ONE OUTFIT ONE YEAR

So many people have been asking me what I am going to do when I reach a year – “Aren’t you excited?” “What is the first thing you want to put on?” “You have to wear something crazy!” But the fact is that I have kind of just been dreading this point, because I don’t know how to proceed from here. I just know that this has influenced me much deeper than I could ever have imagined, it was maybe in the beginning just a month long experiment that would be over and would maybe give me a few answers to my curiosity – but the fact is that I don’t think that I can ever go just back to how it was before. So that is why I sit here, confused about what to do, still wearing the same clothes.

What I have come to realize is that if I would go straight back to wearing ‘all’ clothes, I would have a few problems.

Firstly, I have sold and given away most of the clothes that I owned before my year started. But even if I hadn’t done that a lot of them would not be relevant for me to wear today. This is because we are so fast influenced by trends and bombarded with new styles and options that most of my clothes from a year ago wouldn’t be as current as they were then.

Secondly, if I were super excited about ‘finally’ getting to wear something different, which is not the feeling that I have – although a lot of people don’t seem to understand that, and would go out and buy me something new and current and totally out there, it would go against everything that I have been standing for in the last 12 months.

So really, these options are not appealing to me at all.

I know that people talk about the fact that fashion and clothing is a way to express ourselves and be individual, but after having taken a step back – I don’t feel like this is as true to all of us as we would like to believe – and are encouraged to believe. I have actually in some ways felt the opposite. I have noticed that all around us, and especially in social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat we are so heavily exposed to pretty things and pretty people living their shiny lives. Even thought we don’t think we are or deny the fact that this has an influence on us – it does.

And I could see it clearly as I started my experiment. I completely stopped buying clothes, and things for that matter, and when I would get exposed to hidden advertisements that are lying all around us, I would just think “No, I don’t need this, it is not relevant to me anymore. I just have these few pieces of clothing and they are all I need right now.” And as time went by I could feel that I completely stopped seeing these things and thinking about stuff that I should buy or own. Everything that I had and all the things around me became so much more valuable to me and I felt that I really where using all my things to the fullest.

I started becoming more of an owner to my clothes and things – instead of a consumer, like we have in the past few years become.

If I got a stain in my shirt I would act out on it right away, and always got them out. I had some accidents, ripped my shirt, got a cigarette hole burnt in it and I just took care of it, mending my things instead of easily laying them in the closet until enough time had passed for me to throw them away. I washed and waxed and shined my shoes regularly, I hung my woolen sweater out to breath and I put my jeans in the freezer. I even started fixing the holes in my socks, which is something I had never done before. All of these things are something that I mostly had to do for them to survive this long, and now when I look back I just think that it is ridiculous that I hadn’t been taking this good care of all my things before. No matter how cheap they had been or how fast I could go out and replace it with a new one. And I think this is the biggest problem and the biggest fault on our side, the consumer side.

I am not saying that I haven’t bought a single thing in a year, I have bought some new underwear and make up, I just feel freer from constantly having to live up to a standard that is laid so secretively around us. Suddenly I felt like I had a free pass, I didn’t have to take part in all of this madness anymore.

It almost just feels like a privilege sometimes. And I think I need some more time to adjust and think this through.

So for today I will go out and celebrate wearing my one true outfit.

12 pictures representing 12 months of the same clothes

Berlin

New years eve

Thanks for reading, 

J

The Conscientious Consumer

It's obvious to me and the people around me that this little experiment has changed a lot about how I am and think. I have become so much more aware of the things around me and in my life. Not only when it come to clothes, but all things that surround me. And the great thing is that I can also feel the awareness being growing out there and that the discussions have started.
As a result of my project I decided in my BA thesis to take a closer look at the consumerism in fashion - and how the consumer can be or is able to make a difference.
To give you a little insight, I wanted to post two parts from it, the abstract and my conclusion, since the thesis in itself is around 20 pages.
The whole journey of writing and researching for this thesis was very inspiring, eye opening and so interesting to me. And since I have been floating around in all of these thoughts now for a long time it was a good thing to be able to pinpoint these things down and take a closer look.

