The eco-worrier
The other day, I turned one of my dresses into a top. The bottom half was
stained so I snipped it at the waist, sewed up the jagged edge and very nice
it turned out, too. With the leftover material, I’m going to make a
headscarf and patch up some fraying jeans. If this sounds a little dreary
and homespun, let me explain. These days, I have to take my sartorial
pleasures where I can find them. Clothes shops are out of bounds.
Eight months ago, sick of filling my drawers with badly made, ethically
dubious items that looked identical to everyone else’s, I launched
Eco-Worrier’s Wardrobe Challenge. I decided to stop buying new clothes for a
year and to survive on what I already had. Among other things, I was spurred
into action by the size of my wardrobe. With more than enough to keep me
going, it had started to infuriate me that I was still compelled to buy
more. No wonder there is a serious problem of clothing waste in this
country; last year in the UK alone, we created 900,000 tons of it.
While short-lived, I have always found the thrill of the new to be seductive.
I am not a serious fashion junkie, preferring secondhand bargains to
designer labels, but I am shockingly bad at holding myself back if I spot
something that I like. I wear my trophy once, maybe twice, then it lies
around making me feel guilty.
In the end, what clinched my plan to embark on a year of fashion-rationing was
the ethical dimension. The more I found out about the link between poor
human rights and cheap clothes, the less I wanted to spend my money on the
high street. When the charity, Labour Behind the Label, drew attention in
November last year to the dismal conditions – long hours, low pay and few
rights – of garment workers in the developing world, that was it. I wanted
out.
Since then, I have witnessed a backlash against cheap, disposable garb. In the
aftermath of riots in Primark and Topshop – on the days that clothes by Kate
Moss and Stella McCartney were launched – the mantra “buy less and of better
quality” makes sense. Cementing the trend, Topshop’s former brand director
Jane Shepherdson has joined the ethical clothing company People Tree to help
Oxfam give its clothes shops a makeover. When she left Topshop, she
predicted the ethical fashion trend: “We can’t carry on buying £2 T-shirts
and not ask where they come from.”
As for how I have coped without new purchases, much as I’d love to play the
martyr, it’s been easy as pie. Shopping, I have realised over the past
months, breeds discontent. You never find the perfect winter jacket that you
think will complete your wardrobe, so you keep looking and spending and
wanting. By releasing myself from this cycle, I have reclaimed time and
taken control of my purse strings. These days I stride down Oxford Street
with scarcely a glance in the windows of my previous haunts. I feel happier,
richer and more like me.
There is fun to be had outside of fighting for pavement space every weekend.
There are boozy lunches to enjoy with friends, bulbs to plant, cakes to bake
and long walks that end in the pub. All pleasures that outlast a new piece
of clothing.
That’s not to say there haven’t been moments when I’ve come close to falling
off the wagon. There was the time on a trip to the bank that I found myself
caught offguard and heading, zombie-like, to a rail of dresses in Monsoon.
Not even sure how I got there, all of a sudden I was fingering the price tag
and the pristine fabric. A fog of desire descended and it took enormous
willpower to steer myself out of the shop. The funny thing was, once out in
the street, relief surged through me. The spell had been broken. I had
rescued myself from myself.
Resisting, you see, is empowering. You feel as if you are carving out your
consumer choices rather than giving in to the same desires that drive
everyone else. As for what I wear, I’ve not once felt defeated by a lack of
choice. Oddly, that happened more before I stopped shopping. Perhaps now I
give more time to it, thinking about various outfits while in the shower, or
eating breakfast. I spend evenings every month going through my supply,
pulling forgotten numbers from the bottom of the wardrobe and teaming up
different bits and pieces. As with food or travel, a degree of constraint
can make you more creative.
Admittedly, other people have helped me out. I’ve got to know a local
alterations specialist and profited from kind friends who have taken pity on
me and passed me their rejects. I have even received mystery parcels
containing clothing. Prompted by concern for the wellbeing of my underwear
drawer, my mum sends me socks and vests, worn once by her, to get around the
rules of the Wardrobe Challenge. “They’re not new,” she scribbles on the
enclosed card, but I know exactly who they were bought for and if I was
strict, I wouldn’t accept them.
But there’s no point being too hard on yourself. Otherwise you end up
channelling your consumer instincts elsewhere. Initially, I was worried
about this. Deprived of new clothes, I might develop a soft furnishings
habit or start spending ridiculous sums at the garden centre. To some
extent, this has happened. Not with cushions or compost bins, but with food.
Waitrose is my new Hennes. Marinated artichokes unleash the same yearning
that empire-line dresses once did. I now browse delis. I only hope I don’t
get fat.
A few pounds on the hips, though, is a small price to pay for the health of my
bank account. I’ve estimated that I will save nearly £1,000 over the year,
although this doesn’t account for the cost of the “deli” factor. The
financial benefits of fashion frugality attracts attention from my female
friends. Men tell me smugly that they hate shopping for clothes so they
adhere to the rules of the challenge without even trying. Personally, I’m
not so sure. I think that when they swoop into Selfridges to stock up on
work shirts, they don’t count it as shopping.
Or maybe I’m envious of their indifference to what they wear. One thing I know
for sure, when my year is up, my appetite for clothes may have shrunk, but
it won’t curtail the pleasure of purchasing a new, ethically made frock or
two.
The vintage dresser
John Naish wears Fifties clothes that were made to last
When Anna told me of her vow not to buy new gear for a year, I listened rapt
with sceptical admiration. Great idea, I wondered, but is it really
practicable? Then I had another thought: hang on, I’ve not bought any
clobber for 12 months, maybe 18. Part of this is down to me being tighter
than two coats of paint. Oh, but mercifully we don’t call it that any more,
it’s “being green”.
