5 Tips to Make Your Fashion Shopping Sustainable
By: Maria Pastor Paz
Tags: Shopping, Lifestyle, Fashion, Sustainability, Environment

Being a personal stylist has helped me realize that for a few years now, people have started changing their minds, asking for information, and being aware of what they are buying.

At the beginning of my career, not many of my clients would ask me for the quality of the products, or if the brands were fair trade or where the clothes were made. But little by little, I can see how society is in a constant change. We still have a long way to go but this is a good sign of what is to come.

I would like to share with all of you, a bit of myself, and my relationship with fashion over the years.

I used to be a girl who was crazy about fashion but I didn’t care about quality or who made my clothes — at that time not many people spoke out about this issue. I found myself shopping for new clothes, shoes, accessories every single week, and as you can understand, nothing I really need.

Something really helped me to stop shopping in a compulsive way was to ask myself, “Do I need this product?”. As you can imagine, most of the time the answer was “No, I don’t need it”. But my consumerist mind was saying to me “you really love it, you can’t live without it and is going to be out of stock soon because it’s a very cool piece” obviously I could live without it and didn’t need it. What I started doing it, was asking myself in three weeks' time, first, if I still needed it, second, if I still loved it as much as the first day and third, if I really thought it was a good purchase.

Photo by Jacek Dylag

However, the reality is that I needed to re-educate myself again. It took me time to stop buying and think further than I want this or that. I started thinking about who made my clothes or the impact my acts had on the environment among others and that’s what made me change my lifestyle and start being more sustainable.

As a consequence of the Mundial crisis we are living in, the big brands will have to take decisions and change their business model into more sustainable and caring options. Right now, the fashion industry is the second most polluting in the world. Society is asking more than ever for a change. We all showed, in these last three months that if we consume responsibly, the pollution falls to disappear in many countries, and we leave the earth breathing again.

Photo by Charles Etoroma

So, let’s bet for sustainability. Making some changes in our habits, for example:

Buy vintage clothes instead of brand new.

Customize those items you have in your wardrobes that you don’t like anymore, or you are tired to wear.

If you decided to go for a brand new item, find out about the brand you are going to buy. Where they made your clothes? Are the people who make your clothes in good working conditions? The fabrics they use, if they are recycled, organic, fair trade, or sustainable?

Buy items with quality that you don’t need to renew every year.

Choose timeless outfits that you can wear over and over during the years and you won’t be bored with them.

Those are some of the ideas I try to introduce when I need to buy something. Also, no one is perfect and sometimes I don’t tick all the boxes. But it will be amazing if all of us, next time we go shopping, we can keep in mind some of these tips and put them into practice. You will save money, space in your wardrobe, you will be helping people, you will help people with their rights as workers and you will help take care of our planet!