Dressing ethically,it's not a snobbish trend but a commitment that we must respect.
For many of us, fashion is frivolity and whim, beautiful certainly, but also vacuous and often out of context. Yet every day we open the wardrobe, choose what to wear and, consequently, what role to play. Our relationship with clothes is the hate and love of Catullian memory, dotted with wrong choices, with unnecessarily full wardrobes that we look at disconsolately because they have everything, absolutely everything, except that blouse which, right now, would have been perfect.
What happened to our grandmothers who said "few but good things are better" . Why do we buy so much, spend so much, make so many mistakes?
A complex question that Marta D. Riezu tries to answer in her essay "The right fashion, an invitation to dress ethically" which provides us with an accurate picture of the contemporary way of purchasing, enjoying and undergoing fashion.
We purchase 50 items a yearwhich we wear on average 6 times.
Fashion is crucial because, like it or not, it defines who we are. Fashion is a big mess because it costs a lot, it is not fair or even supportive, it does a lot of damage in terms of exploitation, it highlights inequalities.
Riezu makes a sparkling comparison with the food industry which is at least thirty years ahead of fashion: we are very sensitive to food ethics but we don't pay enough attention to the ethics of clothing. Yet fashion and nutrition equally have a great impact on the planet.
We have been overproducing clothes, shoes and accessories for no more than fifty years. Since the end of the '80s, fast fashion has appeared, hailed by many as elegance within everyone's reach and defined by others as the democratization of style. And this is how, think about it, today the low price has become a right, not an option.
It matters little if low prices mean exploitation (of raw materials), delocalisation (of production), burglary (of the ideas of fashion greats).
Since 2000, production has doubled and today the situation is clear: in Europe we buy on average around 50 items (clothing, shoes, accessories) a year, we wear them six times and then bye bye. The statistics speak for themselves: for every three products created, only one is actually sold.
Sustainability, Riezu comments, is not a whim but a pact between quality and respect that has existed for a long time. Consumerism, low cost, throwing away carelessly, these are recent fashions.
It is estimated that it takes ten years to neutralize the ecological impact of a dress. But a beautiful suit, of excellent quality, perhaps sewn by a tailor, can live great for at least twice as much. I don't know about you, but we belong to a generation where there was a sewing machine in the house, where we mended, where we put mothballs because things had to be looked after so that they lasted longer.
It seems easy, but today throwing away a dress is cheaper than having it mended, unless you know how to sew or have a good seamstress. Yes, then the seamstresses, the menders, the embroiderers, the knitters, the milliners are all species in danger of extinction.
An essential wardrobe,organized and representative.