Stop looking like trash

I frequent Goodwill at least twice a week. No, I don’t need anything at all, as my closet has exited onto a rack in the corner of the room, and the rack has now consumed the small floral settee neatly planted beside it. There is no reason for me to add to what I call “clothing mountain,” but the terrible overconsumer in me screams for me to halt anytime I pass a thrift store.

If I am having a bad day, a trip to the Salvation Army will always bring me cheer, or if I have an event to attend, instead of making my way to Dillards, I’ll peek my head into any hole in the wall second hand store just to see if there is any gold tucked back between all the cringey old Wet Seal dresses and Abercrombie shirts. Even if I find something vintage that fits, and I know I don’t need it, I somehow end up coming home with it. Yes, this habit has been addressed by my therapist, and yes I know it isn’t healthy, but I would rather be surrounded by heaps of quality clothes when I die, rather than trash. 

The other day, I was feeling a bit down on myself and decided to make a quick run through of our local Goodwill. I entered the doors, smiled at my favorite worker while grabbing a cart and began my fast paced game of pulling dresses to the right as I examined the dress and tag. Yanking ugly dress after ugly dress to the right as I made my way down the rack, I observed something I hadn’t noticed before. 

As a professional hoarder and expert second hand shopper, I was appalled by the amount of Shein and Fashion Nova dresses that were in front of me. Four years ago, all I could find while out thrifting were amazing Lesley Fay suits from the 1980s and anything that millennials wore to high school. Back then, it felt like it was rather slim pickings. Now there is a plethora of everything but most of all, fast fashion dresses from the last two years. 

I huffed and continued on, shuffling through dozens of tube sock dresses, and paying attention to everything I touched, I thought to myself “maybe I should just go home.” Leaving this store empty handed meant something not about me and my growth from overindulging but about what these stores are now filled with… TRASH! 

Shopping at thrift stores used to be considered a sustainable form of shopping. Remember the little slogan “reduce, reuse, and recycle”? By shopping second hand, you were buying reused clothing and making a whole new life for a garment that would usually be considered unwanted or in need of recycling. How are you supposed to reuse clothing if it is falling apart?

On a rainy day recently, while a friend was wearing a black Shein top that she paid $4 for, the dye started to run down her arms after contact with water. That is a big deal, especially in the fashion world, as all textiles used in manufacturing clothing should be tested left and right to make sure things are according to plan and won’t do something like this. Right as I started to lecture her for wearing something so cheap, the shirt itself started to disintegrate as if it were made of tissue paper. All I could say was “Go take that off right now.” 

I wish I could stick my nose up and say, “How could you buy such garbage?” but I can’t. Clothing nowadays is extraordinarily expensive, and the quality of any garment is simply raggedy compared to something made 40 years ago; clothing companies that are making “sustainable” products price them so astronomically, that it is unrealistic for the average consumer to be able to afford something. 

“They are only $300” a classmate nonchalantly pointed out during a lecture while talking about a completely eco-friendly and sustainable fashion brand making recycled textile jeans. In my head, I thought about how utterly appalling it is. My Gloria Vanderbilt jeans only cost four dollars off the Goodwill rack, and were 40 bucks new. Of course, they were more than likely produced in some other, unregulated country and made of things that I would rather not know about, but for people like me, that is just kinda how it has to be. 

We have made sustainable fashion, but it is only for the least sustainable people of all, wealthy people. In the past decade, we have witnessed a rise of greenwashing capitalism. There are now all sorts of bamboo toothbrushes (which are actually not very eco friendly), lots of linens made of all-natural biodegradable fibers and plenty of other recyclable materials, but they are marked at such a high price that the only people who can even think about being a little better in their habits are snobs who can afford to buy two of everything, in anticipation of the first one breaking or falling apart. 

This irks me deeply. I want to help our planet, but with how the planet is, how am I supposed to do that without spending gobs of money? Greenwashing has become the backbone of every single company. Instead of changing old methods of production, they still continue the old ways and produce the old products but also make so-called “better” products for eco-conscious people.

So what is our future, and where does fashion fit in? The world of design has tried to make its best impression and to try and leave less of a footprint. It’s all credited to small designers who themselves weren’t even leaving a trace of trash behind them. It isn’t the big name designers and the mass production of their clothes; it’s the fast fashion brands that continue to not only steal designs from other artists but produce them in thousands of colors, shapes and sizes. 

We can hope and pray for something better, and even hold these brands accountable, but will they listen? They will have to once the world starts burning down around them in their highly flammable ensembles.  

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