Jane! Get Me Off This Crazy Thing!

I’m not sure how I feel about ‘Fast Fashion’ anymore.

Fast Fashion means that we can all be on the cutting edge of fashion if we want to be. It also means that we are all on the cutting edge of fashion if we want to be.

Why is this a bad thing I hear you ask?

Well, to put it simply, no-one knows how to dress themselves anymore.
I’m not talking about some tragic loss of manual dexterity that means we are all walking around with our trousers undone and our heads up our sleeves, but a much more fundamental loss: a loss of individual style.

Sure we all have a great pair of jeans or a fantastic party dress, but we all have the same jeans and the same party dress. We have drawer after drawer (or in my case pile after pile) of one-hit wonders. Clothes that were in for a minute, but went out just as quickly. High-waist jeans? Braided leather belts? Breton stripes? I’m not wearing any of these anymore but I bet I can find them stashed in a bin bag somewhere ready to go to charity. I also bet I didn’t pay more than £9.00 for any of them.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not standing on some high moral ground surrounded by Harris Tweed and Hermes handbags; I’m as guilty of succumbing to Fast Fashion as anyone else. I sort of love that I can read about the new trends at fashion week and get it in the shops almost the next day - at a fraction of the cost of the real thing. What I don’t love is that I only get to wear it once because it falls apart the first time I try to wash it, or that the fabric doesn’t breathe and even though my outfit is the latest thing, I look horrible because I feel like I’m trapped in a Bikram Yoga studio. The real problem for me though is that before I can really wear in my new pair of shoes/jeans/jacket/whatever, and get them really comfortable, I abandon them for the next new thing. I never feel comfortable in any of it. I always feel like I’m wearing someone else’s new clothes. I never feel like me.

Grace Kelly had access to any designer she wanted, whenever she wanted. But she also kept the same style of Hermes bag for most of her life and rarely discarded old clothes, often wearing her favourite pieces several times. The gown she wore to accept her Oscar, was the same gown that she wore to the premier of the film a year earlier. Can you imagine that happening now? Can you imagine any Hollywood actress wearing the same dress to two red carpet events a year apart and not getting ripped apart by the press for it? Kelly wore things that suited her, wore them repeatedly and over a period of several years. That’s Slow Fashion. That’s style.

Fast Fashion is like Fast-food and recently, for me anyway, it has taken on the same negative connotations. Cheap, in every sense of the word, Fast Fashion is quickly forming its own Pacific Gyre, a vortex of polyester/cotton blended knits, smelling faintly of cheap perfume and Axe body spray.

I was wrong. I do know how I feel about Fast Fashion. It doesn’t make me happy, it doesn’t make me a better person and it certainly doesn’t help my bank balance.
Maybe it means I’m getting old, or maybe it means I’m falling off the style radar once and for all, but I’m getting off this crazy gyre and going to join the Slow Fashion movement instead.

I’m going to buy things that will still look good next month and will last until next year, or for the next five years. I’m going to think about what I already have in my closet (read: pile on the floor) before I buy something new: if it doesn’t go with at least two things, I’m not buying it. I don’t think I need 7 pairs of black stilettos. I certainly don’t need 6 pairs of red shoes. And I really don’t need 15 white t-shirts with slightly different sleeves. I just don’t.