I care about my health and sustainability. General advice is to check clothing labels, and I won’t buy underwear or whatever that has a large percentage of polyester. But they can just make it up and there isn’t recourse. Can’t sue em and I don’t have access to a lab that can analyze the composition. So how would one know?
A billionaire’s birthday party will create more pollution in a day than you will create in a lifetime.
Don’t focus on what you are doing, focus on getting good people elected so we can change the system.
Port que no los dos?
We should reward companies striving to be ethical instead of contributing to shareholders of unethical companies.
Shein only exists because people keep giving them money. There is great power in where we choose to spend our money.
Also I’d like to add that the whole billionaires do it so I don’t care anymore is a shitty argument. I care because I care, not because of someone else’s actions, and I can’t turn off the part of my heart that cares because someone else did it. I just want to know who to believe because I need to be clothed in public and I’d like to enrich the least bad guy. Fully aware that the men who move only in dimly lit halls determine my future for me
You ate good people!!
I’ve been feeling down lately because people around me don’t seem to care. Seeing you passion made my day better!!
I didn’t eat any people, how dare you (happy you’re happy and I know what you’re dealing with)
Hahaha damn auto correct!!
Let’s eat the rich instead!
Lol when I read that I was like oh no they caught me eating all the good ones
Just top clarify, I didn’t say not to care. I think that there are certain things we can and should do, but it’s more important to build a powerful movement than to focus on individual effort.
Yeah it’s not gonna do anything if you pressure individuals to make difficult choices and spent a lot of time shopping and we shouldn’t expect a poor working mother to buy from ethical companies, excuse the oxymoron, but I do have time and a tiny bit of money and I just want to know where to focus my efforts. If you want to build a powerful movement I’m all ears, but if you’re just saying that like a catchphrase that’s just noise
PREACH! Forreal I will never dream of buying Shein or the like and encourage everyone to vote with their money. I just want some decent clothes where I can actually trust the label.
Honestly there is a tangible difference in clothing made of synthetics. Like, literally, you can feel the difference. I thrift a lot, and am a clothing and textile snob, and through many years of groping fabric I’ve become able to identify cotton, silk, wool, rayon etc just by touch. In my experience textile labels seem to be accurate as long as they are present. The really shady manufacturers will not put a label on or will call polyester/acetate/acrylic some other name to pretend it’s fancier than it is. If something says it is 100% cotton I personally have never found it to be otherwise. There are methods to test, for instance burning a scrap and looking at the residue or using bleach on protein fabrics (wool/silk). Most often when I misidentify something though, I check the label and it’s like 2% elastane which is frustrating because that stuff wears out and is completely unnecessary in knit fabrics.
Anyway, my recommendation is to avoid feeding the fast fashion industry as much as possible, and thrift or get second hand as much as you can. Those heavyweight 100% cotton T-shirts from the 90s or early zeroes are made of way better quality materials anyway.
I used to thrift a lot but have been finding the value vs reward ratio off, and I can’t tell by feel, and I haven’t seen a lot of old cotton shirts that didn’t have a stain…maybe I just wanted to whine instead of find a solution. I might be doing a learned helplessness thing that I don’t like in myself…
Is it something you do as a hobby/interest or for a living? Bc that sounds like a lot
Is it something you do as a hobby/interest or for a living? Bc that sounds like a lot
Yes to both. I have always been interested in clothes and fashion since childhood (dolls and sewing and crafting etc) and I like getting the most value out of my money, which led me to thrift shops and buying second hand. Thrift shops and the quality of their items are highly variable but for some time I lived in a place that had multiple fantastic shops. I would rotate through them and grab high quality items that were not selling there and sell them online. I moved and don’t pick as much to sell anymore, but I still buy for my family and self.
Thrifting is sort of like gambling, except it costs time instead of money to “play”. You only pay after you “win” by finding the Awesome Thing. Sometimes you will strike out and not find anything, that’s normal. If you only look at one thrift shop once or twice you will likely not find anything, and you usually will find something other than what you were specifically looking for. However when you “win” and find something truly special and exciting, it can keep you going back to the hunt.
Men’s clothes are harder to thrift generally, because as a group, men are more careful consumers and will wear their clothes out instead of donating them. However it’s still perfectly possible to find good things. You already know to look for natural fibers, but did you know you can dye stained shirts in your washing machine with dye from most grocery stores? If you have a an otherwise good quality plain shirt but it has some discoloration, you can spend $5 on a bottle or box of dye, and either throw it in a big cookpot on the stove or run it through the hot wash cycle with anything else you want to be that color. There are also other places to thrift, like online second hand marketplaces (Ebay, Poshmark, Vinted, Thredup etc), Church fundraiser sales, and of course good old yard sales.
Preciate the tips a lot. I’m currently wearing a tank top from god knows where, my brother’s old soccer t-shirt from over 15 years ago, and some sweatpants I have no idea the origin of. Doing my part lol.
I think I’ll set aside dedicated time, like 2 hours on Sunday, to carefully select clothes, so that I can look more put together. Will start with your comment, ty.
Look for trustworthy brands before buying. A shortcut is looking for B Corp brands. If you are in the US,the Commons app is also good.
However, the best thing you can do is just buy less, and buy second hand.
You rock for actually suggesting a solution. Hard to know who to trust though. I searched “commons app clothes” and didn’t see what you’re referring to
It only works in the US, so I never used it. I do listen to their podcast (Second Nature) and really enjoy it. It’s all about trying to do your best to be an ethical consumer n a deeply unethical world.
It is very vo fusing in the beginning, especially with all the green washing. But I do promise that like exercising, it gets easier the more you do it.
Also like I said the B Corp certification is a good shortcut for a first pass in verifying companies. With the caveat that not every ethical company is B Corp, and that I disagree with some of their selections. I tend to look for companies with at least 100 score.
This is helpful, ty. We are doing our best <3