A mindful life: how I'm moving away from the consumer mindset
About two months ago, I sold the majority of my clothes on Instagram. Crazy, right? I was the girl who never missed a GAP sale and had well over 30 pairs of shoes, but decided, in a bizarre moment of clarity, to sell it all.
This ended up being a pivotal moment in my life. It's funny how tightly we hold on to things that we don't really need, and it took a massive overhaul for me to realize that I didn't need half of the things I thought I did.
As I moved towards creating a sustainable closet, I made it a point to find brands that fought the fast-fashion tides when creating their product lines. The issues that turned me off to fast-fashion, like child labor, atrocious work conditions, and unbelievably low-wages, were at the heart of these companies, and I immediately felt like I had found my niche.
The stigma around ethical, sustainable clothing is that it's a hoax, or a ploy to make more money from the same products by printing "ethical" on the tags. In some shady cases, I'm sure that's a legitimate fear; however, with the majority of brands (especially prominent ones, like Gap, Zara, and FreePeople) there's documentation of their environmental and labor policies, as well as cold, hard facts detailing how they actually maintain them. You can find everything you need to know about a brand's ethical practices by googling their name and the word "ethics." Don't be surprised when you find out that FreePeople does not, actually, free people--in fact, they very much enslave them.
Brands like Everlane, FashionABLE, Sseko, and Frank & Oak have shown me that you don't have to sacrifice style in order to care about people/the earth. Amazing, modern pieces that support humanity exist!! Check out these stores, and let me know what you think! Do you shop sustainably, or is it something you're interested in?
xx, Emma