If you’ve heard about sustainable fashion and want to learn ways to incorporate that lifestyle with your clothing choices, then this post is for you!
Though it’s not glamourized yet, sustainability is an umbrella that houses many names including, eco-fashion, ethical fashion, thrifting, secondhand, and slow fashion.
All are part of this lifestyle, and they cover recycling, donating, upcycling, fabrics that’s good for the environment, the healthy ethical practices, wages, and treatment of garment workers, and ways to increase the longevity of every piece in your closet.
So if any or all of this feels like your vibe, here are easy ways to learn sustainable fashion as a newbie.
Disclaimer: This post has affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission.
Learn Sustainable Practices
You should start by learning what sustainability means. While there are a lot of practices of this lifestyle, I want you to start by the basics. We briefly covered some in the beginning but here there are in more detail.
- Eco-fashion: This is how garments impacts the environment.
- Ethical-fashion: How garment workers are treated, paid, and with healthy occupational standards.
- Slow fashion: Instead of the ever-evolving fast fashion, slow fashion refers to really appreciating the clothes we have, making them last longer, and keeping the quality good with great maintenance.
- Donating: Donate any garments that are gently used, unworn, forgotten, or unfit.
- Thrifting: Buying gently used or new garments that are donated to thrift stores, secondhand stores, and consignement stores.
- Upcycling: Repairing and repurposing your garments that are unworn, forgotten, or unfit with DIY sewing, no sewing, and decorating embellishments.
- Shopping from Sustainable Brands: When you are itching to buy something new, shop from brands who value sustainable practices and use eco-friendly fabrics.
Start Thrifting and Secondhand Shopping
Shopping at thrift stores is one of the easiest ways to adopt sustainable fashion. Nowadays, there are more and more thrift stores, vintage shops, and online platforms offering second-hand clothing. Not only will you discover unique pieces, but you’ll also contribute to reducing textile waste and supporting a circular economy.
Circular economy or circular fashion is when you keep garments in use by donating, reusing (buying secondhand), and upcycling. Well talk more about each in a second, but refusing is a big part of this lifestyle.
Online Thrifting
Here’s a few online thrift and secondhand stores to look into.
Explore Sustainable Fabrics and Materials
Sustainable fabrics are eco-friendly. This means they are good for and all about the environment. Fabrics such as organic cotton, recycled cotton, hemp, bamboo, linen, recycled polyester, tencel, and more are popular materials used for sustainable garments.
These may not seem like a big deal at first, but when I found out that most fabrics use a ton of water consumption and gas emissions, I was SHOOK! But not only that, the construction of fabrics affects soil degradation, destruction in rain forests, and crazy manual labor.
And it doesn’t stop there. When people throw clothes in the trash instead of donating them, the clothes end up in landfills of all garbage. Fabrics that are non-biodegradable such as polyester, nylon, and spandex take hundreds of years to decompose.
That’s why biodegradable fabrics such as cotton, wool, linen, and hemp are sustainable because they only take a few months to 5 years to decompose.
Support Sustainable Brands and Designers
If you want to give mainstream brands and designers a break, go support sustainable brands and designers instead. But before you whip your debit card out, make sure that the brand you are supporting is the real deal.
Look for certifications like Fair Trade, GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard), or B Corp to ensure transparency and ethical practices in their supply chains.
To give you a head start, here are some brands and designers I LOVE!
Sustainable Clothing Brands
- Tentree – Sustainable clothes for the whole family. They use organic cotton and recycled fabrics to create loungewear, outerwear, and going out wear for everyone.
- Allbirds – Activewear and sneakers for the cool kids only.
- Sézane – Ready to wear workwear, knitwear, and casual wear for the sophisticated woman.
Sustainable Designers
- Nigel Xavier – The man is a beast! He’s known for upcycling fabrics into wearable art.
- Fe Noel – She makes women look sexy, sustainably.
Tyler McGillivary – She puts the stain in sustainable when it comes to floral stains on her garments. That was a pun by the way. Just look for yourself!
Learn Creative Ways To Upcycle Your Clothes
Upcycling is just another word for DIYing your clothes. When you come across clothes that doesn’t fit anymore, has holes, snags, or stubborn stains, you can give them new life with upcycling.
Get creative and cut up, stitch up, add buttons, embellishments, patch ons, iron ons, cricut vinyl, and more to them.
Or you can get practical and make something completely new like:
- Handbands
- Sweater pillow case
- Regular pillow case
- Quilt from old shirts, sweaters, jackets, etc.
- Scarves
- Compose
- Wallet
- Bag
- Cup Holder
- Baby Onesies
Connect with Like-Minded Communities
Finding like-minded people who also love sustainable fashion is easier than you think. You can start online with forums like Reddit and look for subreddits like Thrifting and Sustainable Fashion. They are great for newbies.
Social media is great too. You can find groups on Facebook and other like-minded people on Tiktok, Instagram, and my favorite, Pinterest.
Or if you want to see people in real like, you can Google local groups who do meet ups and swap clothes.
When you emerce yourself into the lifestyle and engage with others, you will learn so much about sustainability.
My favorite thing is befriending those who love thrifting so we can have thrift meetups and have a blast together. But thankfully, my family are big thrifters so I’m blessed to have that too.
Sustainable Websites
If you’re more of a reader and loner, I got you. Start with websites and blogs all about sustainable fashion. This is the best way to read all you want with no limits or judgment about how long you want to read.
Who cares if you’ve been reading for five hours straight because you fell into a rabbit hole? It happens.
So I’m gonna get you started on the blogs I read.
Blogs To Read
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