posted 5 years ago
Mandy, thank you for sharing this video! I watched it a while back and it was stunning to see differences in quality. It was great to see how she wasn't angry at her dress being knocked off, but rather how many resources were wasted to make a dress that wasn't even worth wearing. To think of the people being paid slave wages to make a dress out of a non-renewable resource (petroleum) that isn't worth wearing because it's so misshapen...and even if it were worn, it would fall apart because the fabric was so thin and the stitches so far apart. The quality is so low that it can't even be repurposed. It's a waste.
Meanwhile, something like the dress Bernadette made has sturdy fabric and tight stitches so that it can be worm many, many times. Thinking back historically, it used to be that people only had 2 or 3 sets of clothes. Clothes take a lot of resources, and they take time to make. So, they were made very, very well so that they could be mended and passed on from generation to generation. People actually bequeathed their clothes in their wills, and fashion itself changed slowly--basically ways they could alter their existing clothes slightly to give a new look.
We buy nearly all of our clothes at the thrift store (I would much rather make good use of resources by not spending a lot, and saving things from landfills. I think it's important to the resources--cloth and hours put into the cloth--that already exist). But, some of the cloth I've gotten is so poor quality that I can't even mend it--it falls apart as I try to sew a patch on to it. I'm saddened by the resources (the water and land used to grow the fibre, energy used to harvest and process it, people paid low wages to make it) that have pretty much gone to waste.
I've read some neat NPR articles recently about the amount of resources and energy that goes into fast fashion. I'm going to see if I can find them again!