This is an easy tip:
DON’T BUY FAST FASHION.
Fast fashion is bad on many levels. The environmental and human impact is enormous. There are tons of resources for you to see all of it. You might want to start with my simple definitions surrounding Fast Fashion, and other fashion terms.
But avoiding fast fashion is easier said than done. As with almost everything in the sustainability movement, it starts with a mind-set shift. We must move away from the idea that we need to constantly be buying new clothes, that we need to keep up with changing trends, and the idea that having a lot of cheaply made and purchased clothing is better than having a few pieces that we love and that cost more (and therefore, hopefully, were made humanely with the environment in mind). We must also change how we think about clothing at a basic level. We are consumers and our first thought is about ourselves. We must move away from our first thoughts of “that would look good on me”, “that’s so cute!”, “that’s on trend”, “I need this item”. and think about where our clothing comes from. Who made this item? What conditions were they exposed to? What impact did it have on them? On water supplies, on animals, on the earth? Once these become questions you ask yourself before buying you are less likely to buy unnecessarily. The impact fast fashion has on the world becomes an impact on you as well. But this may take time and certainly takes a lot of effort.
So while you are figuring out how to make that mind-set shift, here is my number one tip for quitting fast fashion:
STOP GOING TO FAST FASHION STORES.
In real life and online.
Vintage clothing labels.
This is the one big thing that really helped me kick my fast fashion habit; I stopped looking to shop fast fashion. I stopped visiting the mall, target, stopped going to online shops. Stopped looking at sales and deals. Mostly I stopped looking at clothes at all, unless I was in my own closet or at the thrift shop. Since we are consumers, we are conditioned to look at sales, we are taught that merchandising and deals are important, that having more will make you feel better and shopping will make you happy. But we need to reconnect the human and environmental cost of the things we buy. That cheap, trendy, top is not just a inexpensive pleasure for you to have. That top was made by a real person who most likely worked in horrible conditions, used water that could have saved someone from thirst or hunger, shipped across the world leaving pollution and destruction in it’s wake, excreted microplastics into the oceans and air, and finally will be thrown away and end up in a landfill or burned to create even more waste. By changing the way we think, and eradicating the temptation of looking at fast fashion, we break the hold that consumerism has on us.
What has helped you quit or reduce buying fast fashion?