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Sustainable fashion: The community you want to be a part of
2020 has been a chaotic year; politics has become so polarised, the world has gone into lockdown, and our climate is descending into madness. But in reality, this could be our future if we don’t act now. 2020 was the year to save our planet and to hold the big industries accountable. 2020 was the year to redeem ourselves, but the pandemic has diverted our gaze to the immediate threats we’re facing. It’s time to make our consumption sustainable. Climate crisis Environmental activists have been flooding the media with statements trying to draw the world’s attention to our planet’s cry for help. We are rapidly depleting our resources and most…
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Will fashion ever be truly genderless?
In this article we’ll be investigating whether or not genderless fashion is just a trend, or whether it’s here to stay. While gender-fluidity can seem like quite a recent topic, it can be traced back to 1824. Hidden in the forests of Indiana, a small town called New Harmony was founded. In this town, both men and women could wear shirts and trousers. But how could one small town revolutionise gendered clothing while the rest of the world was trapped in rigid gender-stereotypes for the next 150-200 years? How has vintage and second-hand clothing changed gendered clothing? Now that sustainability is becoming a huge part of life for all of…
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Ambiguous Vintage
‘Vintage’ can mean different things to different people and clever marketing has given it a rise in popularity in the last twenty years. Nowadays, you can find ‘second-hand’ clothes for 99p while a ‘vintage’ tag can push it towards £99. Did we trade in value for cool points when ‘vintage’ became a desirable look? When I first moved to London a few years ago, I was excited to discover events called Vintage Kilo Sales. The idea behind these events was quite simple – a local hall is filled with pre-loved items and the price of the clothes is determined by their weight. A kilo of clothes thus has a set…
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Bricks and Mortar
While online-only brands like ASOS, Boohoo and Missguided chip away at our formerly fashionable high streets, is the same true when it comes to second-hand? Do charity shops, vintage boutiques and thrift stores suffer at the hands of online marketplaces such as eBay and Depop? In 2015 the used textile market was worth close to €4 billion. Today, the volume of used or second-hand clothing is enormous and growing. And increasingly, this volume isn’t just coming from more economically developed countries, but from countries around the world. For example, 60% of Chinese consumers now admit to owning more clothes than they need, with the average number of wears per item…
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Vintage Fashion: Sustainable Style
I used to walk past high street shops and fill to the brim with excitement. There is no doubt that the feeling got my adrenaline pumping. As a British girl living on the continent, my options for shopping were limited in my eyes. I took trips to London just to go to the Oxford Street Primark. My friends and I would go mad in that shop, buying all the latest bright-coloured trendy tops. Although Primark was my favourite store, as a thirteen-year old I could easily be dragged into any famous high street shop. The whole experience was thrilling to me. A shopping trip never ended in disappointment. I was…
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Once Upon A Frock – The Green Silk Dress
There’s something magical about shopping for second hand clothes; it’s a treasure hunt for a hidden gem and when you find something, you cherish it forever. Tell us about your favourite vintage buy and how you came to fall in love with it! Every summer, I make the journey to the south coast of England to visit my great-aunt. This has been a tradition for many years. I first started going with my grandma as a child but now, being in my twenties, I travel down by myself. For a few days, we enjoy going to cafes, relaxing at her beach hut and doing arts and crafts. Last summer, I…
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Vintage Fashion: A Wardrobe of Hidden Histories
By Molly TaubeInstagram: @smollmol Crafting an outfit can be a form of art, a ritual of creative selection and self-expression. How will you present yourself that day, what energy would you like to embody, how can your wardrobe facilitate capturing who you are or want to be? Clothes not only have utility but intrinsic value as forms of self-expression and a way of understanding yourself through your fashion choices. It makes sense then, that an important choice is what we will wear. This outfit selection can be as subtle or as captivating as you want depending on how you feel that day. Having the right clothes for the right mood…
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Vintage vs Charity Stores: ‘Who Are We?’
Second-hand clothes are wardrobe treasures passed on from one person to the next and each unique item tells a story – yet they seem to get a mixed review amongst shoppers. Does using the term ‘vintage’ free you from the stigma or does buying second-hand clothes make you feel like a second-class citizen? By Annabel LindsayInstagram: @annabellindsay To quote the official Wild Child herself, aka Miss Poppy Moore, “If we could just call this stuff vintage and add three zeros to the price tag, I could totally get into it”. This very important pop culture reference, I believe, is the perfect opener for exploring the stigma woven into second-hand clothing. The term ‘second-hand’ seems irrelevant when buying…
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Second Hand Fashion: From Milan to London
By Mariangela BrunaInstagram: @maribruknitwear My view of second-hand clothes changed over the years and when I moved country. I grew up in Italy between the ’70s and the ’80s. Second-hand was definitely associated with second-class, poverty; not being able to afford new stuff was considered a kind of failure. My mum always bought new clothes for my brother and me. Although we had older cousins we very rarely inherited any clothes from them. I suppose my parents’ generation was still too close to WW2 (that some of them had experienced directly as children) and the poverty and hardship associated with wartimes. Plus, in the ’70s the economy was still growing,…
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Thrift Fashion Hauls: Changing Trends, Changing Attitudes
By Carissa KotyuhaInstagram: @carissablount Twitter: @carissastoryy “Fashion trends tend to repeat themselves”, said my mom on several occasions over my 24 years on this planet. Every 20-30 years, some trend highly distinguishable for its presence in the last few decades pops up again on the fashion runway and trickles down to the storefronts of Forever 21’s across the country. From high-waists to bell-bottoms, fashion trends seem to fade out just as quickly as they came in. Most of our closets and drawers are filled to the brim with pieces that reflect trends that have come and gone, but are eventually sorted through and then donated or thrown away. But a growing…
