ethics

[snarryfool]

Over and over in this comm, I read complaints about the price of clothing. I get that most people are on a budget, but it's a source of dismay that I have not once seen any pushback concerning the kinds of labor practices that make clothing cheap -- in particular, the kind of fast fashion that seems to be most popular here. Here's a blog post

Comments

[meiow]

I always viewed this as a matter of basic logistics on this community.

OOTD photos: well, yeah. Who wants to take a photo of their tried-and-true 10 year old dress? They want to take pictures of the new hip thing. This is not necessarily representative of their actual wardrobes.

Queries for cheap things: a lot of us (myself included) have weight fluctuation issues, bouncing between sizes. This gets expensive. So you want a few things here and there to suppliment the better quality basics. Not 100% excusing the behavior, but reasonably understandable.

You'll see a lot of thriftiness posts, too, or exchanges, which does directly address your concern.

The one time in my life I wholeheartedly threw myself in to ye olde cheap clothing was during pregnancy, personally. A rag I'm going to hate and only wear for 3 months of my life? Yeah, it can fall apart after three washings. I don't care.

The thing that always makes me squeamish is when I have to throw clothing away. Too worn for donation, whatever. It's like my grandmother's voice is in the back of my head, disappointed I me for not finding another way to use the fabric.

[meiow]

Side note: I sew, and I have several pieces made by artists here in the US. Where do you think the *fabric* is made? The notions? Even if the outfit was assembled here, there's still likely to be tears in that fabric somewhere.

Just FYI.

[goldbug]

FYI, I was told by one of the environmental activists in my area that I could donate worn-out clothing and fabric items to Goodwill. He said that if it's too worn to sell, they recycle it. If you have a bunch of stuff that is worn, it helps to put it all together in a bag labeled "rags" so that they don't have to use labor/time to sort through it. Now, that said, I don't know if it applies to other thrift stores or even Goodwills in other areas, but it's worth looking into.