Abstract

Without consumerism there would be no fashion industry. But with increasing awareness about the environmental issues that we are facing, buying to satisfy our longings isn’t as relevant as it once was. The consumer needs to start taking responsibility and stop hiding behind the statement that big companies are the ones doing all the harm.
With conscientious decision-making and relevant information seeking, the consumer can make a difference: voting with their dollars. There are many different ways of being a conscientious consumer, and the reasons and focuses differ from person to person. You might care for the environment or the welfare of animals. You might want to fight for human rights and buy only Fairtrade or take a more drastic change and start living a zero-waste lifestyle. Maybe you make the switch to a minimalistic lifestyle and follow the slow fashion movement. And some might even try to do it all. That said there are countless different approaches to being and becoming a conscientious consumer, but the place to begin is to start taking responsibility and stepping back to see the bigger picture. Fast fashion being one of the biggest issues, being unsustainable in almost every aspect, as consumers we need to set pressure on brands, demanding more ethical and sustainable products for what ever reason one might find conscientious.

 Conclusion

Our planet is running out of water and oil, our icebergs are melting and we have permanently altered our climate. By treating clothes as though they were disposable, buying too much of them adds a tremendous amount of weight on the environment while we are at the same time simply being unsustainable. [1]

Consider this: all the ants on the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of humans. Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years. Yet their productiveness nourishes plants, animals, and soil. Human industry has been in full swing for little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do.[2]

Looking at the diverse perspective of possibly being conscientious there is a clear pattern of social responsibility. People are driven by their own believes, aesthetics, opinions and moral values to make better choices in their lives. Conscientiousness is not presented in a single right definition; it is presented in countless different manifestos. Whether it might be because you care for the planet, the oceans, the animals, your family, the economy, politics, other people or yourself, it is conscientious. If you feel what is the better thing to do, for whatever reason you might imply - and consume accordingly, then you are a conscientious consumer. While not being a totally established sector inside of the fashion world today, the conscientious consumer does exist; getting a long way with consumer activism and increased talk about the need for a more sustainable world.

 With the building of more informative and transparent platforms designed for easy access for the consumer, we work our way towards a much more ethical fashion industry. With demand comes supply, so with increasing demand from the conscientious consumers out there; putting pressure on design labels and fashion companies to act more ethically, we could see a drastic change inside within the industry. We have made the world as it is today, and we should just as easily be able to change it.

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[1] Elizabeth L. Cline, “Seven Pairs of $7 Shoes,” Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2012), e-book, 

[2] William McDonoguh and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: remaking the way we make things, 16.

Have a good one, 

J

DAY 300

I have never in this whole period thought about checking how many days there have been since I started wearing my one outfit. Today I randomly got the thought to do it, which was a pleasant surprise, because today marked my 300th day. Just randomly like that.

What started as only a 30 day project has become ten times that. Funny. Time has passed and I almost haven't felt it, so already come this far I am heading for one year. Only 65 days to go. (!)

This period has evolved me even more than I ever thought it would. My everyday life, my consumer patterns, my standards, values and focuses. As a result I wrote my BA thesis about conscientious consumerism - and right now I am working on my bachelor project in school, where I come in on things that I have learned and found out during this time. 

I want to write more about that all later. 

Thinking there are only 65 days left to go I get a little nervous. What will I do then? How should I move on from this? I have already sold and given away most of my clothes, and things for that matter so of course things will never go back to how they used to be. I've stopped thinking about this as a project or something that I have to do, this is just me, right now. A lot of things have happened in the last few months, events, christmas, new years, parties, festivals and not once have I felt the urge or the pressure to wear something else or something more appropriate. And I love it. 

A short one for today, but a promise of more to come.

I'll include this year's favorite christmas photo for y'all: 

Until next time, 

J