Hi everyone. It's Justine. And I get this question more and more often. Ask consumers what can we
do to help reduce fashion waste? I see where the question is coming from. You are hearing about how
super polluting the fashion industry is. You see textile waste piling up in mountains. Yeah, fair
question. So the first thing that I want to tell you and the great news is yes, as consumers we can
absolutely contribute to making a difference. And so in today's video I want to share with you six
ways in which you can help reduce fashion waste through your own behavior and shopping decisions.
The first one is pretty obvious, shop more sustainably. This means buying from brands
that are really careful about how they source their materials and that everybody
in the process gets paid fairly. It also means avoiding overconsumption. For instance when a
brand's website, you open it. And on the homepage the first thing you get is a huge pop-up ... in
your face, 75% off before you have even seen the product. That brand is pushing you to overconsume.
The fact that they can even sell at 75% off is also quite revealing. It tells you two things.
First, the products were probably quite cheap to produce.
Second, they tend to overproduce as a brand, which is not a sustainable strategy at all.
Then being more sustainable in your behavior also means planning your wardrobe so that
you are consciously deciding what makes it into your closet and that these pieces are
really going to get worn. I have several videos on the topic of capsule wardrobes.
It's a method to help you consciously plan and curate your closet. I will link these
videos for you here in the little card and down below in the video description.
The next strategy to limit fashion waste is to shop and sell secondhand. The most sustainable
garment is one that is already here. When I say this, I know some of you're already
thinking just, "Justine, I don't want to buy old clothes. I can afford to buy new ones on a
budget." I understand this. I think it's a mindset thing and I would like to urge you to look into
it again. What bothers people in general is a thrift store where you have mountains of things,
way too tight, with no order stuffed on hangers. You don't know where to start,
and the whole place smells like mothballs. This is not a great shopping experience, I give you that.
But nowadays, they're also very well curated and chic thrift shops in pretty much any city in the
world where you can also get much better style advice than in shops by huge brands,
franchises that you find in every high street. Because usually the owner of a
thrift store is also the person who selected and bought and curated the entire collection,
so they know much better what they're talking about and they can be of great help.
And if you're not convinced and you don't like the in-store experience, why don't you
shop secondhand online? I'm thinking of websites like Vestiaire Collective, The RealReal, Vinted,
etc. I'll leave you some links in the video description down below. There you can search
exactly precisely what you want. You can sort by brand, by style, by price, by color,
anything you want. Secondhand shopping is cool. If you do want to shop new clothes, you can look
into brands that are involved in circular fashion activities. One concept I really like is design
for disassembly. It means that while designing a product, the brand is already thinking about what
will happen to it at the end of its life. Take a handbag for instance. I just launched my line of
handbags, so I've been thinking about handbags a lot lately. I have one that is made in canvas. It
can be disassembled. You could separate all the elements from each other and recycle them. For
instance, you could isolate the canvas fabric and recycle it. You can isolate, take off the metal
elements, melt them, make something new out of them. Inside the handles, there is layer of cork
to reinforce the handles. You could separate this completely and make something new with the cork.
It would be much harder to disassemble a product like this if the fabric was coated with chemicals,
for instance. Coated canvas is very hard to disassemble and to recycle separately. It
would also be much harder if the material was not just 100% cotton but a mix of different fibers,
some natural, some synthetic. Or if there was a Lurex thread or plastic,
something woven into this fabric, that wouldn't work. You couldn't disassemble it and so you
could not easily recycle that product. And the reason why I really like that
concept of design for disassembly is that I think it's fairly easy as a consumer to
guess or to assess whether a brand has been designing a product with circularity in mind.
Your next strategy is to rent your wardrobe. You'd be surprised how many companies offer
fashion rental these days. You can rent clothes for special occasions on Rent the
Runway. They're specialized on high fashion and designer prints. You can also rent clothes from
By Rotation. There it's an app where users are renting from each other. You can even rent bags
from Selfridges in the UK. Plenty of options really. You can just Google rental of blah,
blah, blah, and you'll probably find what you're looking for without having
to actually purchase it. And again, open the video description and you'll find all the links.
Upcycling is another great option. Example, you have jeans that get a hole at the knee level,
cut them into shorts. Once the shorts have a hole at the crotch level, and so the crotch overlap,
turn the shorts into a skirt. Once the skirt has a whole. Denim is really good cotton fabric,
so you still want to keep it. Cut a piece that you can use as a cloth for
detergents. Turn the rest into a patchwork blanket with other rest of other fabrics.
This is what my grandmother used to do. Textile would be endlessly recycled around
her house. I don't think I've ever seen her throwing away textile. It was too valuable.
And upcycling also works for me as a designer. I can use rests of fabric that were overproduced in
another brand's production that they ended up not using. I can buy that inventory and
make something with it. Designer Marine Serre, I don't know if you know her, she's French. She
started like that. She would buy rests of fabric inventory from different brands and turn them into
her collections. That's up upcycling as well. If you do end up donating your clothes which is
also an option to lengthen the life cycle of a garment, you need to make sure that you're
donating the garments somewhere where they're actually needed and can be used. For instance,
the Red Cross which is present in many countries across the
globe. They typically sell garments that are donated and then with the budget generated,
they finance other projects. So in their case, they can only do something with the donation
if the clothes are in good enough condition, good enough quality to actually be resold.
Association Initiatives, working with homeless people, what they need the most are warm clothes
like a wool sweater or outerwear. They don't need another 20 H&M polyester skirts. Because
here is the thing, if you are shopping too much and you're conscious of it but you're saying,
"It's okay because when I don't want these things anymore, I can donate them, so I'm
not going to throw them away." It's only half true because at some point later down the line,
somebody will have to deal with that extra textile that is in circulation. Technically,
you're outsourcing the problem of the textile waste to the next person.
The most sustainable mindset would be, "I myself, will I wear this garment often enough
for it to be worth it if I buy it at all?" Thumbs up if you enjoyed this video. Thank
you very much for your support. Don't forget to subscribe to this channel. Do let me know in the
comments below, I've touched upon different topics today. Is there a topic in there that
you would like to hear more about because I can definitely dive a lot deeper in future videos.
Let me know. And if you need a shopping checklist to make sure that the clothes that you decide to
purchase are needed and will be cherished, I have a video for you to watch next. You will be linked
here and down below as well. I'll see you soon in a new one. And until then, take care. Bye.