Resisting Fast Fashion

With biking and moving out of corona-torpor, I’ve been thinking about the environmental damage of “fast fashion” a lot.

It requires if not child-, very young labor, questionable factory practices, and a lot of petroleum to keep moving fast fashion out of Southeast Asia and to bring it to the closets of America where it endures but a few wears (rarely more than a season’s duration) before being tossed aside or “donated” and rendered “some other poor country’s problem.”

The solution is: buy less, buy better, and repair over replace. This is, of course, a natural mantra for those of us living in sub-1,000 ft² homes, but it would be so much better for every living human if we were to reject planned obsolescence and embraced fewer, higher-quality goods.

When I think of the brands that projected endurance for as long as I can remember, I can recall my Dad’s faithful “Duck shoes” AKA (L.L.) Bean Boots. My own pair, so useful for traversing the soggy and muddy fields of our parks in Spring with Byron, had some holes in them. Fortunately, Bean will resole your boots for $40.00.

I shipped them off and then a few days later the sweetest lady ever called me from, Freeport, Maine, home of Bean. With a kind and optimistic demeanor that recalled an enthusiastic chef in Mississippi, the representative confirmed my financial details and, within a few days, I had boots, gloriously repaired, returned to my doorstep.

The perennially awesome and water-resistant, L.L. Bean boot

Similarly, I went to an independent cobbler near my office and asked whether mis zapatos were muertos. He assured me they werent and a few days later…

I’m going to try to think about bringing purposeful purchase and mindful mending into my purchases. Lauren and I shed so much stuff in this move all the while muttering “why did we ever get/buy/keep this?”

Gathering to that extent is pathological if not schizoid: a symptom of late-stage capitalism’s conditioning of us in order to keep itself wheezing along.