Above image from: The Fast Fashion Epidemic
I try to walk lightly on this earth. I prefer to leave no trace, or to leave things better than I found them, especially since I have a daughter! I want her to inherit a beautiful, healthy, well-functioning planet and society, as idyllic and far fetched as that might sound right now.
For years my design business involved making one-of-a-kind custom headpieces that last for a decade or more. Beautiful items but they weren't scalable and didn't pay the bills; but, almost no footprint.
Now I'm in the industry, and I feel the waste everywhere! Garment bags, hangers, boxes, scraps of fabric. I feel it all.
I also suspect there are solutions we could all be participating in if we shifted our focus and energies. I know there are multiple kinds of plastic-eating fungi out there; why don't we all have a box of them in our kitchens or backyards where we put our plastic refuse? Can we stop waging war on each other long enough to focus on actions and solutions that make this a lovelier place for our kids?
https://earth.org/plastic-eating-mushroom-of-the-amazon-and-ecuadors-development-dilemma/#:~:text=When%20Yale%20University%20students%20found,landfills.%20They%20taste%20good%20too.
My designs come from a love of the kind of lifestyle where you invest in a smaller number of beautiful things that you truly love, and you wear them for as long as 20 years. I have items in my closet that go back 15 years and more, and I look forward to lending them to my daughter when she's tall enough (which feels like it'll be next week but is probably more like 4 years).
As overwhelmingly complex as the world is right now, instead of fretting about every scrap of fabric that gets thrown out, I think the thing for me to do is promote the "consumption" of very well made things that last, preferably made with natural or recycled materials (happy to say most of my fabrics qualify). Bringing beauty into the world is still important. I'd like the beauty I bring in to have a beautiful effect while it's being made - supporting local workers in ethical conditions here in NYC and not creating excess waste - and long after it's bought, lasting years and leaving as little trace as possible. We'll see. It's a complicated world these days. Oof.