My Slow Fashion Journey

My Slow Fashion Journey

Supporting sustainable and independent businesses for me is now a no brainer, but it hasn’t always been the case. I was woken up from a fast fashion haze back in 2015, whilst I was up to my neck in throwaway Primark hauls and obsessing over fashion trends like my life depended on it. I was a fashion blogger, I had a rep to up-keep and fashion was my thing, I needed to keep on top of it. How glad I am this is no longer the case!

I became a blogger as a fashion related hobby whilst my kids were small, following a career as a fast fashion designer for well-known highstreet brands and running my own indie fashion upcycling business; I had already experienced contradicting sides of the fashion industry! Despite running my upcycling business (and a lack of time and support to run it) I had become, in all honesty, lazy, and as a young, skint mum, turned to fast fashion for comfort!

I was taken along to a Fashion Salvage event by a friend who was already well involved in the sustainable fashion scene and ran her own label, sustainable events and upcycling workshops.

Fashion salvaging events were popular at Bristol Textiles Recycling

(Photo credit - Bristol Textiles Recyclers / BTR)

The event took place at BTR (Bristol Textiles Recycling) which sadly due to a lack of funding, no longer exists anymore. These recycling heroes, managed to direct 20 tonnes of unwanted clothing from landfill on a daily basis. That’s right, 20 tonnes every day! That’s just in Bristol. Just imagine how much ends up in landfill each week. It’s a shocking and disturbing amount.

The garments came from clothing waste bins, charity shop rejects and I can’t imagine where else… Just tonnes of garments everywhere, many pre-loved, some classic vintage pieces, designer garms and worst of all, unworn clothing with their labels still attached!

What makes me feel really nauseous about those particular garments now is that most of these unworn and unloved garments were from shops like Primark and supermarket chains. Fast fashion pieces that were knocked up cheaply by under paid workers in, more often than not, shocking working conditions. Then shipped over to the UK, chucked on the shop floor with tonnes of other fast fashion nightmares and bought for just £3 a pop by us, the consumer.

This means that these workers went through such hardship to produce fast fashion garments on demand, garments that never even ended up being worn – pretty much being made to go straight into the polyester landfill of doom! This is why we need to stop fast fashion and our outlook needs to change, quickly!

Back to the fashion salvage event, and I’ve grabbed a whole bin liner of pre-loved garms. I couldn’t help it, I acted the same way with the pre-loved fashion as I did in a Primark Haul. It’s like getting free clothes isn’t it? Looking back, I had a problem… Why did I need all this ‘stuff’. Don’t get me wrong, I also saw the fashion salvage event in the positive light in which it was created, to save these garments from landfill.

Slow fashion blogger and journalist Emma Gorton-Ellicott at a BTR fashion salvage event.

(Photo credit - Bristol Textiles Recyclers / BTR)

The fashion salvage events invited the public to come along and search through their salvage bins for fashion gems and vintage treasures. If you don’t mind getting your hands dirty (remember it all came from clothing recycling bins) you could find some amazing pieces! I was hooked! But the shock of seeing all these wasted garms, being educated on how much is sent to landfill each week, and how unfairly the workers are treated in the fast fashion industry (an ongoing issue, even during lockdown) was just too much for me to bare.

I became instantly more fashion conscious, ashamed of my obsessive consumerism and had my eyes open to a new way of living.

With this fresh in my mind, my blogging style changed instantly. I ditched the high street and began to support independent, sustainable designers and businesses, which has led me to many amazing experiences; from fashion journalism to speaking at sustainable fashion events, and being inspired to start my own slow fashion business, which I am immensely proud of.

Please, support slow fashion, support sustainable, support independent.

Make the change.

Emma Gorton-Ellicott Fashion Blogger at No-Debutante Founder of slow fashion brand Fruit Salad

www.no-debutante.blogspot.com