Clothes Call
Reconstructed tops by Snowflake 66, available at Cut + Paste
Shopping as therapy is so ingrained in our cultural identity that despite my best efforts, when under duress, I still double over, sink my head into open palms, and use the Lord’s name in vain because GOD ALMIGHTY I need to shop NOW. It’s a genetic sickness, kind of like Bruce Banner’s, if the Hulk had a thing for pointelle lace and cap sleeves. Most of the time, Chekhov leaps onto my lap and jabs me in the eye so I have trouble making out where to key in my credit-card number. When his mind is honed in like a particle-beam satellite on the cleanliness of his furry tuckus, however, the following cheat sheet comes in handy.
GOOD: Buy organic clothing, i.e, no pesticides or chemicals were used in the making of this T-shirt, which is good for you and good for the environment. (See “What’s the Cotton Pickin’ Idea” for problems with conventionally grown cotton.) Other tree-hugging materials: hemp, bamboo, and soysilk.
BETTER: Buy vintage or repurposed/reconstructed clothing. Their polluting impact has come and gone, no new resources have been expended, and you’re not contributing anything new to the waste stream. Plus, you’re keeping perfectly good clothes out of the landfill. Even Umbra of Grist says, “New organic clothing is not better than already-purchased synthetic clothing.”
BEST: Don’t buy anything. (No foolin’!) Refuse to wrap your identity within the temporarily gratifying bounds of material consumption and be “possessed by your possessions.” Like Juliet B. Schor, author of The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need and Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture says, choose quality over quantity, longevity over novelty, and versatility over specialty. If we’re satisfied with a much smaller closet, we can spend more per garment so our clothes are better constructed. “Workers would work less, produce fewer but higher-quality items, and be paid more per hour. Such a change would help make ecologically clean technologies economically feasible,” she says.
Dustywheat said,
November 17, 2006 at 7:08 pm
The problem that i’ve run into in buying repurposed is work pants. Jeans get turned in by the dozen, but I haven’t been able to get slacks at any of the thrift stores that I’ve been to. So if anyone knows where to get work pants in the OC (yes I did just write the OC) let me know!
I have, however, been able to purchase designer clothes at a fraction of the price. I really don’t care if it was last season, I like it!
holland said,
November 17, 2006 at 9:17 pm
THose shirts are so eastern block–I love them. I have to put my vote in for the re-purposed–since I have not yet been able to shake the shopping bug. Quality.
Crafty green Poet said,
November 24, 2006 at 4:17 am
I totally love second hand clothes! I buy all my clothes second hand (apart from underwear and shoes) and now that I’ve got a wardrobe of clothes I like, I buy far fewer than I used to. I like the idea of custimising my own clothes, but apart from small projects it never works!
bottleman said,
November 29, 2006 at 10:20 pm
I think the most forgiving and yet best analysis I ever heard about people who love to shop came from some sensitive expert on NPR, years ago. The gist of it was, people shop because it’s a way of exercising their creativity.
They get to make aesthetic choices, combinations, and try to communicate themes. Ergo, the expert went, if somebody has a creative outlet, they’ll be a lot less likely to need to shop.
Anyway, early on in my marriage I had already heard this expert, and decided to be really supportive of my spouse’s desire to take a sculpture class, with the sneaky little motive that it might cause her to buy fewer shoes. Well guess what? It worked. Now we have fewer shoes. Our art & craft bill is bigger than I’d like, but on the whole I’d say it’s been a win-win for us and the planet, not to mention closet space..
The Worsted Witch » Fast Clothes Nation said,
March 5, 2007 at 2:02 pm
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