I inherited my parsimony from my mother, who called it efficiency. And she got
it from her parents. They called it rationing. I’ll wear a sock until its
holes have holes: aesthetics apart, it’s surprising what little difference
it makes when they’re safely hidden in shoes. But what really makes my
nonbuying habit possible is a long-standing love affair with rock’n’roll
guitars, which got me into buying vintage clothes to match. In my
mid-twenties I began buying Fifties suits, coats, ties, shoes and trousers
from junkshops, market stalls and secondhand stores. I loved them for their
shape, for the tailoring, for the mischief of being a young fogie while all
about were dressing for yuppiedom.
I even (oops) invested in a couple of cravats. Now, nearly two decades later,
I’ve discovered something else about my vintage gear: it was made to last.
The thick-wefted three-piece pinstripe woollen suit, “Tailored by Daks for
Calders of Cardiff”, is as good as the day it was first sold. The original
buyer most likely expected to be married and buried in it (so maybe I have a crafty
undertaker to thank). Likewise, my velvet-collared brown overcoat, bespoke
tailored (not for me, but for a Colonel F. Hindle of Gloucester, according
to the label) still holds its shape, its nap, its timeless style. And so
does all the rest of my retro wardrobe – unlike my later, unwise buys from
the high street: a trail of suits that went shiny-kneed and baggy elbowed
within a season.
Because they are meant to do that, Sir, because Sir is supposed to be bored
with them by then. Over the past 30 years, clothes-sellers have successfully
infected the men’s market with the butterfly-minded fashion fixation that
makes such a lucrative business out of womenswear: flimsy, evanescent and
affordably frivolous.
But for the sake of our planet, and for the sake of nurturing deeper
relationships with our possessions in this disposable-everything society, we
need to return to having a sustainable and even (blush) a sentimental
attitude to the things we wear. Instead of treating our threads as
throwaways, we need to keep them as cherished companions, as valued parts of
our life stories. That may mean getting off the ever-spinning wheel of
fashion, but what has contemporary fashion become anyway, other than a
postmodern mishmash of foregone styles? Two decades ago, wearing my vintage
gear made me incongruous: people would remark dismissively that I was “being
Fifties”. Now, however, people just say, “Nice suit.”
John Naish’s new book, Enough: Breaking Free From the World of More
(Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99) is out on January 24
The sentimentalist
Simon Crompton enjoys the emotional resonance of wearing his dad’s clothes
I look at the pants I’ve just put in the bin, and they’re looking at me. I
find this bit hard. It’s somehow like taking your old dog to Battersea Dogs
Home. Something you’ve lived with so long, shared so many experiences, just
discarded like... well, an old pair of pants.
Actually, pants are the easiest. It’s the shirts and jumpers that I get
attached to. I just can’t see why clothes can’t go on for ever. Actually,
several of mine have. Over the years I’ve taken the idea of hand-me-downs to
an extreme. Mostly they came from my dad, and in my teens I seemed to have
been bequeathed a continual trickle of shirts, shoes and ties. Fortunately
for me, the ones he didn’t want in the Seventies were the ones I did –
lovely retro Forties stuff.
Then, in the 1980s, my dad died, and his clothes took on a new emotional
importance. Yes, I now liked wearing his Sixties and Seventies clothes
because they were good quality, but also because they had been his.
And though I’ve been through that awful waste-bin experience many, many times
in the two decades since (sending old clothes for recycling makes the
process more palatable; you can kid yourself that there’s an afterlife) one
or two of Dad’s clothes still make appearances. My mother provides the
provenance, and emphasises that the quality stuff was always bought at the
sales.
Item: one Van Heusen shirt, c1975. Still worn for work, due to
delightful faded blue colour.
Item: one blue Marks & Spencer cotton shirt, c1960, worn by me
until 1985.
Item: one grey summer shirt, Austin Reed sale, c1977. Nice fashionable
tight cut.
Item: two woollen and three silk ties, 1960-80. Last of dozens
devastated by moths.
Item: four white linen handkerchiefs. Item: one grey-and-brown striped
cotton shirt, c1960. Collar very worn, but still brought out on special
occasions.
Item: one M&S macintosh, c1974. Item: one blue waterproof jacket,
c1978, still stuffed in golf bag.
I must stress that I never inherited my father’s pants. But what his
hand-me-downs have instilled in me is that good clothes last and that they
become part of you.
I find it hard to discard something after three years, simply because it was
so badly made that it now has no buttons and resembles a dishcloth. Throwing
clothes away is stressful because they should mean more than this. And it’s
so damned wasteful.
This explains why I have so many gardening clothes. It may also explain why my
fashion statements sometimes have been a bit frayed at the edges. But then,
fashion should be all about being you, and you is partly where you came
from.
Next week in Waste not... Three middle-aged, middle-class brothers go
for a week without spending any money
Flattering your figures
800,000 tonnes of clothes and shoes were thrown away in the UK in 2006;
a people-carrier weighs about a tonne
£30,222 is the amount that the average Briton spends on clothes in
a lifetime
5.4m UK pensioners didn’t buy clothes in 2004
3% of UK household waste is made up of textiles
371million gallons of water would be saved if everyone in the UK bought
one reclaimed woollen garment each year
5p an hour is what workers in Bangladesh are paid to produce clothes
for Primark, Tesco and Asda
£3 million was reportedly paid to Kate Moss to put her name to a
Topshop range of clothing
Sources: Times database, Evergreen, War on Want, www.labourbehindthelabel.org
