Can Sustainable Fashion Be Cheap?

A common issue with sustainable fashion is that many people, myself included, just find it too expensive. Fast fashion has increased our desire for more and more clothing and keeping this level of consumerism up while only shopping from sustainable brands just isn't possible. Most sustainable fashion brands price their products way out of the reach of normal people in the UK and asking people to stop buying clothes from Primark and switch to People Tree is just unrealistic. 

If you are thinking about dabbling is sustainable fashion but are worried about the cost, then fear not. Although many sustainable fashion brands are more expensive, there are so many secondhand and vintage shops to help you along your journey instead. For me this was the best way of switching to a sustainable wardrobe wile keeping it cheap. Charity shops, car boot sales, vintage stores and secondhand clothes apps like Depop are sustainable ways of buying clothes while still paying fast fashion prices.

However, shopping sustainable and sustainable fashion is not just about changing where you buy your clothes. It's also not just about switching your plastic clothes for hemp. The point of the sustainable fashion movement was about deconstructing the addiction to purchasing and consumerism. Learning to shop more sustainable is not just about shopping in different places, its about changing the way we think about shopping, changing the way we think and feel about our clothes and breaking the relationship between acquiring material goods and our own self worth.

For me, this was the hardest part of the past three years shopping sustainable; I never thought I had an addiction to buying clothes, or that I was particularly attached to them. When I quit fast fashion however, I realized just how ingrained and socially conditions certain thoughts and feelings were.

So can sustainable fashion be cheap? Yes, it can. Apart from breaking the expensive addiction to buying clothes, changing the way we think abut fashion and transitioning how we relate to our own style can end up saving you money. 

Make sure you have a look at my other blog posts on sustainable fashion here.

Or have a look at my Ethical Brands list here.