Having had a ‘thrilling’ moment of fast-fashion resistance, Hannah Rochell explains why she champions the circular fashion and slow style movement
It’s been seven years since I walked empty handed out of a shop that was selling a printed skirt I loved in my signature colours. It was like it had been designed specifically for me … but this 100% virgin polyester skirt was being sold at a too-good-to-be-true price (less than thirty quid!) by a fast fashion brand I no longer wanted to spend my money with.
Why did I look this gift horse in the mouth? I had an epiphany. No more overconsuming on mass-produced, on-every-corner outfits. Instead, I had pledged to choose quality gear made using natural and recycled fibres. To my surprise, I left the store with a far bigger buzz than if I had bought that skirt with my name on it. It was, genuinely, quite thrilling.
Changing my shopping habits began when I learned the staggering estimate that every second, the equivalent of a rubbish truckload of clothes is burnt or buried in landfill, and that 60% of material made into clothing is plastic fabrics like polyester. We often hear about planned obsolescence – products that are intentionally designed to be replaced after a short amount of time, like smartphones – but have you ever thought that many of the around 100 billion garments produced annually are made using the same principles? Many fashion brands are built around a model that doesn’t want you to treasure, take care of and repair your clothes. Rather, it wants you to buy more stuff from them next season (or next week). In fact, some garments are made so badly that they fall apart after a few wears, making them unsuitable for the resale market. So even if you have good intentions for rehoming your old clothes, much of it ends up in landfill, where, if it’s made from plastic fibres like polyester, nylon or acrylic, it will stay for hundreds (or thousands) of years.
But there is a better way, as I have discovered in the years following my day of resistance on the high street. I now spend my money with brands that make clothing more responsibly, whether that’s a micro-company producing in small batches in the north of England, a slow fashion label that values timeless style over trends, or a B-Corp working towards increased supply chain transparency. Bonus points for the ones that take back their used clothes and repair, resell or recycle them, with details of what they do with them.
Take Seasalt Cornwall, a B-Corp brand that realises there is still work to do and challenges to overcome, and is on a journey to do better. Its Creative Circularity vision means that soon it will offer its customers the opportunity to send back their used Seasalt products for charity resale, re-use or recycling through the Salvation Army (although since it aims to design quality clothing intended to be worn for years, you probably won’t require that service for a while) [Note to client: are these links that we’ve added here the right ones to use?) .
A pioneer of using certified organic cotton, Seasalt is also working to reduce the amount of virgin fibres used in new clothing, with innovative initiatives like Seasalt Circular, which uses end-of-roll fabrics to design limited edition pieces, each unique thanks to the section of previous season prints selected for each particular piece. And it has just launched its second collaboration with the vintage chain Beyond Retro, using reclaimed denim and shirting to create patchwork capsule collections for men and women with retro vibes that celebrate the history of the materials used. I couldn’t think of a better way to show I’m shunning fast fashion than by, quite literally, wearing my support for responsible brands on my upcycled sleeve.