There’s No Such Thing As Eco-Fashion
Yesterday I was reading a guide about how a bunch of famous spiritual and health conscious women start their days. It was a little interesting, but mostly boring; none of them had young children, so spending three hours doing yoga and meditating and leisurely reading over a cup of tea sounded completely stupid to me. I used to have mornings like that in college, but there’s just no having them if you have young kids.
All of them had jobs that didn’t require frantic running out of the door, either; they were writers, artists, media consultants, and what have you. I’m a writer too, so I don’t have room to talk, but I’m just pointing out that their tips certainly would not work for the average working woman or mother.
One of the women described herself as an eco fashion designer, and I had to chuckle. I guess it’s nice to design clothes for a living and all, but to me there’s no such thing as eco fashion. There is recycling and reusing old clothes and passing them on, and making new clothes as sustainably as possible without, say, the use of chemicals or sweatshops or virgin trees or whatever.
And maybe this designer does just that, and maybe she makes the world a better place. But what I’ve found with lines of things like eco laundry detergent and eco fashion and eco blah blah is that it’s usually an expensive marketing ploy to get you to spend more money when you can usually make these things at home. In fact, tomorrow I am starting to make my own shampoo out of baking soda and warm water as a friend recently showed me because I’m not buying the natural organic stuff—literally or figuratively—anymore. I can’t afford it, for one thing; but it’s also usually not as natural or as organic as they claim to be.
To me, eco fashion is heading to the thrift store and buying something used cheaply—perhaps while dropping off your own old clothes in return to keep the cycle going. I am getting tired of people peddling their “eco friendly” wares at me all of the time when I can just as easily make my own. You know what’s eco friendly? Skipping the packaging and unnecessary driving or delivery trucks and, say, pulling dandelions out of your yard to make tea. But that doesn’t sell anything, does it?