Janis Kay

Stop Fast Fashion.

Buy less, choose well, make it last.
– Dame Vivienne Westwood

Depop: JanisKay

The first time I went thrifting was sometime in the early-mid 2000’s. My idea of a dream closet consisted of raised-print Hollister tops and Pacsun jeans in every color under the sun. These, in hindsight awful, pieces of clothing were outrageously priced for a 9 year old and I settled for less overtly labelled items. However, when I discovered Goodwill I realized some people were actually rich enough to discard them for a significantly reduced price. I went wild.

Since then my love of thrifting has only grown, and how I thrift. Second-hand clothing is a microcosm of what is going on in fashion as a whole. Much like how I thrifted as a child, people are consumed by labels, fads, and ensuring everyone knows what they wear fits their “aesthetic”. Racks have become filled with cheap, chemical soaked fabrics and little black tags with all capital S H E I N letters. Designs are copied, warped, and constantly out dating themselves. The irony of the fast fashion epidemic is that its built upon the idea you can look stylish and trendy (loaded word) on an impossibly tight budget, but it results in the never-ending cycle of spending money and looking horrible, and above all else, boring.

Micro-trends do not always involve extremely cheap price tags. Many people are more than happy to spend over $100 on a thin piece of stretchy polyester because its waistband has a small logo that tells everyone that’s exactly how much they spent on them.