Not buying a piece of clothing in 10 years

And I’ve never had a bigger sense of style

One of the first “important” decisions you lay your hands on as a kid is on what you want to wear. Eventually, it becomes what you want to buy. I embraced such a decision from a very young age and I loved it. I thought it was great. But I quickly learned about the fashion industry. The first kick was given by the documentary “The True Cost”, and from then on, information kept coming.

I was so horrified whit what was going on in the industry I couldn’t understand why would anyone ever buy clothes. It wasn’t just the manufacturing, it also was the pollution the tainting of the fabric, the long hour's people in Bangladesh, Marroco, and other places had to put, unable to go back home, unable to take care of their kids just so I could buy a 5$ t-shirt that would break in a year. I was left horrified.

So as a 15th year old, unable to convince my parents to eat differently, unable to choose what energy company we had contracted, unable to choose most things that were going on, I decided to stop buying clothes. It wasn’t much of a decision, it was mostly an inability to do otherwise. I remember I once entered Zara and left crying. Because of how unaware the woman there were being because they treated clothes not realizing they were ruining lives on the daily. I couldn’t bear the pain encapsulated in that room and the indifference felt by everyone around it.

So I was 15, unable to buy clothes and, doomed I guess. My approach developed to be the following: I could buy new clothes made by sustainable brands (DIRECT-ory) if there were something I absolutely needed and was unable to get otherwise, a jacket, a pair of boots, underwear… Most of the time clothes came from second-hand shops and fabulous dumpster diving. I know, it sounds gross, but my smart's clothes have come from a garbage bag. And honestly, most people throw away clothes when they have been sitting in the closet for a while. The most disgusting thing I can found is dust.

My approach had one loophole: I could buy as many pieces of jewellery I wanted from wherever. The trick here was that I liked good jewellery, and my taste has only gotten more specific as I age, nothing about cheap earing, give me nice polished gold or silver. This basically meant that the constrain is now economic. So I still keep my purchases low but it relieves me from the constant constrain of not buying clothes.

And it’s been 10 years so far. And I keep finding myself in a surplus of clothes. Friends know about this, most have joined -maybe with way more loopholes than mine- and most call me when they have clothes they want to throw away, so I’m always flooded with clothes, often when I need them the most.