There's lots of fun to be had with fashion, especially if it's slow!
Taking control of your wardrobe means knowing what suits you best,shopping smarter, finding great treasures, swapping, mending and making your own.
It all takes time and the result is slowing down the pace at which we consume and discard clothes in the name of fashion. And being more aware of the huge industry behind fast fashion, as well as its social and environmental impacts.
At our inaugural Skill Share session on February 15, local Kat Wray told us how the Rana Plaza building collapse in 2013 in Bangladesh got her thinking about her fashion choices.
The building housed garment factories, including ones that made clothes for Benetton, Prada, Gucci, Versace and Walmart. In the collapse, 1,134 people died and the poor working conditions of garment workers in Bangladesh were exposed to the world.
In countries like Australia, we’ve grown to expect clothes to be cheap because a big part of the cost of producing them – social and environment costs – are not included in the price to the consumer.
As a result of the Rana Plaza disaster, people started paying attention and the slow fashion movement gained traction. Today there’s a wealth of resources available for people looking to reduce the impact of their fashion choices.
One of Kat’s favourites is Wardrobe Crisis, a podcast that addresses big issues – the future of fashion, justice for garment workers, climate change, plastic pollution – with humor, vulnerability and warmth.
That was also how Kat went about telling her slow fashion journey to a great group of people who came to Skill Share.
We talked about the challenge of buying nothing for a year, learning your colours and what fits well according to your body shape so you buy less, tips for optimum op-shopping, clothes swaps around Perth, how to sew basic clothes for yourself.
It turns out everybody has a bit of information to share with others, and it was exciting to see the exchange coming alive at the Slow Fashion session.
The Skill Share series is all about exchanging, starting with someone who feels passionate about a particular issue. If you would like to raise your hand to host a Skill Share session at our centre, don’t hesitate to drop us line!
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