I'm sure you all saw in the news this week and plastered all over Facebook, Twitter etc - the scary headlines along the lines of "WE HAVE 12 YEARS TO CHANGE EVERYTHING OR THE PLANET WILL BE DAMAGED BEYOND REPAIR". Now this along with the suspiciously high 21 degree temperatures in London this week meant that everyones ears suddenly pricked up and we all started to ask ourselves what we could do to be a tiny part of this change.
Could I become vegetarian for a few days a week and cut down my meat consumption? Probably. Could I also stop buying drinks and plastic packaged foods for lunch, cutting down plastic waste? Also yes. But these are all things that are shovelled down our throats constantly and there is already a big buzz around them. What I became more interested in is the impact that our generation in particular is having on the planet, the habits we are introducing and how we can try and create a buzz around these less talked about factors that actually have more of an effect than we might think.
If you are following or reading my blog, you will more than likely be here for the fashion chit chat, the outfit links and all that jazz. However for this post I am glad to announce that there are absolutely no website links for this ootd, simply because its all old and god forbid HAND ME DOWNS. The skirt is roughly 7 years old from a dress that I had when I was about 14 years old which I have cut up and saved for so long just because I adored the fabric and new that someday I would be able to make something beautiful out of it (helps that mum's a seamstress cough cough). And the jumper was an unwanted hand me down which scratches a little bit but was originally from a lovely high end store so I didn't want to part with. I was inspired to do a set of outfit photos using only recycled/ out of season clothes to try and spark up a conversation between girls that follow me because I think the whole of instagram has started to become so focused on constant consumption of fast fashion, a new outfit for every occassion, constant browsing of the New In sections from our favourite shops, the fear of being an 'outfit repeater', and just wanting to constantly be a part of all the fleeting trends.
I am absolutely a contributer to the problem myself, most Sundays spent browsing instagram, spotting something I love on someone, clicking through to the outfit link and then spending the next few hours lost in the depths of the asos new in section - but I am starting to wake up to the harm it is causing and trying to make a conscious effort to only buy pieces that I know I can style in different ways, create different outfits to wear more than once, resell old pieces that I know I won't wear again, and steer away from any trends that I know will be shoved to the back of my wardrobe in the next month or so - such as a neon green roll neck that looked cool on that one girl but I will definitely try on once, realise I look like a knob and shamefully hide any evidence of my mad 5 minutes at the bottom of a drawer somewhere - you know the ones.
"If one million women bought their next item of clothing secondhand instead of new, we would save 6 million kg of carbon pollution from entering the atmosphere"
Shocking right? So here I am doing my teeny tiny bit and trying to get a few of you to do a double think before you do your weekend shop - in the words of Vivienne Westwood "Buy less, choose well"
If you want to share your own recycled/ old season/ reworked outfits it would be really cool to start up a hashtag so we can use each other for inspiration and make this a thing! Add #oldseasoninspo and I'll share them on my story.
