When I stopped buying fast fashion this happened...

At the beginning of this year, when I started my blog I had no intention of changing any of my shopping habits apart from buying only cruelty-free makeup. Although I have studied environmental science for years and spent a lot of time around environmentalists, I never really saw a reason to change the products I bought let alone the clothes I wore. I always just felt that it was the role of environmentalists to encourage the government to introduce new legislative rules to constrain the acts of big businesses, this, in turn, was the way the world would begin to move towards a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way of being.

Since leaving university and giving up on a career in environmentalism, I started working in marketing and requalified doing a couple of diplomas and subscribing to marketing week. It was also around this time I started watching Youtube and reading blogs. I started to come to the conclusion that I had always thought about social political and environmental change in the wrong way. Due to the development and prevalence of social media in society, I think that rather a large scale environmental change should be looked at from the point of view of individual change and responsibility. Businesses follow changes in the market and will redesign themselves and evolve with society to ensure they continue to make a profit.

This is why when I first saw the True Cost documentary and started to do my own research around the fashion industry I decided that I would do my bit and boycott fast fashion. What I didn't realise, however, is when I made this decision how it would deeply affect me emotionally. I'm not a particularly emotional person, personally, I feel like one of the best things you can do in an emotional situation is repress your feelings if you have any. This for me made my emotional journey when I decided to boycott fast fashion even more surprising.

I decided to stop buying anything from a fast fashion brand. No shoes, no clothes no accessories, no homeware. Now one thing I hate is breaking a promise I have made to myself, I think that it is worse than breaking a promise to another person; so I have stuck to this for the past 9 months.

 First of all, when I started out I was really cross and angry all the time. I would usually spend most of my time in the evenings online shopping and my time at the weekend shopping in town; now I couldn't do that I just had to sit back and watch other people buy all the new clothes they wanted and I just had nothing. On days out shopping, I just had to trawl around shops after other people watching them enjoy themselves and me just be miserable unable to buy anything. 

This went on for around a couple of months, I felt like I had bitten off more than I could chew and this was not something I could keep up. I considered writing a blog post 'boycotting fast fashion for 3 months'. I just felt excluded, like I was missing out on this huge part of society I couldn't be stylish or look pretty because I couldn't have these things that everyone else had. After 3 months of boycotting fast fashion, I found myself in H&M picking up lots of bits from their 'conscious' collection (that I don't agree with), this is it I thought, this is the future for me, this is how I can validate my 'ethical' purchases to myself!

However, as I was waiting in the queue for the changing room with about £200 of clothes in my hands I started to think why has this been so difficult for me? Do I really want or need these things? Why has just stopping shopping been so difficult and upsetting? Why or how am I actually missing out? Will I actually look more stylish and pretty for buying these random, uncoordinated, poorly made bits of clothes? Is that what makes a woman stylish? Why do I feel so emotional about this? This is when it dawned on me, that this is how it works and just how deep-rooted in my mind consumerism actually is. Needless to say, I didn't buy anything.

After about 5 months of boycotting fast fashion and thinking about why it's important and how the trap of consumerism works, I stopped wanting to buy anything. I saved so much money I was able to go on two holidays and put money in a savings account every month. Since then I have never looked back however, the most shocking part of this journey emotionally came for me at this point. I started to feel a massive wave of liberation, a feeling of being free from something I never knew I was constrained by. I felt like an odd weight I never knew was there had been lifted off my shoulders, it felt lighter to be detached from this system. I never considered myself to be a shopaholic or obsessed with fashion which made this experience even stranger to me; I have found liberation and freedom when I wasn't even looking for it.

I think most people boycott fast fashion and unethical brands because of the issues surrounding the workers or the environment, but not many people seem to have spoken about doing it for yourself. There are reasons I feel outside of just wanting a capsule wardrobe etc. to do this for yourself. Happiness, self-esteem, finances and the liberation of excluding yourself and your soul from a system of consumerist indoctrination. I don't ever intend to go back to buying things from fast fashion brands or even view shopping for clothes in the way I did. This has above all else really made me feel happy and although I'm not opposed to getting myself a treat I really want for my birthday or at Christmas, I don't see the need to shop for clothes in these places again.  

If anyone else has had any other emotional experiences boycotting fast fashion let me know, it would be interesting to know how other people have felt going through these experiences or if other people have felt completely different as I can only speak for myself. :)