangladesh to Serbia?
Once again, ignorance is bliss. And fuckin' A, aren't we blissful!?
I'm just ranting, it's not that serious. Okay it is, but it's all about awareness, and I'm trying to raise it right now.
So, fashion got caught up in the whole sustainability trend(thank God!), and there are a few areas where it needs more than a hint of sustainability. In fact, the fashion industry has so many problems, that it confronts 50% of the UN Sustainable development goals, I think. I know, I'm talking about everything at once, but let me break it down for you.
I'll try not to get into the details that much, because what we all should care about is the concept, if you feel like you need a stronger incentive to respect the concept, there are a few documentaries contemplating on this problem, one of them is 'The real cost'.
For me 2016 has been the year of discovery, adventure and awareness. In general – it was a good year. We are rarely acquainted with the root of our actions and that's why most people don't care if they shop sustainably or not.
There are many world problems to whose growth the fashion industry has contributed enourmously. All of those processes needed to make fabric emit a lot of CO2, pollute water and sometimes harm people because of all the toxic chemicals used. After that comes making the clothes. It's done by people and not by people like you, or me, but by people who had no choice. They are either enslaved or underpayed. Such a shame. Reading all those labels saying 'Made in Bangladesh', or Vietnam, or whatever poor country they have picked for their factories, and seeing it as just letters, not even thinking about the possibility that it was made by a child. By a child that sacrificed it's education to make your shirt just to get enough money to feed his parents.
Oh, yes, and then they have got to ship your shirt to wherever you live and emit more CO2 and what not.
Do you need it? It is more likely that you don't then you do. There are so many clothes in the world because of our constant need to spend money, to carelessly fill our closets and empty our wallets that those companies making the clothes don't even care if you need it. They make – you buy. And it's like this inherent ironic race that they win, and you...No, you don't lose, the factory workers lose it. Their time, their effort, their lives.
The cheapest and the best thing to do is GO SECOND HAND! Yes, it might not be new, it might have been made by kids in Vietnam but still, you are doing them a favor. And yourself. You are wearing the clothes to their maximum, what they're made for, you are not shopping because it's a therapy, you are shopping because no one wants to see you naked in public. We took fashion way too far we didn't even notice it was hurting someone. There are 27 million individuals enslaved around the world. You could make that number fall down significantly. Think before you buy.
To end this post, I will quote a wonderful young lady from Milan, Italy that has, along with a few of her friends, felt fed up and decided to make a sustainable fashion show to raise awareness and prove that we don't need to constantly buy new clothes.
Aisha: What I did was collecting second hand clothes into more ''fashionable'' clothes creating new ones. It doesn't hurt the planet because before throwing away, people can donate them to people like us, willing to modify them and resell them. In fact, I was really surprised because at theend of the show some people asked us if they could buy some clothes. They just bought their old clothes.
Aisha has taken the time to think, show and start changing. What will you do?