My passion for fashion began to develop at the ripe age of 15. As I thumbed through the latest Cosmo Girl magazine, I fantasized of being on the French Riviera in the latest trendy outfits. I pictured my younger self basking in the warm sun with my branded wide-brim sunhat and designer bathing suit… until I saw the price tags. I thought to myself “one day”. Well, I’m two years into my PhD at the University of Ottawa in Environmental Geography, and while still humbled by beautiful luxury fashion, I no longer wait for “the day” that I can afford all of that… stuff. Because that is what it is, it’s just stuff. As a conscious consumer, I now realize that fashion is an industry. To my younger self’s dismay, high fashion is highly priced to keep specific people with large amounts of disposable income in their grasp, and the majority who are not in that realm on the outs.
While this was disappointing, my dreams of being a little fashion mogul were not squashed. I started working for mid to high-end retailers throughout my high school years and learned some of the tricks of the trade. First off, designer clothing is seldom different in style than most fast fashion brands like Zara and H&M. In fact, all active clothing designers come out with one set of outfits per season that are meant to be consumed in that way. Life hack- those styles repeat- all. the. time. In realizing this, I reasoned with myself that I would not bankrupt myself by buying new trends that were picked out for me by designers each season. I would use my own creative ability to mix and match clothing and do my best to stick to the trends, with a little bit of my own flare.
Even so, some of the items that I was looking to purchase were way outside of 15 year old me’s budget. This is how I discovered second-hand shopping, and it changed my life. I started going into second-hand shops like Value Village when I was dressing myself up for a Friday night, equipped with my knapsack and a $20 bill. I was absolutely SHOCKED by what people threw out. What started to me as an opportunity to buy cheaper clothes, turned into the only way I bought clothes. I started to understand that within second-hand shopping there are tiers; you have free stuff, donations-based shops, consignment, luxury consignment, and so on. When I realized that perfectly good clothing was being thrown out- clothing that I would have paid the ticket price for- I realized that we as consumers attribute value to clothing. Brand names are brand names because we agree to it as a collective society and we’re willing to use our buying power to increase the demand of certain brands. Like I say, fashion is an industry, and not one looking to lose money.
The life changing part about thrift shopping for me, was that I had to work with what was there. I did not know what the stock was going to be that day- I had to get creative. Honestly, thumbing though the different colours and shapes and textures of those racks inspired some of my most awesome looks. In having to mix and match these different pieces from different eras, I found my artistic ability. Fashion is supposed to be about self expression.
I have had the opportunity to volunteer with the uOttawa Free Store for a few years now. For those of you who don’t know, the Free Store is a store on campus where everything is free. This free stuff comes from two main avenues. First, uOttawa has students who live on campus in our residences. When these students leave, they do not take all of the things that they have accumulated back home with them. There is a program called the Dump and Run where students and staff go into these student residences, take all of the things that were left over, and bring them to the Free Store. These items are washed, dried, and set out in the store for uOttawa students, alumni, and staff to take- free of charge. Second, the Office of Campus Sustainability hires coordinators to accept donations from the greater Ottawa community and add those to the Free Store as well. In short, check out the Free Store.
This all leads me to my final reveal. I was going through all of the stuff as a Free Store volunteer and realized that one person’s trash is most definitely another person’s treasure. I have created a program called “Impact Runway” which will feature clothing solely from the Free Store. I have called on students from the University of Ottawa to model outfits that I have curated for them from the Free Store stock, that we then post to our blog and our instagram account (@impactrunway.impactmode). From these social media accounts, we sell the clothing at a very low cost. The proceeds from Impact Runway’s store will be used to put on a fashion show at uOttawa in September of 2022. At the show, each scene will represent and inform the audience of the great sustainability initiatives that we have at uOttawa. The clothing that is worn in each scene will then be sold to people in the audience, and the money that each scene makes will go into funding the initiative that the scene was based on. Some people have asked: “Celeste, why are you selling clothing to people that is supposed to be free?” My answer to this is: visibility. If I put up a shop online to sell second-hand goods, it changes the narrative from ‘these clothes are garbage’ to ‘these pieces are worth buying’.
My main message here is this: fast fashion is unsustainable. From an economics perspective, participating in trends is expensive. From a societal perspective, participating in trends includes you in certain circles and excludes you from others. Finally (and immediately detrimental), fast fashion is terrible for our environment. I’ll keep it light for the purpose of this blog post, but the natural resources that go into producing clothing, the sweatshops in which people work to produce clothing, and the waste that is produced when that clothing is ‘no longer stylish’ is astronomical. Have fun with fashion. Make your own trends. Volunteer with Impact Runway.
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