What is Slow Fashion?
Slow Fashion favors trendless designs and premium long lasting quality garments that approach the production of each piece of clothing with respect for the people who make them, the environment and animals. The goal is to encourage slower production schedules, small batch collections and zero-waste designs and put the spotlight on the artisans who make our clothes.
It is quality based, rather than time based. It is the combination of both brand practices and the customers shopping habits, unifying sustainability with ethics.
On the other hand, Fast Fashion retailers have taught us that more is better, thus creating a huge consumption issue. This “buying mania” has resulted in people not needing to “go” shopping but “are” shopping now every minute on their smartphone.
One of the many downsides to this is that 90% of our clothing is being thrown away before it needs to be and for every five new garments produced each year, three garments are disposed of. People worldwide are feeling “stuffocated” and oppressed by their unmanageable heap of stuff
In other words, the Fast Fashion industry is driving down quality, exploiting the environment and their workers to create cheap garments that do not last. Slow fashion is the exact opposite of this. It’s about creating mindful, curated collections based on quality, versus pumping out large quantities of seasonal and trendy clothing.
What can we do?
We, as consumers need to actively become more curious and intentional with our clothing purchases and focus on being mindful – only purchasing what we need, investing in trendless as opposed to trendy and focusing on quality over quantity.
There also need to be more regulation, accountability, and transparency in the fashion industry. If there’s no accountability on the brand’s part, it’s too easy to not take an interest in the full lifecycle of the production.
Fashion media can tend to shine a light on the big brands, who can afford to buy it instead of featuring more up and coming brands who have genuine sustainability and ethics built into the core of their business model. If the focus were to shift into creating awareness and unveiling the perils of over consumption it could help consumers make better choices that have a positive impact on the health of the environment.
As a brand we shouldn’t be part of the problem but part of the solution. Our goal is to create pieces of high quality that will last generations, using eco-friendly and reusable materials in our jewelry line as well as our clothing line. From the pieces themselves to the packaging, everything is thought of to be timeless and repurposed. And our hope is that we can inspire more brands and consumers to follow this ethic.