I Did Not Shop for a Year and Fared Pretty Well

I am a “birthday and new year resolutions” kind of person. The fact that they almost never work has not stopped me from making new ones, especially on my birthday when I tend to get philosophical and sit down thinking about growing older and (how) wiser. But in 2018, I took a resolution on my birthday and stuck by it. Probably my first successful one. It was to not buy any new clothes for a year, at least!

Why? Because I simply did not need it. It really helped to differentiate actual need from looking for ways to expend the money credited to your bank account on the last day of every month, or end of the fashion season, or going to the mall because it is weekend or because you’re bored. 

It was around the same time I got introduced to the not so imitable side of fashion – that of fast fashion and the damage it causes to the environment. “Fast fashion can be defined as cheap, trendy clothing, that samples ideas from the catwalk or celebrity culture and turns them into garments in high street stores at breakneck speed.” (https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-fast-fashion/)

Every piece of fast fashion clothing that we buy comes with an environmental cost which is much higher than the price we pay for it at the billing counter. But it is something we may have to pay heavily for at a later time. I am not a fashion expert, and the problem with fast fashion goes much deeper than can be elucidated here, but to give you a head start to thinking alternatively about fashion, it must be known that the fashion industry today contributes to more greenhouse emissions than the aviation and the automobile industry put together (video source linked below). It takes about 2700 liters of water to produce one cotton t-shirt, which is the estimated drinking water amount of 1 person for 900 days. And that’s just ONE t-shirt we’re talking about! 

Throughout my childhood, birthday and Diwali were two occasions when we compulsorily got new clothes. Apart from that, it was always on a need basis. I mean, we clearly did not go to malls every Sunday and bought clothes, just because it was Sunday! The fashion industry now follows a 52-seasons-a-year cycle. By that measure, I am at least a hundred seasons behind on the fashion scene! New designs come to stores once or twice every week. The old designs (even one week old in some cases) are discarded so that consumers are made to believe that they are not up-to-date with fashion if they are not constantly (every week or every month) buying new stuff. Shockingly, these clothes are sometimes damaged to a visible extent before being discarded so that customers cannot buy them elsewhere (like thrift stores) and have no choice but to buy new stuff from these “affordable luxury” stores. The garments are dumped in landfills or incinerated by the tons every day, releasing an enormous amount of harmful chemicals into the environment. 

How many clothes does one need anyway? If fashion is an expression of you and your personality, you can create the same impression with the same set of clothes a second or a third, fourth..time as well. You do not need a new set of clothes to create that impression of you every single time. I am sure your personality is not changing as fast as the seasons in fashion! Also, a fine piece of clothing is like a work of art. You cannot expect a thousand masterpieces being doled out in a 24-hour stringent industrial cycle. Fast fashion brands bring you designs ripped off the fashion runways within 24 hours of being showcased. I wonder, if a piece of clothing designed and produced with little thought, can do justice to my intricately nurtured personality! 

So, the next time you tell me you are wearing a Zara or an H&M (with the weirdest pronunciation of “H” & “M” which does not ever happen with any other goddamn word starting with “H” & “M”), you know I am totally judging you! 😛

The idea is not to stop buying clothes at all. It is to buy consciously – only when you really need it and use it longer, definitely more than 2-3 actual climatic seasons. And buy less, because the market is fuelled by the demand from us. And of course our demands, more often than not, are fuelled by brands’ marketing. Therefore, it is important we acknowledge this vicious cycle, differentiate our needs from our wants (or pseudo needs), and give the planet and our pockets a breather. 

Here are some of the things I have done over the last one and a half years to reduce my need (or the apparent need) to shop:

1. I have separated clothes that I actually wear (probably 30%) from the whole bunch I own. I have tucked the clothes I don’t wear often away from my eyes, into a couple of boxes. Every time I feel that I don’t have enough clothes, I remember all the space occupied under the bed at my place and know that that’s not true. This works better than having everything in front of your eyes and yet feeling that you have nothing.

2. I have learned to be okay with repeating my clothes. What I wear is a minuscule part of my being, or maybe not even that. I would rather be judged for my work and competence, respected for my compassion and how I treat others, and loved for who I am, as I am, and definitely not for what I wear. 

