Yes, that right it is that time of year again, the festival season, which means only one thing festival fashion. Or, as many would say, the pressure to buy an over the top outfit that you will never wear again after the festivals finished. This fashion style is damaging our planet by contributing to fast fashion.
What is a fast fashion?
Well, fast fashion is cheap clothes created to support the idea that you should buy a whole new wardrobe for that one occasion. But what happens to that item once you are finished with it? Well, generally, people tend to throw it away, contributing towards our never-ending landfills.
Did you know that the clothes we sent to our landfill weigh the same as the Empire State Building!
Another reason why fast fashion is so bad is its impact on its people and our environment.
Fast fashion encourages pressure on people to reduce the cost of their clothes and speed up their production. This then impacts our environment because they use cheap, toxic textile dyes to create these clothes.
Polyester is one of the most popular fabrics that is used in fast fashion. This fabric is created from fossil fuels, which contributes to global warming and can shed microfibres, increasing the levels of plastic in our oceans.
But even when fast fashion decides to use “natural fabrics” to create their clothes, the scale they are doing it at still has a significant impact. This is because conventional cotton requires enormous quantities of water and pesticides, and in developing countries, it is putting them at risk of drought. Not only that but is it creating a huge amount of stress on water basins.
It not just an environmental cost but also a human cost.
It impacts garment workers who have been found to work in dangerous conditions, for low wages and without human rights. One serious incident that occurred because of fast fashion happened in 2013 when the Rana Plaza clothing manufacturing complex in Bangladesh collapsed, killing over 1,000 workers.
What can we do to our festival outfits to contribute less to fast fashion?
Re-wear and love what you already have
This means that you have to look at what you already have from a new perspective. For example, can you use that silk kimono as a head wrap or turn that silk dress into a skirt by adding a neon t-shirt over it.
Sometimes this might mean you have to be quite handy with a sewing machine, but if you’re not, you could always ask a friend to help you. Or if it is worn out, then maybe you could upcycle it.
Handy tips:
– You can use the hashtag #OOOTD to share your ‘Old Outfit of the Day.’
– Once you have looked through your wardrobe, make a pile of clothes that need mending and DO IT!
Shop second hand, Vintage or Thrifted
Clothes swap with a friend. If you have a specific theme outfit in mind, you can try and reach out to someone on social media to see if someone has that special item to make your outfit complete.
If reaching out to people through social media doesn’t work out, you can always try and rent something.
You can find a lot of fancy dress shop in your area. You can find lots of second-hand shop or vintage boutiques online. Many people like to shop on popular sites like Depop or eBay for someone unwanted trendy pieces.
Handy Tips:
– Raid your mum/ grandparents wardrobe- to find some vintage pieces from back in their days.
– Set up a jumble sale! It a great place to meet new people and to find some amazing clothes.
– Set up a group chat with your festival friends and create a list of all the clothing items you don’t wear, and have a swap system in places for those pieces.
Make it! Upcycle it! Repurpose it!
This idea is a fun way to create your festival outfit. It will defiantly make you stand out from a crowd and guarantee that no one will have the same outfit as you.
To do this, have a good look at what clothes and accessories you already have and try and up-cycle it into something new. For some inspiration, there are so many different blogs and YouTube video to help give you some inspiration and advice.
If we all work together, we can start a festival fashion revolution and reduce fast fashion to protect not just the workers but also our environment.