![]() Through styling, you've taken an item you've only worn in one setting, and made it work for countless others. Pair it with relaxed denim, something you'd only wear on a weekend. Where do we start? "Block off two hours one week and open up your wardrobe," she continues. "Look for pieces you haven't worn in months or more. It's about learning to interact with fashion, outside of consumption, and it's forming relationships with our things." "Styling allows people to express themselves and have fun with clothing, without buying new to push creativity and to truly wear their clothing. "Many of us don't use what we own because we've been taught to find style solutions through consumption," says the stylist, with a long track record in high-profile campaigns. Sam Weir is founder of Lotte.V1, a one-on-one styling service, aimed at rekindling our relationship to our clothing. The first step is to re-encounter your own wardrobe textile reuse charity Traid's 23 Percent Campaign was launched in 2019 to highlight the proportion of clothes Londoners left unworn in their wardrobes. De Castro subtitled her book "how the joy of re-wearing and repairing your clothes can be a revolutionary act". ![]() But it is now more important than ever to ask why so much of our clothing is petroleum-based whether the rayon in that jumper was sourced from ancient forests what animal's fur has gone into that pom pom why only a minority of garment workers are paid a living wage – and whether we still want a hand in driving all this destruction. ![]() De Castro's perfect pieces with broken zips are symptoms of a profound disconnection from how clothing is made. Where once our grandparents lived lives of thrift and repair, most consumers today have become acclimatised to a wear, break and chuck model. It has, after all, been just over a generation since we have lost the fine art of clothing maintenance. Now, however, the stakes feel too frighteningly high not to try. These may sound easy to achieve but if they were, we'd have done them already. Factors that contribute include buying good quality clothing, the willingness of owners to wear the same item over and over again, and their ability to take care of them. ![]() Research by environmental charity Wrap shows that extending the life of an item of clothing by just nine months could cut its environmental impact by up to 10 percent imagine what could be achieved over decades. For a generation of shoppers pumped up on constructed desires and instant gratification, this can be hard to envisage – but the figures are irrefutable. Basically, the fashion industry needs to shrink in size, substantially. Increasingly, campaigners are arguing that one of the easiest ways of slashing fashion's impact is by buying less (far less, just three new pieces of clothing a year, according to campaign group Take the Jump), and by making the clothes we already own last longer. Yet nonetheless, out they are churned, between 80 to 100 billion pieces a year. Very few of us in fashion-consuming capitals around the world really need more clothes. These are breathtaking facts, given that, after a certain point, this is an industry trading in non-essentials. ![]() Finally, the sector is responsible for between two and eight percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions, depending on which study you read. Natural resource use rates are stratospheric, as are pollution and waste levels, while global supply chains are riven with exploitation. It is increasingly hard to downplay the environmental and social damage the industry causes. The ancient enigma that still resonatesĭe Castro's questions are just two of many confronting fashion in the 21st Century. After all, what is the point of spending time and money repairing a broken zip when ultimately it is quicker, cheaper and infinitely more fun to buy a new piece, with a fully functioning zip? But can we please stop and consider what we are doing when we give up hope on the one that broke? And what happens when we choose to mend it instead?" "In my years of scouring second-hand clothing sorting warehouses I have seen hundreds of perfect pieces abandoned simply because of a broken zip. In her 2021 book Loved Clothes Last, Orsola de Castro, founder of the global campaign Fashion Revolution, issues a cri de coeur. ![]()
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