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187: Responsible Consumer Sustainability

Laurel H
Beauty secrets, Blog, color analysis, creating_a_wardrobe, fashion_technology, industrial couture, sustainability, Wardrobe reduction, women's clothing
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Responsible Consumer Sustainability

Sheep demonstrating wool source.
Fibershed is a global movement that advocates climate beneficial agriculture. Fibershed’s mission is to implement a better pipeline for production and use of clothing that does not harm the ecosystem.

You can assist a global movement to help with reducing clothing waste. YOU can make a difference!

Why? Because the industry makes what sells. If you buy it, the market will make more.

Ever notice that whatever you see in one store you see in all? This is why: Industry makes what is selling.  Reps that sell a manufacturer’s garments to buyers often rep more than one manufacturer. Gofers, usually young women just out of fashion school who shop the stores to see what is sold, buy the garment(s) that sell on credit. Reps and gofers take the garment(s) into a competing manufacture’s designing department where the garment is copied, then put on the market, usually at a lower price. When I worked in industry I would copy the garment on Monday morning, test the patterns and have my sample maker make one sample. Then I would grade the patterns, do the layouts and draw them to scale on Tuesday, send the patterns and scaled layouts to the cutters on Wednesday. A single cutting was always 500 or 1000 garments. The cutting would start down the line on Thursday. Friday the garments would  pass me, hanging on the racks, on their way to the shipping department.

The average USA citizen buys 60 pieces of clothing a year, much of which is discarded within a year, ending up as trash in Third World countries.  Much, if not most of today’s clothing is made from synthetics – usually oil, a nonrenewable energy source. It takes at least 500 years for most of these synthetics to decompose.

  • Polyester. Polyester comes from synthetic materials derived from petroleum-based chemicals or petrochemical products. Polyester is also known as polyethylene terephthalate (PET).
  • Nylon. Nylon is one of the world’s most versatile synthetic materials. It’s a petroleum-based plastic polymer widely used to make fibers and textile fabrics in the fashion industry.
  • Acrylic. Acrylic is a petroleum-based synthetic fiber widely used to make fabrics for fashion. The synthetic material comes from Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA).
  • Polyurethane. Polyurethane (PU) is an artificial leather made of thermoplastic polymer.

If you are concerned about this, here is what you can do to help provide a solution:
It will save you money and time, organize and improve your wardrobe. You will look terrific, but your friends won’t know what you have done. Your friends will tell you how good you look, ask if you have been on vacation, etc. They will want to know what you did.

My grandmother’s quilt that she made from her discarded clothing when she was a child. I’m shown donating it to the Salem, NJ, Historical Society.

This worked for me, and it will work for you

After I was color analyzed at the Color Me Beautiful franchise in King of Prussia way back when Color Me Beautiful was popular, I reorganized my wardrobe based on my best colors and clothing style. I cleared out the house. Most of my clothing and accessories  were returned to stores, sold at yard sales, given away, and thrown away. I’m still wearing clothing I made 30 years ago.
I then had my husband, son, and daughter color analyzed. The result? A saving of thousands of dollars.
  • This is not a new idea! Back in the 1800s women were well aware of color palettes.
  • My paternal grandmother was a dark autumn. Her best quilt that she made from her discarded clothing when she was a child in the late 1880s, proves that (see photo). She was a seamstress who made and bought much of my clothing when I was growing up. She always selected colors and patterns that looked good on me.
I now discard almost nothing because everything in my wardrobe mixes and matches. I am a winter. Summer is my  second best palette. I have two identical handbags, one white, the other black. I have very few shoes. There is no brown or yellow clothing in my wardrobe because those colors don’t look good on me. My wardrobe now fits into a couple very small closets. I make my clothing using the drafting and sewing techniques I learned in industry.  What I make lasts.
The four seasonal color theory actually has twelve palettes. For more information visit this post. 

Fascinated with Color Me Beautiful, I sat in on numerous sessions at the franchise. I was stunned by the difference color made in the attendees’ appearances. If I came with a friend, I could sit in for free, so I made friends in fabric stores and anywhere else I met strangers. I needed to know how color analysis worked, because, as I told my students, After I have taught you how to sew, you will be able to make anything, which means you will be able to make yourself look pretty awful. 

While I’m not a color analyst, I understand color theory, especially the seasonal color theory, and have explained it numerous times to my college students and others. I recently presented the seasonal twelve palette color theory at a PhillyCAM workshop. It was very successful because I engaged everyone in determining each participant’s best colors. Note: Doris Pooser discovered the twelve color palette system.
I buy almost nothing. My clothing purchase this year is a pair of blue gloves to replace the ones I lost. I am making a new spring coat from fabric I bought in 1970. I  plan to make a suit jacket with fabric I bought a couple of years go, using  patterns I plan to copy from a jacket I took out on my charge. I plan to return the jacket I’m copying.
This blouse is 30 years old. Learning to sew provides one with beautiful clothing that doesn’t wear out.

My son Andrew and I just filmed Organizing Patsy’s Wardrobe, showing wardrobing and color procedures. The video will be televised on PhillyCAM.org and up on our YouTube channel in a couple of months. Patsy is Patricia McLaughlin, the syndicated columnist who wrote Style, published years ago in the Inquirer’s Sunday magazine and other publications throughout the USA. I met Patsy  when she took my continuing-professional-education program at Jefferson University.

Comments are welcome.
Thanks for reading,
Laurel

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