Fashion

Slow Fashion at the Speed of Light

In my second year of university, I watched a documentary called The True Cost in a lecture and it brought me to tears. This film was all about the social and environmental harms caused by the fast fashion industry, and watching it was both an eye-opening and heart-breaking realization for […]

They Talk the Talk, But Are Big Brands Doing Enough To Make Fashion Circular?

The fashion industry is broken. Of course, you won’t notice this walking around the shops, but behind the scenes at a production level the resources needed to make your clothes are rapidly approaching their limit. With circular fashion touted as the savior of this phenomenally wasteful industry, hundreds of the […]

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Why We Upcycle

In 2016, the magazine TakePart reported that 26 billion pounds (11,800,000 tonnes) of textile is tossed into US landfills each year. You might donate clothing in hopes that someone will re-love it, but according to the 2015 film The True Cost, only 10 percent of clothes that people donate get sold. […]

Fashion designer Peggy Sue Deaven-Smiltnieks

A Stitch in Time (wastes less)

When my Austrian grandma passed away, I found her 20-year-old Dirndl in her wardrobe. Although it was much too big for me, I was emotionally unable to throw it away. Eventually, I decided this Dirndl deserved to be worn again. So, I opened all the seams, divided it into its […]

(Photo: a woman sews a button on fabric)

Mend Your Wears

Not getting new shoes until the old ones wore out, darning the toe hole in the end of a sock, patching a favourite pair of jeans for the third time; these practices are no longer a reality for most of today’s youth. Maybe, if we are lucky, our moms can […]