Made to Last: Why Vintage Clothing Is Sustainable Fashion
Often when people hear the word sustainable fashion they envision something along the lines of the aluminum cans and police tape outfit that Lady Gaga wears in her music video for the song “Telephone,” or some of the items used in the “unconventional materials” challenge on Project Runway. While those are valid interpretations of sustainable fashion, another way that consumers can do less harm to the environment is by shopping for vintage clothing.
As the public have become more aware of global warming and the human impact on the environment, the fashion industry has done the same. Some top designers, such as Vivienne Westwood whose autumn/winter 2017 collection displayed during London Fashion Week Men’s at the beginning of that year showed support for a renewable energy company in the UK, and Stella McCartney who has been conscious about fashion’s impact on the environment since the beginning of her career, promote sustainability through their work. But luxury brand clothing is not very accessible to the masses. An article from the journal Fashion Theory, entitled “Fast Fashion, Sustainability, and the Ethical Appeal of Luxury Brands,” describes sustainable fashion as clothing that is meant to last and does not cause harm to humans or the environment. What is not sustainable, as explained in the article, is fast fashion which is a big part of today’s consumer market. Fast fashion is trendy clothing, modeled after what designers have on their runways, that is made to move quickly from production to stores, and from stores to consumers. This includes stores like Zara, H&M, and Forever 21. Since fast fashion changes with the trends, it is not built to last, meaning a lot of it ends up in landfills. According to a Huffington Post article, Americans threw away about 81 pounds of clothing in 2016, which means that landfills contain about “26 billion pounds of textiles and clothes.” Anna MacFaden, who works in visual merchandising likes to buy vintage and used clothing for this reason. “We produce so much and where does it go,” she said. “That’s why I always shop in either thrift stores, vintage stores, or Goodwill instead of buying new because it just kind of adds to the whole thing.”

Buying vintage clothing, clothing that is at least 20 years old, is essentially recycling clothes that are already produced as opposed to purchasing fast fashion. That is how Lucy Ann Laupus, the owner of a vintage store in Brooklyn called Collections, sees it. “I think that clothing used to be made a lot better and would last a lot longer,” she said. “It’s just reusing clothing and reusing the resources that we already have.” Compared to the fast fashion clothing that is produced today, older clothing is more durable because, according to an article from the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, in the United States during World War I, clothing was produced in a way that did not use excess fabric and it was reused for as long as possible. But later during World War II, industrialization and consumerism increased in the U.S. so more clothing was produced. With consumer demand as high as it is now, quantity is valued over quality, and many fashion companies have begun to manufacture their clothing in other countries, like China, in order to keep production costs low. Joshua Suzanne Ethier, the owner of the store Rags-A-Gogo in Manhattan, says that reusing clothing for as long as possible was a part of her upbringing because the quality of the clothes enabled her to do so. “Vintage clothing lasts for decades simply because it was made really, really well,” she said. “You wore something until you couldn’t wear it any longer and then you gave it to people who needed it.” Because of the fast fashion model of clothing manufacturing, clothing nowadays is no longer made to be worn for a long time, it is made to be disposed of when the next trend is in stores.


Although vintage clothing was made 20 plus years ago and it is not made to look like the latest runway trends, it can still be trendy. Much of what is on the runways today is inspired by previous trends. Marc Jacobs’ women’s fall 2018 ready-to-wear collection, for example, contains large shoulder pads and high-waisted trousers that are unmistakably ’80s. “A lot of clothing produced today is based on clothing from the past,” said Erika Perenic, one of the owners of the store Chess and the Sphinx in Brooklyn. “Lots of designers buy from here to copy patterns to make new patterns for their clothes.” Shopping for vintage clothing can also be good for consumers who do not want trendy clothes and want to find clothing that is unique. Aside from the fact that she owns a vintage store, Laupus said that she personally likes to shop vintage because, “you don’t feel like you’re in a box with everyone else, dressing like everybody else.”


While the idea of recycling clothing and wearing trends from the past has been around for decades, some think that buying vintage is a trend in itself, and that consumers will eventually lose interest in it. But vintage store owners and shoppers think, or at least hope, that it is something that people will continue to do. And they hope that more people will begin to think about the environmental impact of fast fashion and become more interested in vintage shopping. In regard to consumers moving towards vintage as opposed to purchasing clothes that are fast fashion, Laupus said, “We started thinking about what that [fast fashion] is and what that means and we’re trying to inspire others.” Perhaps fast fashion will prove to be a trend and within the next few years, sustainable clothing production will again be the norm. But until then vintage clothing will always be around.
