Wardrobe Fast Day 3

I’m joining the Write 31 Days Challenge hosted by Crystal Stine to get my blog juices flowing and chronicle my Wardrobe Fast journey. You can find the first post in the series here.

Day 3

Top: Thrifted…not even sure of the brand

Jeans: Also thrifted…also not sure of the brand and too lazy to take them off to look.

(Also too lazy to take a legit picture, but I’m enjoying that book!)

My #2 reason for buying better is the environment–which also goes back to my #1 reason, which is the people making my clothes.

When God told Adam and Eve to “subdue the earth,” I doubt he meant build a whole bunch of factories to pump out stuff nobody needs and fill all the rivers and air with toxic chemicals and waste.

That’s not a deep, exegetical reading of the passage; it’s just a hunch.

 

(Movie still from the documentary RiverBlue, courtesy of EcoWatch)

Where environmental law is slack, business takes full advantage. The photo above came from the same article that said this:

In the opening scene of the new documentary RiverBlue, deep magenta wastewater spills into a river in China as the voice of fashion designer and activist Orsola de Castro can be heard saying “there is a joke in China that you can tell the ‘it’ color of the season by looking at the color of the rivers.”

Imagine if your drinking water, bathing water, and wash water all came from a river that looked like this. Imagine a river that looked worse (don’t worry; they’re out there).

I could say so much more, show you so many more pictures. There’s so much that it becomes depressing. Friend, this is not subduing the earth; this is tyrannizing it.

My jeans (all of them…and most of my wardrobe, in fact) are my little sliver of rebellion against this mess. They’re used. Instead of coming directly to me from a factory near a river like this, they came from somebody else’s closet.

Yes, before that person’s closet, they probably came from a factory with a river like this nearby. I’m hard on jeans. Apparently, I have super friction thighs (TMI, sorry), so I put holes in jeans really quickly. With my current budget, I can’t justify buying new, ethically-made jeans. I’m just not there yet.

But I can buy used and only buy what I need. It’s not enough. No one person’s efforts are enough. But it’s what I can do right now, so that’s the plan for right now.

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Wardrobe Fast Day 2

I’m joining the Write 31 Days Challenge hosted by Crystal Stine to get my blog juices flowing and chronicle my Wardrobe Fast journey. You can find the first post in the series here.

Day 2

Top: Thrifted Boden via Poshmark

Jeans: same as yesterday

Shoes: Chuck Taylors, purchased new May 2018

My #1 reason for buying better (which, as you can see, usually looks like buying used)? How people who make stuff are treated. When I saw The True Cost documentary, I had no extra money to blow on clothes anyway, so it was sort of a moot point.

But, by God’s grace, we’re not in the same financial place we once were. And it would be easy (like, so much easier) to just buy cheap stuff off the rack–particularly the clearance rack. But after seeing images like this:

(unregulated workshop in Bangladesh, 2015 – DailyMail)

and this:

(workers on strike in Honduras, 2010 – wage increases since! – USAS)

and this:

(workers on strike in Cambodia, 2017 – Newsela)

and this:

(Rana Plaza factory collapse fallout, 2013 – Change.org)

I’m no bigwig. I don’t have capital or influence or a business or a stake in the fashion game. But as a Christian, called to love my neighbor and care for the poor, I can’t knowingly perpetuate such a broken system. That’s where the Wardrobe Fast comes in, but only as a first step.

There’s so much more that can be done, but everybody’s gotta start somewhere, right?

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31 Days: The Wardrobe Fast

I’m joining the Write 31 Days Challenge hosted by Crystal Stine to get my blog juices flowing and chronicle my Wardrobe Fast journey. Keep checking back for daily posts!

Day 1

So, the Wardrobe Fast challenge is about limiting your wardrobe for a season to better appreciate what you have. Think of it like the Whole30, but for your closet.

Here’s my theory: limiting your outfit choices to just seven, one for each day of the week, will probably not be so bad. And if at the end of something not-so-bad you get to add back everything else from your closet…well, then you probably don’t need much else.

And that leaves you plenty of opportunity to buy better going forward. We’ll talk more about buying better throughout the series. I’m so looking forward to diving in with you!

Keeping Mondays simple with a top and jeans.

Top: Talbot’s, 3 years old

Jeans: Old Navy, thrifted recently

That’s it for today! Do you think you could handle dressing by the days of the week? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

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