Learn how to be a sustainable fashion consumer with simple tips and ideas.
In support of Sustainability Week and looking to be involved in the Fashion Revolution Week movement, I am sharing different tips to become a more conscious consumer when it comes to fashion and beauty.
5 tips to shop your closet the right way.
1. Start cleaning your closet and drawers. Pull out everything out and evaluate. Ask yourself a few questions: Do you like it? Does it look good on you? Does it fit you today? If the answer is “no” to any of those then send it to a second-hand store or online service.
2. Reorganize whatever you have left. A lot of people like to organize by color, a lot other like to organize by category. You can always pick one or both of this ways, just make sure it is a good way to keep it organized. I must confess that I love looking at Pinterest worthy color- gradient organized closets, but I am not that good at keeping mine that way. So I simply divide my closet by categories and I hang the clothes by similar hues, although I don’t spend too much time trying to make it look like a Pantone catalog. But, hey! that’s what works for me.
3. Mix and match the clothes you already have and take a picture of the final look. Yes, for this you will need to plan a good couple of hours in order to really go through all your options and create as many combinations as you can imagine. You can try on everything or just lay it on your bed, turn on your favorite music and play with your clothes and accessories. Try to twist your usual ways to style those jeans and shirt adding color or prints with the shoes and bag selection. Try as many ideas as possible and take a picture of all of them. Once you have them all on your phone, check them one by one and just keep the looks you really love. Use this pictures as a guide to shop and wear your own closet.
4. If you have storage space issues, as many of us do, put your CLEAN seasonal clothes away inside bins. For voluminous pieces as snow jackets or bulky sweaters, go get vacuum bags. I usually take out all the air from their inside and store the tight packs under my bed. Be mindful of not putting any item made of delicate fabric such as silk because it can get damaged or seriously wrinkled. And, seriously, only store the pieces that are odor-free and stain- free. Otherwise, you risk to find out your favorite coat unable to keep going next season because of it stink.
5. Divide your shoes by use frequency. What we do at home is to keep the shoes we use more frecuently by the main door, so we don’t wear them inside the house but we are ready to put them on once we are ready to leave. The rest of our shoes are stored in two different ways: Those that are seasonal are inside a big plastic bin with a lead, so we can keep them away in our garage storage. The rest of the shoes are displayed in our closet in a shoe rack that allows us to see them easily and decide if it is time to change the couple of shoe styles we have by the door. Another option for store your shoes is to use small bins or their own shoeboxes, take a picture of each pair and tape it on the outside, so you know exactly what do you have and where you have them.
In 2013 Rana Plaza’s clothing manufacturing building in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed killing hundreds of people. Factory owners and brands push workers to work overtime, with no regard for safety. Until this day, the owner of the Rana Plaza factory, Shel Rana, even though he ordered workers to go inside the crumbling building that fatal day, has yet to be sentenced. If the consumers don’t change their buying behaviors it is almost impossible that brands and manufacturers change their own ways of exploiting workers all around the world. Let’s push for greater transparency in learning who made our clothes, under what conditions and how we can help to make our society fairer.
