Fighting Consumerism

We all know we live in a highly consumerist society, or era better said. This can easily be said about technology, clothes and even food. 

Technology these days is poorly made ON PURPOSE to be replaced often. Why do you think Apple releases a new iPhone every 6 months or so? their excuse is: "we added a little fix" or "we improved this little thing," and so on.

The same can be said about clothes - at least about what we call fast fashion. Except their excuse is "that you MUST keep up with the trends." There are of course several other aspects in our lives where we're told "this season you MUST buy this or that in order to impress" and the list goes on and on. 

You know what? you must not keep up with any trend! you must not impress anyone with newly bought stuff either! 

You know what? I've had it! a long time ago. And as a result I did all I could to stop buying new items. At least on full price. There are only a few exceptions, because I can't find everything discounted or as second hand. I also started sharing with A coats, shoes, scarves, tshirts - mostly because that's all we can share, since A is much tinier than me. 

Below are some of the stuff A gave me - i chose to show you 3 pairs of pants. One of the pairs is pink and thick sweat pants, which is one of the most recent "gifts". The oldest is the pink silk pair with an over-sized upper part, while the black pair are some ripped jeans for which i must lose some weight. 

I started buying clothes only when there are sales, or from discounted boutiques - so basically the stuff other people didn't like anymore. Let me give you some examples below: 3 pairs of jeans from an discount outlet and 2 tshirts on clearance from a known store (fast fashion, which I'm not very proud of, but I figure that sometimes it's ok if there's an item that we really really like. it's more wasteful if the stuff gets destroyed, in my opinion, and a shame for the work of someone.) 

And yes, 2 of those pairs of jeans are identical, because they fit me so well, and they are so comfortable. The material and the seams seem of pretty good quality as well, and the price was unbeatable - 10 lei a pair! (about 2.5 USD?) The darker large pair is also made of a good quality fabric - thick and heavy, and not stretchy at all. I thought they're designer, but i think they're fakes. Meh! 

I also checked the clearance section of another fast fashion store, but the men's section. I found 2 pairs of jeans that i really like how they look and feel. See them below as well, in the 3rd picture.

I also got some clothes and footwear for free, from a "swap shop" event I found on facebook. There's a jeans jacket, 2 pairs of boots, and some tshirts.  A got a few dresses as well, and a flannel shirt. I'll include a pic of a few of the items, not everything. 

One of the tshirts I got had a few holes in it, that I didn't see when i chose it. I didn't think much about them, and I decided to mend them somehow. 

Speaking of free stuff, remember my post about the expensive stuff I simply found? That's another way I fight consumerism. or by using facebook groups like freecycle, where people give away for free, the items they don't need or want anymore. 

I mentioned earlier I mended some clothes. Luckily, these days fashion is very permissive and allows patches over patches as well as destroyed garments. 

On the tshirt with little holes, I used some clear nail polish to prevent the holes from getting bigger. Then i proceeded to sew on, by hand, some small patches or (printed) ribbon. The ribbon was used as a tag on some other item A got from another outlet (i think). 

Another way we saved some money and fought consumerism, was to share some of the clothes we own.  The easiest is to share the jackets and the shoes, like in the picture below. But granted, we can't share all the shoes nor all the jackets. 

The home clothes and socks are other items we share, just because it's more convenient this way. 

I want to hear from you, how do YOU fight against consumerism, and if you have any other tips for me. :)

© Charly Cross 2013 - present. All rights reserved.