On Fashion: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The overdue follow up to last week's piece:

If there is a defining feature of our post-modern age, it is repetition. Images are recycled through the media; messages are reduced and repeated ad-nauseum; fads endlessly recur like patterns in a Mandelbrot set. Fashion is no exception to this rule. What began with the twenty-year rule – the latest styles would refer to clothing two decades past – is now a melange of styles and periods. The aggressive peddling of this tweaked unoriginality has led to a disconnection from the art of design and to an unsustainable consumption binge. One previously offered solution is to opt for costly garments that encourage fewer, more thoughtful purchases. On the flip side, there are the endless offerings of previously worn vintage clothing – inexpensive, sustainable, and potentially interesting.

To many, vintage clothing suggests garments that old and/or expensive, while thrift-shop clothing conjures images of dowdy and dusty cheap clothing potentially tainted by vermin and mites of various characters (see David Sedaris and the thrift store trousers incident). Given these frequent (mis)conceptions, I will stick to the following concept of vintage fashion – anything more than four seasons old, affordable or fairly priced, previously worn, of design interest, and (presumably) hygienically intact.

The purchase of vintage clothing should share the underlying principles of expensive clothing – there should be a connection to the design and concept, and uniquely, a connection to the history and past of the garment. It is strange how some items are cherished for their history - wine comes to mind - while others seem to have a very brief lifespan of utility. This need not be the case. Consider the design concepts in vogue at the time the garment was constructed and the reasons behind this – current events, state of the economy, influences from other creative disciplines, changing weather patterns, or migratory movements. One soon begins to realise that objects tell a story, and thoughtfully designed and well-made objects tell an interesting story. I’ll leave Baudrillard’s System of Objects to explain the rest.

With the rise of ‘fast-fashion’ the quality of clothing rapidly deteriorated and supply chains began to take on the nature of a Pollock painting – chaotic and spread to oblivion. Decline in quality leads to more intensive consumption as there is the need to constantly replace damaged clothing, while the process of shipping raw materials, fabrics, and finished garments results in an unenviable carbon footprint. Travelling back in time takes us to an era where clothing was produced (relatively) locally with higher standards. Trends moved at a slower pace echoing the changes in society rather than the need to perpetuate unwarranted consumption to grow revenue. The vast majority of vintage clothing answers the rights and wrongs described above.

Objects have power - the power to describe sub-cultures, philosophies, socio-economic orders, and the zeitgeist itself. Given its ubiquitous, every-day nature, clothing has perhaps more power than most other objects. Objects, however, require natural resources in a time when resources must be used in a more sustainable manner. Consuming clothing in a sustainable manner requires us to buy fewer pieces of a high quality with price as a deterrent, or reuse and recycle vintage clothing with the effect of negating new production and starving rubbish heaps. The next time you ‘need’ that outfit, consider the process behind it and whether it is an outfit that truly warrants purchase. Ensure that the decision is a sustainable one, both from an aesthetic (who really wants day-glo stretch pants five years later?), social, and environmental perspective. The rewards should be multi-faceted.