What is fast fashion?

The comparison of ‘fast fashion’ to ‘fast food’ gives you, the consumer, a crash course of what exactly fast fashion is; fashion produced quickly, without thought to sustainability. Designs are copied from the catwalk at top speed in order to capture current fashion trends and just like fast food, there is a toll to your health and our environment.

Green Peace has been testing major brands and finding many of the hormone disrupting chemicals we’ve been trying so hard to avoid. This shocks parents, especially those who have been detoxing their homes to keep their children away from phthalates, lead, and other chemicals of concern. How can we avoid the chemicals without breaking our bank accounts on organic cotton clothing?

How do we avoid fast fashion?

I’ve have always shopped with a different set of rules when it comes to clothing. Just like sourcing clean food, finding quality clothing just felt right, but I couldn’t articulate why. Then one year ago, there was a factory building collapse in Bangledesh, where over a thousand factory workers lost their lives due to working conditions. The faces behind some of our clothing emerged and we saw one of the true costs of cheaply produced fashion. And the financial reasons behind cheaply produced clothing made sense to me. There is a cost to that $2 t-shirt and we saw the faces of people desperate to work who earn only $38 per month.

So there are social reasons as well as environmental and health concerns – this is the dark side to fast fashion. And the appeal for finding alternatives to fast fashion has never been easier or more abundant.

• Local: local clothing designers are making a resurgence, organic clothing and buying second hand fashion removes all of the mystery of where to purchase slow fashion.
• Thrift: when you are buying second hand clothes, you are saving the original production and simplifying the problem of over consumption in our closets. Second hand clothing has less chemicals normally associated with new clothing because they have already been washed multiple times. So while we spend the extra money on brands with sustainable clothing practices, my family has always supplemented most of our children’s clothing with hand-me-downs and second hand clothing. Good news parents – there is a way to be sustainable with fashion without breaking the bank.

To help give you inspiration when it comes to upcycling and resusing clothes, here is a fun contest to win this handmade hoodie from MuggaBug (fits 18 months to three years old).

We are big fans of MuggaBug and she put together this whimsical hoodie that is made from her fabric stash and upcycled shirts from the thrift store. This is such a special clothing piece that has all the components of slow fashion.

Please like the MuggaBug Facebook fan page and enter to win it below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway