Please make second hand clothing fashionable

Fashion, food and traveling are three crucial subjects to address when rethinking your life to  become more sustainable. In this post I’m going to share a bit of our thoughts and experiences with second hand clothing.

First of all it makes a lot of sense to buy second hand clothing as textile manufactoring especially the methods within fast fashion do no good except to the shareholders. The fashion and textile industry is the second biggest polluter in the world. Recent years’ unconscious fashion consumption led by the devastating and addictive fast fashion industry have had grave effect on the environment. Read more in my previous post about how to make each piece of clothing last as long as possible.

We both sell and buy second hand clothes. Especially within children’s fashion the market is huge in Denmark and it is widely accepted to use second hand. Which makes a lot of sense as children usually grow out of their clothes before they wear them out. Looking at our own consumption I’ll admit that both of our children have much more clothing than they need. Analyzing our old habits I would say we could easily cut of 25-40% of their stock. I would like to reduce this and especially the part that we have bought from new.

I have always found a scarf and a shirt occasionally in local second hand shops but I have never found the majority of my clothing second hand. For 2017 I’m going to test how much I can find second hand. For the new things I’m going to buy it has to be ethical but I’ll get back to that in another post.

Earlier this week I went to a local charity second hand shop. I found seven pieces of clothing of which I’m going to use four of them the way they are. The dress needs to be shorten 5 cm and two of the shirts are intended for DIY dresses for my 20 months old daughter. Three items (the animal printed turtleneck, the scarf and the black and white striped top in the bottom right corner) are already in use. My favorite is without doubt the black and white striped shirt which will be a cornerstone in my wardrobe this spring.

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