The value of clothing and slow fashion

Times are tough, but we can make a difference.

This has been a rough month for slow fashion brands. Specifically, small, women-owned slow fashion brands (ironic during Women’s History Month). Three of the most beloved companies announced they were closing, and two of those made their statements on the same day. And, while a huge factor for these companies closing may be the state of the economy (inflation and high cost of living), I think the biggest one is actually how little value our culture attributes to our clothing. 

The history of clothing prices

The topic of clothing and value has been heavy on my mind for some time. If you like to nerd out on fashion history as much as I do, you’ll know that our throwaway fashion culture is a recent phenomenon. Up until the 1980s, people had a limited number of clothing items, and they cared for those pieces like they did other valuable necessities like their cars and homes. Clothing was made mostly by small companies. 

Here’s the thing: ALL clothing is handmade. I think we have some idea that a huge machine crafts the clothing we buy when, most of the time, that’s just not the case. There is a person, most likely a very young woman, sewing each pair of jeans you buy, at a sewing machine, in a factory. Life for her really isn’t much different than it was for the women and children working in factories in North America during the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s. Safety regulations in her workplace are lax, intimidation and harassment are the norm, and the pay is barely enough to survive. 

For most of history, clothing was extremely expensive. Remember the scene in Little Women when Meg impulse purchases some fabric for a new dress? It cost $50, which in today’s currency would be around $1170 USD. And that didn’t account for the time she would have to take to actually sew the dress! No wonder people owned fewer items of clothing, and cared for them far longer than we do. In another scene from the 90s adaptation, younger sister Amy wears a blue dress that Meg had worn almost a decade before.This was a historically accurate depiction of how clothing was handed down and adapted for new seasons and new generations because it was simply too expensive and labour-intensive to waste. 

But that started to change around the time my parents were in elementary school. Better technology, as well as outsourcing production to the Global South (cheap labour and lax environmental laws), helped companies bring prices down and production up. At the same time, the fashion industry began pushing the idea that wearing the same clothes all the time wasn’t “stylish” or cool, and that to keep up with trends we have to be constantly shopping for what's new. That’s a simplification of how we ended up here, of course, but suffice it to say that “progress” in this case has meant lower quality for consumers, devastation to the environment, and intense suffering for workers.

Why slow fashion is different

This is the month that many slow fashion brands launch their spring collections. So how does a slow fashion brand do drops, as opposed to the never-ending cycle of cheap goods from sites like Shein and Temu? Let’s use the Spring 2024 Pyne & Smith dress collection as an example. Founder Joanna carefully crafts two collections a year (with a smaller summer launch of sleeveless items), and then her team of fairly-paid seamstresses sew each limited-run garment from sustainable linen that she commissions. The dresses retail for around $300 Canadian regular price, which can be a bit of a sticker shock for those of us used to paying $50 or less for a dress from Old Navy. But when you compare it with the $1170 it likely should cost? It seems like a steal. 

Here’s a little breakdown via Christy Dawn of the costs that go into making a dress where everyone involved is paid fairly. It’s a few years old, so these numbers are a little out of date, but you get the idea: 

Someone else is paying for our cheap clothing

I thought that I had a good understanding of why we should be supporting slow fashion, but when I started learning to sew in 2020, it opened up a whole new world. Fabric is not cheap. And the number of hours it took to sew my first dress was revealing. Sewing my own clothes turned out to be more expensive (and time-consuming) than shopping from big brands. So where are the corners being cut to make those items still profitable to the CEOs? Mostly on the labour side. They are paying extremely skilled sewists in Bangladesh, Turkey and other countries pennies per hour. When you add in lower quality fabric and ignoring environmental practices…you get the picture. 

What would happen if we started attributing true value to the clothing that we buy and own? What if we learned from the past, and began mending, altering, buying less and respecting the time and resources that went into making even the simplest cotton t-shirt? Because the truth is that our clothing DOES have value. It is incredibly labour and resource-intensive to craft each piece in our wardrobe, despite what the price tag may have told us. Clothing is not meant to be thrown away, and we generally need far less than we have. 

Next steps and resources

I’ve started making small changes recently that coincide with my continued evolution when it comes to the value I place on my clothing, and the people and planet that craft it. I’ve committed to buying secondhand or from a slow, sustainable brand, whenever possible, if I need something for the rest of this year. To be transparent, my year didn’t start this way, but I’ve course-corrected and have plans for the rest of 2024. I’ve been tracking my style and shopping evolution on Instagram, in case you’re interested. Here is my shopping list as it stands right now, including the slow fashion brands I am planning to support, for the next couple months:

• Linen dresses (one spring/summer, one fall/winter), Simply Darling Shop, Pyne & Smith

• Leather shoes and sandals, Posh Panda, Adelisa & Co

• Natural-fibre leggings for summer and winter, Free Label, Anne Mulaire

• Overall shorts in denim or linen, secondhand or Notperfectlinen, Lucy & Yak, etc.

• Black cotton cardigan, hopefully secondhand

To close, even if you can’t support slow fashion brands with your dollars right now, please follow and share their work on social media. Start talking about these topics with your friends and family. Sit down and take a hard look at your budget for clothes, and where you might be able to support more ethical and sustainable options.  

Finally, I wanted to bring you some messages from some of the incredible female makers I follow online. Here is what they have to say about what they do:

“Most small businesses buy things from other small businesses so when you support one, you are helping to support a whole chain of small businesses and it makes the world a brighter, more interesting place.” - Justine, Thread and Sprout

“With Christy Dawn…We look at the human impact of what we are doing. It would be crazy to think that having our dresses made in factories where people are paid inhumane wages would be sustainable. It’s certainly not sustainable for the people in those jobs. That’s why we pay our coveted dressmakers living wages, offer health benefits, and paid vacations.” - Christy Dawn, via The Good Trade

“Many high street brands have developed their business model on fast fashion, creating items for us to wear that are not made to last, producing hundreds of thousands of units, enticing us to make the affordable purchase with exciting copies of the latest hot runway items…Developing our own, unique sense of style and self is almost un-obtainable when we put so little thought into buying a garment.” - Joanna, via Pyne & Smith Blog

Resources for shopping and traditional slow fashion secondhand:

• Lucky Sweater (My Fave!!! Trading for slow fashion, vintage and handmade)

• All Things Linen BST (the community I founded for buying, selling, trading and discussing linen garments, as well as other natural fibres each weekend)

• Poshmark (you can find some gems!)

• Selltradeplus (selling, trading and buying plus size slow fashion garments)