I don’t find myself drawn to new year’s resolutions but I do love a personal challenge. Perhaps that is because I see resolutions as a drive to change something, and I can do that any day of the week. A challenge for the year is a fun project. I’ve done simple things before like decide I had to dance every time I heard ‘Brimful of Asher’. That was years ago and I still do it. A friend told me this year she’s working hard to remember people’s birthdays. For me in 2025 I was on a budget so I decided to attempt not to buy any clothes new.
Thankfully a friend introduced me to Depop, which I’ve been using to help cut down the incredible amount of clothes I’ve got in my wardrobe(s). It’s also meant I was able to get things second hand that I didn’t have the budget to buy new. It was lovely to feel like I could thrift anything I needed, saving money, and contributing to reuse of clothes that already exist. I’ve also been able to use funds from things I’ve sold on Depop to snap up items I’ve wanted on there.
Going through the year with this focus has definitely made me feel like I don’t have to buy things new and can keep an eye for people parting with them some time later. It’s made me get more creative with my own clothes, even when I am already a confident outfit repeater. That is obvious in itself with both this hat and skirt being common characters in blog posts.
Outfit repeating is a word that feels cheap in my mouth. It feels unnecessary. Since humans have been wearing clothes we’ve been wearing them as though they should be worn out. People have previously turned worn out or old clothes into other items like baby clothes. They have repaired and mended. Clothes that can’t be worn repeatedly have a fundamental failure of function. The consumable nature of fashion that has gotten faster and faster. From a business perspective, clothes need to last for shorter periods time so they have to be replaced. It’s a force feeding to a stomach that’s overfull. Fashion also drives an idea that being ahead of all trends is seen as stylish, and that means when something you have worn becomes worn by others, you can’t wear it any more because the trend has caught up to you. The horror of being seen in the something the same or similar to the people who follow fashion instead of defining it is a curse for wearing something only once. The antidote for a curse like that is style. Style is timeless. Great outfits should be repeated. If they were that good in the first place, they should be as good any time again.
This top was one of a few items I secured through Depop. My first time wearing it I realised why the previous owner had sold it; the back zipper has no method to secure it at the top so it tends to undo itself if I lean the wrong way. Cute, but not really functional.
My sister and I did these cute photos after a sweet day down the coast in hot weather. She spotted the crescent moon and caught a pic with it tiny in the sky.
It’s always important to remember that fashion is political. It is impossible to separate fashion from politics. Not only have clothes always represented distinctions between wealth, poverty and working classes, who makes them is defines power and exploitation. Denim, an easy example, known for being blue using indigo dye. Indigo was one of the most valuable crops in the American south, harvested by the enslaved people who would be wearing the very denim it would dye. Denim was a way of separating the enslaved from the owners of the land and the people forced to work it. Slavery was only abolished in America in 1860. Fascinating how southern white culture is often represented by denim jeans today.
Here is a very real life example closer to home of fashion being political. Just last year fashion company Mosaic Brands (owners of Rivers, Noni B and Katies was fined $25 million dollars by the Federal Court breaches to consumer law. In 2023 they also were fined for wage theft. During this time they also refused to pay millions to garment factories across Bangladesh, resulting in the loss of jobs for tens of thousands of workers and the bankrupting of at least 20 garment factories.
At the moment I’m conscious of the pressing personal experience of fashion politics that comes with having blogged for long enough to have long term blogging friends in America. This fashion activity connected us and we have stayed in touch for many years. They reached out to me during the Black Summer fires of 2020. Fortunately for me I was far enough removed from the fires to have the core southern Australian experience was one of the endless oppressive smoke without the direct fear of fire. I now worry for those fashion blogging friends and their safety in their own country while the world watches a rupture in stability that ripples through all other nations.
Individual choices of fashion may seem like they don’t matter, and that’s the way it is intended for us to feel. A clothing choice I make might seem inconsequential but the awareness to repeat outfits and repair our items, as well as buying second hand, makes an impactful personal changes to waste, to social values and to who holds the power. It may seem small being one person, but it has to start with one of us. Choices like this give us agency in circumstances where we would have none. I cannot affect the world around me in a large way, but I can make big personal choices that is amplified when joined with others doing the same.
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