Studies suggest that an average person makes 35,000 decisions every day. I have never given serious thought to how close I could get to becoming a Mark Zuckerberg if I ever wished to, but not wasting my time in deciding what to wear every day just like Zuckerberg can translate into an extra half hour of a nap, reading, cleaning the house or anything more productive. It also saves me from the drama of “I have nothing to wear” on an everyday basis. 

3. I do not shop during Sale. What is Black Friday sale even, dear Indians in India??? To my horror, I even came across an Environment Day sale ad on my Instagram feed on June 5!! The whole point of Environment Day is to discourage people from doing all that is harming the environment, and consumerism underlines every single thing that does so!! There is nothing that should cause you and cost you the “end-of-reason,” definitely not clothes and other items with click-baits that read “below 1599, 999, 599, 199, 0.99″….900 days of drinking water a person can consume…this figure does not change, though. And have you seen the ridiculously long line outside the fitting rooms during the end of season sales?? It starts at Zara on the ground floor of the mall and ends at Reliance Trends on the fifth. And there are just as many men in the queue as there are women. Dare I ever read or hear another mindless joke about women and shopping!

4. Part of the reason why shopping and fashion have transcended our lives in such a big way is accessibility. There have been instances when I have gone to a new city and asked a local about the things to do there, and they have given me names of malls that I MUST visit!! Seriously?? Sundays during my childhood meant washing the car with dad, and boy, I did it with all the passion, dad massaging my hair with oil, all of us watching the famous Indian television series, mom cooking the best delicacies for lunch, dad teaching us to cut and chew sugarcane in the backyard, and me playing outside with my friends till our mothers dragged us home for lunch and dinner. Imagine if all of us swarmed the only garment shop in our locality every Sunday!!

I know cooking delicacies is probably never going to be a routine part of my Sundays as it is the only day I get off from work. But in the last two years, my husband and I made it a point to never go to a mall on a weekend to pass our time shopping. We went to the movies, explored restaurants, soaked in nature at parks and gardens, and even did libraries and museums. 

Needless to mention, I do not have any shopping apps on my phone. I do not want to be window shopping, wanting, lusting, wasting time on a mobile app and then guilty buying and spending the day in regret while there are thousands of books waiting to be read, movies to be watched, skills to be upgraded, hobbies to be pursued, and chores to be completed to live in peace.

5. All that said, I am a person who likes to dress well. I do think of it as a mark of respect to the person I am meeting and to my own self. In order to always look presentable without owning a factory of garments, I have made my “basics” game really strong. The blacks, whites, and greys in my wardrobe offer me the perfect ground to play with colours and styles, and transition from one look to another and accentuate it with just one piece of accessory, or a pop of lip colour. While I am still working on restructuring my wardrobe, I would like you to google Capsule Wardrobe, if minimising your wardrobe is on your mind.

6. Your mother’s (and your father’s) wardrobe is a treasure trove of fashion. I have got even luckier to have two sisters. My sister made dresses out of dad’s shirts while in college. And for me, mom’s collection of sarees and dupattas is gold. I have a set of plain black kurta and pants which I wear to work, for a casual outing, to parties and to the grandest functions, just by changing the dupatta and accessories.  The limited clothing options are helping nurture the artist within me. I am getting good at mixing and matching clothes, experimenting with them and having more fun than I ever did during any of my shopping experiences.

I have a friend who once told me she owned two pairs of dresses. We were starting our careers then, and she told me she added five new sets with her first stipend to have one set for every day of the week. That, she told me, turned out to be such a big problem for her as she now had to wash and prepare seven sets a week from just two earlier. It is important to determine how much is “enough.” A line needs to be drawn somewhere. And only you can do that for yourself.

The idea of buying second-hand or “pre-loved” as it is called is gaining a lot of popularity. For now, I am floating in enough from the family, I feel. But if you do open up to the idea of buying pre-loved clothing, I would love to hear about your experiences. 🙂

Do it for the planet, for your pockets, or your self. Don’t you also believe there is much more to all of us than the clothes we wear? 

I also urge you to watch this video to learn more about Fast Fashion and the burning issues facing our planet today! – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGF3ObOBbac&t=6s.