Vintage and Slow Fashion

My mom, queen of hats

Yes, this is an article about my true love: all things vintage—and of course I’m doing the rah rah for buying vintage clothes and accessories, but suddenly it’s really important to consider your clothing.  I’m not talking about just what reaching in your closet does for you. Everyone wants to look cute/sexy/classy/put together/make a statement or whatever, with our choice of attire before we step out the door, but clothing has consequences.

‘Fast Fashion’ is the newest catch phrase for America’s all-consuming urge to consume, in this instance to consume the newest trendiest clothing to get belched out of polluting factories in 3^rd world countries like Bangladesh.  Some companies are so determined to stay ‘on trend’ they are releasing a new ‘collection’ a week! This clothing is quickly and often badly made, cheap and discarded almost immediately, one wash and its toast, so back to the store for more.

1970s Pop Art Dress

So what is the cost to this growing obsessive need for new stuff? The average consumer bought 60% more clothing in 2014 than in 2000 but kept it half as long.  What does this mean in a way we can actually grasp, not just numbers? It means one garbage truck a second loaded with clothing goes to the landfill 24 hours a day. We will throw out 11 million tons of clothing this year. 

And tragically, when we kindly donate all those clothes to our local thrift organization most of them end up in South America or sub Saharan Africa, and because of the avalanche of used clothes being dumped around the world, the native artisans are ceasing to create their own textiles and their identity and art is being lost. Thanks America for your generous donations.  

One of my photos of traditional weavers in Chiapas, Mexico, 

Most of our modern clothing contains some form of polyester, like all those lovely leggings and stretchy shirts we are so fond of that don’t require ironing. That no ironing bit? That’s polyester and every time we wash it all those microfibers wash eventually into the ocean. 500,000 tons a year actually, that’s the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.  My gorgeous faux fur coat, vintage, is going to take 200 years in the landfill to decompose,  I would have been better off with real farmed fur, or even better, wool, which is a renewable resource. We are ALL contributing to polluting the ocean at this point by what we choose to wear.

I might as well wear it for 200 years at this point, my faux fur faux pas

Aha! We should all switch to natural fibers! Well maybe, but it takes 2,700 liters of water to make one cotton shirt. That’s enough to quench your thirst for 2.5 years.  The fashion industry is the second largest consumer of water on the planet, and responsible for 20% of all the water pollution on earth. The toxic run off from dying textiles is enough to fill 2 million swimming pools a year. The people doing the work (in Bangladesh, one example) make $96 a month. 3 times that is a living wage in that country. No worker protection and exposure to lead, pesticides, and toxic chemicals are a fact of life. Guess what? All those cute bright prints you love so much, lead based dyes in a lot of cases.

The topper for me is the fact that the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of all the carbon emissions in the world, that’s more that airlines and maritime shipping combined. We are on track to hit 25% in less than 5 years.

my mother's lipstick red taffeta cocktail dress, spaghetti straps and a bolero, not easy ironing either.

That’s the bad news; the good news is that we can do something about slowing down the trajectory of this particular fashion crisis. A word has even been coined for it: Slow Fashion.

Cute vintage kitten heels, so you can talk the talk and walk the walk.

This is where quality vintage clothing comes in.  When people could only buy a few things a year they bought things that would last and were of good quality. Solid seams, fabulous fabrics and clothing that often had no ‘hanger appeal’.  The clothes were designed to fit human bodies, not to appear amazing on a coat hanger in a department store.  I love it when someone is coaxed into trying on a hum drum vintage outfit and suddenly, magic happens, the object fits like a dream.  Yes, you can’t chuck a lot of this stuff into the washer and dryer and put it on and run out the door.  Yes, you may have to figure out how an iron and an ironing board work to take full advantage of vintage clothing and natural fabrics.  Your choice, help kill off everything in the ocean or cut down on your polyester passion any way you can.

Gorgeous Susan Lynn coat from the 60s wool and mint condition

My advice for me is to mix vintage with sustainable new pieces. I’m investing in a few good new pieces, coughing up the money for high quality and looking for things I will enjoy wearing wear 30 times or more, the magic number. It’s an alien concept but one that might just work.

I was so thrilled to buy these 1940s wedding shoes from their owner and send them back into the world.

And those of us who are not miniature people from the 1950's to the 70's will be hunting up cool vintage accessories because folks actually were much smaller then—and all the ladies before the 60's wore foundation garments, aka girdles, which make a big difference, in things like how your clothes fit and whether or not you can breathe. 

Scarves, hats, jewelry, that wonderful pop of color to sass up your attitude, that’s where vintage can float your boat or fly your airplane and reduce your carbon footprint.

Mother earth thanks you.