Date Your Closet: Inspiration From The Rules
The average American family throws out more than 6,000 pounds of trash every year. There’s a plastic bag cemetery the size of two Texases floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Obviously, reducing, reusing and recycling are on everyone’s minds. But what about our textile waste? According to the EPA, each one of us throws out 70 pounds of clothing and textiles every year—that’s four percent of the landfill.
It’s time to learn to work what we’ve got—to save money, and the planet. It’s time to date your closet.
No more hook-ups and one-night-stands: Just say no to disposable fashion and create a long-term relationship with your closet. We need to think about clothing purchases as things that we want to live with for a long, long time.
As our grandmothers said, “If it looks too good to be true, it is.” As consumers, we have to realize that there’s no way we can get a new outfit on the cheap without involving some type of material that’s sure to harm the Earth-and its inhabitants, primarily in the form of the cheap labor used to manufacture it.
Once we get past “disposable fashion,” we can see the value of investing in beautiful clothing made to last from sustainable fabrics. One piece that lasts a lifetime is worth saving up for.
Grandma said that, too.
That doesn’t mean wearing things that are out of style. It simply means being more conscious of what we buy—and working with what we’ve got.
To expand on the date your close concept, we went to the experts: The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right, the wildly successful self-help-meets-dating book by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider.
Bear with us. Yes, it’s gotten heavy flak for being retro and anti-feminist and recommending a rather mercenary view of romance, but as this best-selling tome has everyone from Oprah to Beyonce on its bandwagon, we thought it might be fun to interpret its ideas here.
Relax, ecoista, it’s a metaphor.
Here are EcoStiletto’s “date your closet” rules, inspired by three of The Rules’ top 10.
Rule Number One: Be A Creature Unlike Any Other.
This is the best vote of confidence for shopping your close that we’ve found yet. Because how can you be unique when you’re wearing the latest fashions-clothing that everyone else and her mother is sporting this season? All those seasonal fashion stories you read in magazines are recycled anyway: Think high-waisted sailor pants are a new concept? Check spring issues from 1964 and 1987. Stand out from the pack by wearing-and re-wearing-timeless, classic looks that look good on you and forget about People Style Watch.
Rule Eight: Close The Deal-Rules Women Do Not Date Men For More Than Two Years.
We think this is pretty ridiculous when it comes to dating-one-size-fits-all has never made sense to our romantic trajectory-but when it comes to your closet, it works. Because if something hasn’t been worn in two years-meaning you’ve gone through eight full seasonal changes without giving it a whirl-chances are, you’re never going to wear it.
But that doesn’t mean you have to toss your clothing-upcycle it! Let’s take that dress that’s hiding at the back. Don’t like the way it fits? Turn it into a skirt or a shirt. Jeans too long? Crop them into capris. When you rework something you already have, you give it new life. P.S. If you have to scrap clothing, sell or donate it to a thrift store; really trashed-but-soft pieces can go to animal shelters to cuddle lonely dogs.
Rule Nine: Buyer Beware: Observe His Behavior So You Do Not End Up With Mr. Wrong.
Let’s face it: Every ecoista has to shop once in a while-outside her closet. But the next time you go shopping, add a fourth question to those that we usually ask ourselves before purchasing, i.e. “Do I like it?” “Can I afford it?” and “Does it look good on me?” The third question is, “Is it sustainable?” Or, more specifically, has its manufacturing made the least possible impact on the Earth. If you can say yes to all four, then buy away! If not, then maybe give yourself some time to think about it.
Because you wouldn’t want to cheat on your closet, right?
