18 FA SH IO N & L I F EST Y L E
SIN Vol. 22 Issue 03
Who’s your biggest fashion inspo and why? By Neasa Gorrell In today’s fashion world, you will likely see many clothing advertisements as you scroll through your Instagram timeline of the same influencers promoting the same fast-fashion brands over, and over, and over again. It’s a relentless profiteering scheme carried out by most influencers looking to make a quick buck, prioritizing their possible earnings over the ethics of advertising unsustainable fashion brands. Because of that, it is important for us to ask ourselves – ‘Who is your biggest fashion inspiration, and most importantly, why?’. With the information available to us today, I’m sure that many consumers are very aware of the corruption that takes place in the fast fashion world. With one quick Google search, an innumerable amount of stories and reports come up, most referring to the major online brands we’ve come to know over the past few years. With information ranging from fast-fashion’s contribution to severe deforestation, the production of garments emitting more CO2 in the atmosphere than the aviation and the shipping industry combined, as well as contaminating the ocean with huge amounts of micro plastics from the synthetic material, and finally to full on modern day slave-labour within the production and supply chain. All in all, fast fashion is vastly unfashionable from an ethical and informed standpoint. Everyone is likely to have heard some variation of these same environmentally degrading statistics, so that is why it is exhausting to see influencers continuing to push and promote fast-fashion brands into our fashion interest. Admittedly, we all need to play our part in making informed decisions about the things we buy, and
this is not just in terms of fashion, but on a wider scale, we need to do what we can to be actively more sustainable members of society. The reality of the fast-fashion industry and its partnerships with social media influencers and celebrities is that everyone involved knows they will make money, and fast! So, they prioritise the manipulation of followers over the health of our environment. But, don’t lose out hope just yet, there are some sustainable queens and kings out there on the social media sphere. So, want to know who you won’t see doing all that fast-fashion-mumbo-jumbo? This lovely, bubbly lady who is a self-confessed lover of charity shops, queen of up styling, and thrift shopping extraordinaire: Miss Tara Stewart. (@tarastewartdj) Tara Stewart is a personal social media fav of mine! She originally hails from the lands of the great down-under: Australia. She is a well-accomplished DJ for RTÉ 2FM and an icon in the Irish sustainable fashion scene. She radiates fun, colour and style. She is all about owning your look, loving yourself and body positivity. For me, she is a breath of fresh air. She is undoubtedly a woke-queen, owning her style and rocking her platform ethically. In many of her posts, Tara directly talks about up-styling old fabrics to make new fashion pieces, her most recent being a stylish facemask made from an old shirt. She promotes many Irish second-hand charity shops for both fashion and homeware, and supports other Irish-owned vintage fashion outlets, such as Nine-Crows, Dublin Vintage Factory and Dublin Flea Market. Aside from that, she always promotes Depop as a go-to online fashion retailer, instead of any fast-fashion site. Although Tara is making a huge effort with promoting sustainable living on social media, there are
many other ethical Irish icons worth mentioning. Roz Purcell (@rozannapurcell) is definitely one to watch out for on the social sphere as she promotes a healthy alternative lifestyle. In terms of sustainability, she often promotes sustainable fashion brands, up-styling old clothing and she has a page dedicated to vegetarian cooking recipes and ideas. She is also all about body positivity. Another page to look out for is @theuselessproject ran by Geraldine Carton and Taz Kelleher, and it too is focused on sustainable living, and looks at
First of all, you can consider joining the NUIG Style Society and NUIG Sustainability Society to focus on how you can make positive changes in your lifestyle, habits and fashion awareness. Secondly, you can start shopping in the local charity shops in Galway and simultaneously fight fast-fashion while supporting good local causes! There are many other ways to better your lifestyle and fashion consumption but any small change is still a start in the right direction.
Don’t lose out hope just yet, there are some sustainable queens and kings out there on the social media sphere. all things from fashion to food and other ethically Irish-made products. So, in terms of living a sustainable fashion-forward lifestyle in Galway, what can you do?
BEAUTY BAG: END OF MONTH REVIEW By Anastasia Burton Hello my darlings, it’s technically only been one issue since I last spoke about my beauty bag but you have to understand that for me it has been four weeks since my last update on how I’m doing with my beauty bag decluttering. In my last article we spoke about the items I had in my beauty bag which I needed to use up before I started anything new. For those who didn’t get a chance to read my previous article you can check it out in issue two, but I will still explain what the whole deal with the beauty bag section is! Beauty bag is technically my project pan, I put items from my make-up collection into this bag to try and use them up so that I can give the items love and truly appreciate them. I would much rather do this than let them all sit there and gather dust. Each month I will do two articles dedicated to my beauty bag, which means that this is technically my October review, in issue four I will mention what items made it to the November beauty bag! Now, to the items that I had in my October beauty bag;
Maybelline New York: Baby skin instant pore eraser primer- USED So, I finally used up my Maybelline primer, it took ages! I originally thought I’d have it used up in the next month or two, but I completed it before that.
I will be repurchasing this primer since it did make my make-up more flawless and made it glide on nicely, very comfortable and lightweight and not to mention cheap!
Flormar perfect coverage foundation- USED
Essence lash princess mascara- NOT USED
Anastasia Beverly Hills Subculture palette- NOT USED
Horrible foundation! I did not use it up, but I decided to remove it from my collection entirely. It is way too drying and clings to your pores and imperfections, cracks easy and is quite heavy on the face even with a small amount. Not worth it unless you like very high coverage and have flawless skin. Will not be repurchasing.
This mascara is new enough to my beauty bag and still has a lot of life left in it. I believe that by January 2021 I will have it used up. Brilliant mascara, but the wand is uncomfortable. So, I may still get lash princess but different wand design.
Palettes are always harder to use up, but I am proud that I have made a larger dent in the shade “Dawn” which I expect will be completely gone by the end of November. I am practically done with the shade “Electric” and I am a lot closer to hitting pan on the shades “Cube”, “Adorn”, and “New Wave”. I expect to have hit pan on possibly all those shades in the next two months. I will more than likely not repurchase this palette again unless it is in a bundle deal for Black Friday ABH sales.
Illamasqua precision ink eyeliner- NOT USED This eyeliner is so difficult to like. It’s very moist and easy to make mistakes with, and I hate how it latches onto my lashes. It is also very hard to get off. I will definitely not repurchase this once I’ve finished it. I will try to use this eyeliner predominantly over the next two months with the goal of using it up and binning.
Essence Camouflage matt concealer- NOT USED One of my favorite concealers of all time. I have three more back-ups and i am very close to using up the shades “light honey” and “light rose”.
SoSu complete contour palette- NOT USED This contour palette had many different pans so it is hard to use up, but I have practically completed the concealer cream shade and am hitting pan on the setting powder and the contour powder. I realised that the lighter cream contour shade is too light for my complexion but the darker one is slowly making its way to pan. I trust that by the end of November I will have a better idea of whether I will be repurchasing or not.
Topshop Chameleon highlighter mother of pearl- NOT USED This is the most stubborn highlighter to use up! There is just so much product I don’t see myself using this up anytime soon! I will not be repurchasing it either. Although I think that it’s beautiful, I’m getting very tired of it and I have way too many other highlighters to get through!
TheBalm: Balm Beach blush- NOT USED I didn’t mention this item in my previous article, but I’ve been trying to hit pan on this blush for months! I predict that I will be hitting pan with it by the end of November! I love it but I’m not a huge blush person, so more than likely I will not be repurchasing.
