2 minute read
Slowing down: from fast fashion
Slowing down
My journey from fast fashion to sustainability
By Hannah Rochell, En Brogue
Two years ago I gave up shopping and didn’t buy any new clothes for a year. As a former fashion journalist writing for glossy magazines and national newspapers, I’d spent a decade encouraging people to do the very thing I had now decided to stop doing, but as I became more educated about the climate emergency and saw the part I was playing in accelerating it (the fashion industry is said to be the third biggest polluter on the
planet), I decided that enough was enough. I haven’t stepped foot in a chain store or idly browsed a website’s ‘new in’ section since, and I’ve never been happier with my wardrobe. By the time I started allowing myself to buy a few very carefully considered items of clothing per year, I had moved from London back to the Island, and was thrilled to immerse myself in local vintage stores and slow fashion businesses. If you’re not familiar with the slow fashion movement, it just means not slavishly following trends and instead embracing either the clothes you already own, or sustainably made new ones that you know you will enjoy wearing for years. Brands like Roake, for example, which is based in Ventnor, design with longevity and versatility in mind - think wrap tops in classic prints like gingham - that can be worn multiple ways and fit a wide range of sizes and body types to avoid waste and returns.
But back to vintage, something I first discovered as a teenager growing up in Ryde which has always had a brilliant selection of well-stocked charity shops. My
favourites are Cancer Research UK (my grandmother volunteered there for 20 years so it gets the majority of my own donations) and the Earl Mountbatten Hospice Shop, where we picked up our G-plan sideboard a few years ago. I love a browse in Dig For Vintage on Lind Street and I’ve been a regular customer at The Velvet Pig on Union Street, a beautifully curated vintage treasure trove brimming with the loud midcentury prints I adore. So, if you are after a wardrobe refresh as the world starts to open up again, why not embrace slow local fashion and try looking for it a little closer to home instead.
From top: This wool waistcoat, worn over a Justine Tabak floral dress, was hand-knitted for my mum in the 1970s. 1960s wool checked dress (worn as a shirt), The Velvet Pig, Ryde. 1970s floral dress, The Velvet Pig, Ryde; striped top, Beaumont Organic.
