“When everything is uncertain, everything that’s important becomes clearer!”
While 2020 has definitely marked itself in the history of life on planet Earth, it has affected every human in some sort or another. Amidst the current scenario in the world, many have gone through anxiety, confusion, loneliness, depression. However I would like to bring your attention to that part of my life, for which I will be grateful, forever – The clarity I got about my life and love for fashion. I have been into slow fashion for almost 2 years now, but it was 2020 that allowed me to slow down and delve deeper into the subject. Here I have enlisted few of my reasons (in the form of eminent quotes) why I chose SLOW FASHION!
#1 “Fast fashion is like fast food. After the sugar rush it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.”
When I read this quote of Livia Firth, I was a fast food (read fast fashion) addict. I would shop on the drop of a hat. Stress at work? Shop! Tired with house-chores? Shop! Fight with partner? Shop! Going out with the girl friends? Shop! Travelling/ Vacay time? Shop! It simply made me feel good. I am not very proud of sharing this list with you, but I believe that I have come a long way past that lane. Livia also said, “The fast fashion business model is finite, because the natural resources it uses will get scarcer and scarcer. If you want your company to be successful 15 years from now, you have to address these issues today, even if your profits are a lot less as a result.”
#2 “Cheap consumer products are sold to us as some grand achievement of globalisation, but they’ve come at the price of middle-class jobs, craftsmanship and stable communities.”
This quote by Elizebeth L Cline, had me startled. I first thought,🤔 isn’t it so amazing that, our affordability to buy clothes which are priced so low, allow us to have all the trendy pieces. Until, I read the entire book (in the month of October’2019) ‘Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion‘
Clothing is a very personal experience and a beautiful way to communicate about, who we are. But it is also an eminent driver of climate change. Elizabeth Cline’s another book “The Conscious Closet” was an eye-opener.
#3 “What if we started by slowing down and not consuming so much stuff, just because it’s there and cheap and available. It’s amazing how that process makes sense financially, it makes sense ethically, it makes sense environmentally.” —Andrew Morgan, filmmaker and director of ‘The True Cost’ I could not believe that this documentary was so detailed with ground-breaking truths about the dirty secrets of the fashion industry. When I watched this documentary, I was almost in tears and I had substantial reasons to change my shopping habits.
#4 “What is ethical fashion? It’s a confusing term. Sometimes it’s easier to define by what it isn’t – and unfortunately that is most of what can be found on the high street. Unethical fashion means very very little transparency, accountability and knowledge of the supply chain. It means demands of very quick lead times and production turnaround. It means producers played off against each other. It means a wage that doesn’t even afford the worker an adequate salary for two meals a day.”—Safia Minney, fair trade fashion pioneer, author and founder of People Tree
#5 “There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Our father of the nation, (of India) said this decades back, when there were no global movements and revolutions to inspire us to slow down on our cloth consumption. In 1918 Mahatma Gandhi started his movement for Khadi as relief program for the poor masses living in India’s villages. Spinning and weaving was elevated to an ideology for self-reliance and self-government. “Every village shall plant and harvest its own raw-materials for yarn, every woman and man shall engage in spinning and every village shall weave whatever is needed for its own use.” Gandhi saw it as the end of dependency on foreign materials. Superficially, what we are voicing for, as #VocalForLocal to promote small and local businesses, which have suffered immensely due to Covid lockdowns.
