My Journey: Quitting Fast Fashion.
SF Goodwill shopping party (photo credits Greg Habiby)
You’re a 14 year-old girl in high school, circa 2006 and have been invited to go shopping downtown with your new high school friends. You chat as you ride a MUNI bus, as you usually do, to SF’s Union Square. You step off the bus only to walk past luxury retailers in awe of the glitzy shiny baubles and punchy graphic tees, but you don’t dare go in. You walk down the block and see in bright bold letters “H&M” with similarly styled mannequins. You and your group waltz in and mosey about. You make some selections and enter the dressing room, and upon leaving you make a few purchases. Walking a little further down the street you stop at your next destination: Urban Outfitters. This is a really cool spot, but still just out of your minor-pocket’s reach. Your friends are able to use their parents cards, they purchase. You walk down the street, friends in toe, to find your holy grail: "Forever21.” There you load up on all the sparkly trinkets and accessories, 5 items for only $5! Life is good.
Right? Wrong. Rewind 4-6 years and you’ll find the younger you having the same savings high, but at the Value Center, a local thrift store shopping with your uncle and auntie for cute clothing items. You can fill a cart and max out at twenty dollars. These are the cream of the crop secondhand goods, high quality and durable and well, affordable. Life is good.
As you grew in age you wound up shopping at more accessible shops deemed “cooler” and “brand new.” A subconscious ideology gets planted in your mind about shopping fast fashion. It is your newest addiction. You wind up getting a job at 15 and though you continue to shop thrifted, you tend to shop with ease at the mall near your job, much higher ticket garments, now shopping at Urban Outfitters (like you secretly wanted) and even buying yourself —gasp— a Michael Kors bag by 20 years old! You cycle through clothing, re-gifting to family in the Philippines and to your family in arms reach. The rest you donate. You’ve accumulated a lot of stuff.
Ugh. It is actually overwhelming looking at just how much stuff you’ve accumulated.
Most of it you don’t even wear regularly.
You go through a phase of selling off most of your garments and starting again.
It is now present day 2020. You currently have a Poshmark and have quit fast fashion. Why? Fast forward and long story short: you became aware. You became aware of consumption and ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians.” By educating yourself in watching documentaries of how waste, pollution and straight up garbage flood into our ocean, or how containers we use are not bio-degradable,, meaning they don’t break down and sit in landfills, or even how you learn about the Ponzi scheme that is fast fashion and consumer goods that perish and expire after a brief amount of time. whether it is per washes, per wears, per uses….even your washing machine is not built to last to the same standards as before.
What do you do now? Once you have learned what you have it is hard to guilt-free shop fast fashion again. I realize that living in the capitalist society I do, I can never be perfectly sustainable, but I can try daily through swapping things I use for healthier alternatives, like re-wearing what I have, continuing to donate versus throw away perfectly good garments, upcycle my garments and potentially turn them into something new, the list goes on. This is where my blog begins and where we collectively take the first step into better choices and practices for not only people to live comfortably and healthier lives, but for the earth and all that habit it. Let us unlearn together and I hope you stick around for awhile.
photos by Greg Habiby