I like to dress-up, but I don’t like waste

I just added this sentence to my IG bio “I like to dress up, but I don’t like waste” & I feel like I need to elaborate.

I always loved to dress-up, ever since I can remember myself. I had many phases in my life, different tastes, different styles, but I always paid attention to my clothes, always built outfits in my head for the next day. I feel like fashion went from not being accessible to many (it was too expensive to look good before), to being accessible to everyone (with fast fashion brands copying all of the trends from fashion shows, producing unimaginable quantities of clothes, keeping price points lower than should be even possible). And I, together with fashion industry, went from saving up for one nice dress, to buying way too many dresses (some of which would sit in my closet for months with price labels still attached waiting for their better day to come). And hence, I started to waste. Waste too much money on clothes that I don’t even wear, waste too much time at the mall, create waste by throwing unwanted clothing items away at least twice a year. I used to call those “closet clean outs” but in reality it was just creating waste. I would listen to stylists from tv shows, who’d say something like “if you haven’t worn this for 6 months, throw it away” and that I did. I’d put t-shirts, jeans, shoes in near to perfect condition in big black bags and just.throw.them.away. Without even thinking where would all of this waste go to?! Now after saying this, I might lose some followers, I can hear people in the back being like “she promotes thoughtful fashion, did she even think twice before throwing all those things away?!”. But that’s it. People change, mature, re-think… re-use, re-cycle, re-wear.

I finally came to a point in my life, where I’m very happy with my fashion choices. I buy almost nothing from fast fashion brands, I try to support the local community of creators/ designers, I wear second-hand clothes. Each item in my closet has a (sometimes short, sometimes very long) story. Each item is special in its own way. I repeat many outfits, I try to come up with different styling ways for the same clothing item. And most importantly, I share all of this with you, my lovely, very appreciated follower. I am not perfect, I never was, I might never be. But I like to dress-up and I don’t waste.