The Price of Slow Fashion

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Before I got onto social media I didn’t know much about slow fashion. I knew of fast fashion and its human costs- but at that time I had some strong self preservation in place and I rarely bothered with things I couldn’t afford. Back then I got all of my clothing from thrift stores, garage sales or from clothing swaps with friends. I cultivated a personal style and as I became more skilled with textile work I would dye and alter thrifted garments to align with it. Those were lean years, when not finding a good coat at the thrift meant layering until spring- so I honed my knitting skills and unraveled thrifted sweaters to make warm hats and mittens. Mending was a necessity, not a choice, and I spent a lot of time maintaining my clothes to meet workplace standards of dress. These days I still make or thrift most of my clothes, I lean into trade with a few folks I call friends, or I make do without. When I have the money to buy new I spring for things that I struggle to thrift or make myself: pants, shoes and underwear. I try to prioritize small businesses, organic materials, and US production if I can afford to. I recently bought myself a pair of US made overalls and a new organic cotton bra and I felt like the richest person alive!

When we talk about slow fashion on social media, and in conversations branching off from there, it is all but taboo to call the prices unaffordable. Instead we call them just and fair, the REAL cost of clothing. Sticker shock is not chill. If price remains an issue we’ll hear about saving up for statement pieces or building a capsule wardrobe and we are told that investing in high quality garments will allow us to buy less in the long run. It’s the only practical option, really. Wouldn’t you rather have a closet full of well loved and meaningful pieces? In these conversations I find myself holding back the fact that I just can’t afford the investment- a statement that would require an immediate follow up with: “...but the price is totally fair”! Fair to whom? On social media I saw folks with higher incomes than mine make those investments and build their wardrobes one piece at a time. I watched those same folks receive gifts of slow fashion garments in exchange for advertising and I witnessed their closets growing through a web of reselling and trades whose price of admission was one or two starter garments. Starter garments the price of my whole thrifted wardrobe combined! As I watched cycle after cycle of this I felt ashamed- how could I work so hard and love clothes so much and believe so fervently in slow fashion and still be unable to afford these garments that were the one and only answer to the travesty of fast fashion? The more I consumed the story of slow fashion as savior the more I began to believe that I was the one whose work, whose labor, whose time wasn’t worth that much. Because when conversations about slow fashion cannot contain the words unaffordable and inaccessible those of us who are forced to speak those words are left holding their weight alone.

Over time my covetousness as a slow fashion onlooker turned to obsession. When I began to feel sick with both the wanting and the shame of not having I took matters into my own hands. I unraveled an old sweater that was sitting unworn in my dresser and churned all of my frustrations and years of skill building into a free (and very close) approximation of the object of my desires- a $300 sweater that slow fashion influencers seemed to collect by the rainbowed dozens. As I wrote about the project I tripped over myself trying to do right by this company that I admired so deeply. I said NO to over a hundred pleas for a written pattern and I spoke sternly about not accepting money for the work I had done. As I stood my righteous ground I felt that I was holding up some unspoken line of fashion integrity that I knew I was close to treading on. But when I finished my sweater and put it on I understood that the shame I felt before wasn’t about fashion, it was about wealth and class.

In the USA, and I would argue especially on social media, we like to create a binary narrative of good and evil. With regards to fashion it seems pretty clear that slow fashion is good and fast fashion is not. But keep in mind, when we talk about fast and slow fashion we are talking about the human production of clothing. The fast production of garments for low prices and rapid consumption comes at a massive human cost. There is no denying that it is a physical manifestation of the very real evils of human greed and centuries of white supremacy in power. Slow fashion steps away from that and leans into the humanity required of garment making. Production and maker are one, a respected and valued unit. It is hard not to assign virtue to those practices. The problem comes when we take these distinctions of good and evil, separate them from production methods and assign them instead to consumers. Because in capitalist systems consumers can always be divided into two groups, those who can afford whatever is being sold and those who cannot. Consumers able to afford slow fashion become good by virtue of their spending and those who cannot are deemed ignorant or evil. In the world of social media that means that the elite few who can afford slow fashion exclusively are rewarded the most for their spending- with gifts and sponsorships and social capital that undeniably lead to a higher income. And it works out well for the companies we’ve labeled as good, too, because consumers who cannot afford to shop their way to righteousness try to climb there by engaging, sharing, promoting and otherwise providing free advertising in exchange for a foothold on the side of the just. Any time you measure someone’s goodness by the dollars they have to spend the wealthy and the privileged will come out on top and the poor and disadvantaged come out on the bottom. This results in a picture not unlike the one we are told that slow fashion aims to provide an alternative to.

To make change we have to take this back to the root. I believe that fast fashion in its current form needs to be abolished. And when I say abolished I mean that wholly new systems need to be created to support and empower from the bottom up while the old systems are dismantled top to bottom. I believe that workers worldwide deserve at least a living wage, that working conditions should be high and standardized. I believe that the health of our planet should be centered in all forms of manufacturing taking place on our planet. And I believe, with conviction, that if slow fashion is going to be a part of an answer to the fashion industries problems then it has to become accessible to all people, not just the few who can afford to be on the good side.

Grace Rother