Do I Even Still Like Fashion?
Doubts and dilemmas of a former fashion girl.
Kind of Wild is a weekly newsletter on trying to live ethically while still enjoying life. I am a 40-something published author, podcaster, public speaker, charity PR specialist and writer. I speak four languages and live in Brighton, UK. I’ve been vegan for over a decade. I want to save the world - but I also want to experience it.
I remember when I fell in love with fashion - but I cannot pinpoint the moment when I fell out of love with it.
I never cared much about clothes as a child. I was never the kind of girl who played dress-up all day or who wanted to learn to sew my own dresses. I was much more concerned with how I was perceiving life, rather than how I, my appearance or my style, was perceived by others. That was until I got to middle school, where I was bullied for years due to my “quirky” sense of style (or lack thereof). After that, I guess something sparked within me and I decided to make style my whole identity to compensate. I studied fashion marketing in Florence, got a fashion startup internship in Stockholm, and then a fashion editorial job in Milan - which I then left to become a freelance fashion writer in London. I devoured fashion magazines for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I started my own (vegan) fashion magazine too. I lived and breathed fashion. For years.
But as I moved through the ranks of the fashion world, I couldn’t help but notice that I was never quite “in it” as much as my colleagues were. I was a fashion girl, but I wasn’t fully a fashion girl. I always felt like an outsider, no matter how much far inside I managed to get. Somewhere between a press preview and queueing for Fashion Week, it hit me that the things that mattered to fashion weren’t the things that had drawn me to it. There was so much focus on being cool, on liking the “right” things, on appearing in a certain way. There was value in being unique, yes - but only if you were the right kind of unique. Being an “outsider” was trendy, but only if you did it right, if you had that aloof, rebellious, almost self-inflicted outsider-ness. If you were an actual outsider, you became…just that. And by caring about animal rights, by rejecting some of the things fashion loved the most, by making it clear that I didn’t see status in destruction, I pretty much taped a “wrong kind of outsider” sticker to my own forehead. That was, perhaps, the main reason why I got out. And ten years after my departure from the glitzy world of fashion, I see that not much has changed.
The more I observe fashion today, the less I relate to it. Maybe it’s just me getting older, but headlines such as “This is What Hailey Bieber Wore This Weekend And We’re Obsessed”, or “The Dress Everyone Will Be Living In This Summer” are great reminders of why I no longer wanted it to be my job to write them. Fashion media today is still designed to make you feel like if you’re not living in that dress this summer, you’re missing out - and in the process, you lose the sense of what you actually like. Fashion today pretty much never talks about personal style, about finding yourself, about expression - the very things for which style was made. Instead, fashion still obsesses with anxiously performing to ridiculous standards and dressing a certain way to fit into a box - a box that will change in a couple of months, and your “new” style will be old and outdated. And that is exactly what is leading to many of fashion’s ethical issues - overproduction is behind so much of the textile waste, the slavery, the cruelty to animals. So much of this destruction, which we are combating with recycling and “humane” labels, is actually happening because we want new trends every season. No one wants to look at how our obsession with trends, our anxiety about fitting in, is causing all of it.
In my new career path, I’m often working on ways to improve fashion, make it better. And while so much of this work fills me with hope, there are moments when interacting with “sustainable fashion” leaves me disillusioned. So much of it still focuses on “how do we do the same thing but better”, rather than dismantling the whole thing and building a new system. When I lecture to fashion students about vegan fashion, they sometimes ask what they can do to help. I don’t know how to tell a roomful of future fashion industry professionals that the best thing they can do for ethical fashion is…to not start their own brand. The last thing we need is another fashion brand! We have enough clothing on the planet to clothe the next six generations of humans. There is no need for more clothes - no matter how ethical. The ethical thing to do is to stop making clothes! There is no “gap in the market for well-made vegan shoes”. If you’re starting a brand because you’ve always wanted to, be honest about doing it for self-fulfilment rather than claiming to do the planet a favour by bringing even more flatform sandals and cropped denim jackets into existence. Making hundreds of thousands of t-shirts won’t save the environment just because they are made from organic cotton over conventional cotton. Reducing production volumes will. But no one in fashion wants to do less.
There are some notable exceptions. When I still had my magazine, I wanted to host a “digital fashion week”. I asked one of my favourite vegan brands if they wanted to do a preview of their new collection on the magazine during this “event”. They were confused. “We don’t work with collections”, they said. “We just have a permanent range, sometimes we add to it, sometimes we subtract from it, based on consumer feedback”. I was awestruck. This is exactly what we need to truly make fashion better: getting rid of seasons, of collections, of the trend mentality, and just slowing the whole carousel down.
But no one seemed to get it. That brand? They’re closed down now. “Ethical” fashion brands often follow the same seasonal cycle as mainstream brands. The line between the two has blurred even further as pretty much every brand, from Prada to Primark, has some kind of sustainability policy now - often boiling down to recyclable packaging or take-back schemes, while continuing to pump out more and more new items every season, filling landfills, killing animals, forcing garment workers back into their shackles. When there is nothing to define what “ethical” or “sustainable” means, it often ends up meaning…nothing.
At the same time, I can’t deny that style, true style, still has a hold on me. I thought of it this week, when
made me discover a pair of Ganni flats I now see in my dreams. I went back to my Pinterest boards - they do still make my heart flutter. I tried going to the supermarket wearing a “meh” outfit. I felt “meh”. The next day, I wore an outfit I loved and did the same supermarket run. It was a different experience: the whole day seemed a bit brighter and shinier, I had more energy, more spring in my step. Fashion changes you. When done right, it is an instant mood-lifter - and it has an impact on your whole day.Coco Chanel said, “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” Indeed, style is our most immediate way of communication and expression. Fashion affects everyone, whether we want to or not, because we all get dressed every day. For me personally, everyday life is slightly yet significantly improved by loving what I wear - but only when I shut out the noise of trends, celebs and social media, and focus on what I want to express and how I want to feel. So while I no longer feel close to fashion - or the fashion industry, to be exact - I do still love style.
Style that lives outside the “fashion system”.
Style that doesn’t care about what’s trending this season.
Style that has no idea what celebrities are wearing.
Style that doesn’t do hauls.
Style that knows.
Style that’s true, honest, and unapologetic.
As the hedonist I am, dressing in a joyful way will always make me happy. Just like I enjoy good food, good books, and good music, I enjoy good clothes. I will always make space for them in my life. I’m just not sure that fashion, the way it exists today, is the way to do it. A system that keeps us hooked on trends and anxious to fit in is the antithesis of style. It takes us further away from our own personality and expression - when it should do the opposite. If we want our wardrobes to feel true to who we are, while also treading more lightly on the planet, then the system needs an overhaul - and it starts with our mindsets. Instead of the current set-up we call fashion, we need to find a way to return to ourselves and make way for more style in our lives. Style that lasts, style that lives and breathes, just like we do.
What a great insight: the most sustainable thing you can do is to NOT start your own brand. So true. Really enjoyed reading how you have related to fashion over the years, Sascha!
Really enjoyed this, as somebody that used to work in fashion. I eventually moved into fashion and sustainability, before transitioning out altogether.