In the last ten years, in terms of style and fashion, sustainability has made enormous strides. Partly because, when new paradigms take over, it always takes some time before a settlement takes place and partly because the old systems always struggle dramatically to slow the advancement of the new. For this reason, for a few years sustainable fashion has been assimilated to something good, but “raw”, also in terms of style.
Sustainable fashion brands can also be appealing
Today, however, sustainable fashion brands or those that work in this direction are able to have a medium / high level standing. There are many names that can support this vision: Tiziano Guardini, Gucci, Ecoalf, Canada Goose and even the small or niche ones can have their say in terms of style, uniqueness, outstanding. Although much progress has been made, the cliché of ugly sustainable fashion is struggling to die and they compare clothes to clothes similar to jute sacks. If we really had to focus on the materials most used by sustainable and increasingly sustainable fashion, jute is not among the main yarns that come to mind.
Plastic: from an enemy to a friend of fashion
It may be that karma can be ironic and fun, but after having thrown millions of tons of plastic into the sea or having abandoned the nets on the seabed, the main yarns used in the world of fashion sustainability are precisely made thanks to the recovery of these materials, ergo the plastic. Personally, I struggled a bit to get used to this new imagery of “plastic” clothes. After all, I’m a girl from the 70s and I still think of the wool sweaters my grandmother made for me or my mother bought me in stores. At the time there were no sweatshirts (they entered our imagination in the 80s and were considered cheap, among other things, because they came from the United States which were not yet considered a trend setter in terms of fashion).
Today I am more used to this idea and I live peacefully with the idea that in clothes we will find less and less natural materials, also because it would be ridiculous to stop exploiting certain fabrics to start exploiting other resources. In sustainability, the word “exploitation” should be abolished, both in terms of raw materials and in terms of human resources.
What to do to dress more sustainably?
To avoid filling the wardrobe with plastic in the form of garments, I extend the life of the clothes, I recover garments from the family wardrobes and have them adapt to my personality and not just my physical vintage online purchase and I try to find companies that create garments of quality, a feature that once again lengthens the life cycle of the clothes. Finally, I got out of the loop of visiting the sites to see if there is anything fancy, but I only buy when absolutely necessary because, let’s face it frankly, we still have wardrobes full of clothes.
And you, do you dress sustainable?
