In the News - Disposable Clothes

As I write this on 25 March, most clothing stores are closed due to Covid19. As are most thrift stores. I think our Value Village might still be open... nope, just checked and it is closed. I guess clothing and fashion aren't really essential to daily living!

This means we are all going to have live with whatever we have in our closets and dressers which is likely quite a bit. After all, most of us wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time, leaving a whole 80% of our closet with very little to do. Without the option for buying the latest spring fashions... our closets might get some fresh air and new life as we start actually wearing what we already own.

I'm not a fashionista by any means. I haven't bought new clothes (except underwear and socks) for years. All of my clothing comes from thrift stores, usually Value Village because they have the best selection. I'm also a jeans and t-shirt kind of gal... I don't need anything fancy. So, I've always been a bit perplexed by the fashion industry and the latest spring/fall fashions. The only time it impinges on me is when pants flare out to bell bottoms or got ultra skinny. Although, nowadays, I can usually find some pair of thrift jeans that work and are just standard, plain old jeans.

I came across this news article the other month... about how Metro Vancouver throws away 20,000 tonnes of clothes each year. That's a lot of clothing. And that is just the clothing that actually goes to the landfill... not to thrift stores where it might get a second or third life. Although a lot of clothing that doesn't sell at thrift stores ends up being shipped to third world countries where it might get sold at a market or... end up cluttering up their landfills.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that Fast Fashion is not designed to be Sturdy Fashion. Spring/Fall fashions are meant to be worn for one season and then cast aside for the next fashion season. Which means manufacturers do not make them to last.

Make Do and Mend

On top of that, clothing manufacturing can be a highly toxic industry and use enormous amounts of water. So the more fast fashion that is produced... and then discarded... the higher the demand... and the more pollution we generate. Yes, "we". With our demands for new clothing, we fuel the supply chain that creates the toxins and drains the water supply. If you're interested in learning more about the unsustainability of the fashion industry... have a look at this BBC article. It covers the whole gamut quite nicely.

The other problem lies in the fact that we, as a society, have generally lost the impetus to Make Do and Mend. It's been decades since I mended a sock... or patched a hole in a pair of jeans.

When I was growing up, my Mom, who had trained as a seamstress, was forever darning socks and patching our clothing. Heck, she even made our clothing! We had boxes of Simplicity, Butterick and McCall's patterns and got to go to school dressed in red, purple or lime green polyester pant suits... oooh.

Butterick pattern

She sewed, she crocheted, she hand-knitted and she even had a Knittax knitting machine. Mom grew up during the Depression and the War in Europe and... she learned how to mend and make do. It might be something that we could learn from today.

For myself, if my t-shirts get stained or develop a hole, they get demoted to play clothes and then to garden t-shirts. Right now... I have a lot of garden t-shirts available!

As for jeans... my current garden jeans have a massive hole in the knee and I am already eyeing my closet to see which pair of jeans will volunteer to become the new garden jeans. For right now though, I will eek out as much wear from the current torn garden jeans as I can...

What else can we do?

• Mend and Make Do - if you've got a sewing machine... you're in the money!
• Get more life out of our clothes - wear them carefully - use aprons when cooking or wear a garden t-shirt while cooking (I can't tell you how many of my t-shirts have cooking oils splatters...)
• Clothing Swap - this might not work so well in the Year of the Virus but... at other times... swap clothes with friend who are the same size
• Wear what we Have - that out-of-fashion pair of pants might be perfectly fine when all else fails...

I'm going to hazard a guess that we are all going to get a crash course in minimalism and learn what the really important things are. Fast Fashion isn't going to be one of those things. Besides... the fashion industries are too busy rejigging production lines to make Personal Protection Equipment (masks, gowns, scrubs)...