SECOND-HAND FOR THE FIRST TIME
BUYING SECOND-HAND CLOTHES TAUGHT ME THAT THE GAZE WITH WHICH I CHOOSE TO LOOK AT THE WORLD CHANGES COMPLETELY WHAT I SEE.
When I decided that I wanted to come to Englad to volunteer at Schumacher College, there was one thing that really worried me: the cold.
I made sure to arrive only after winter was over, but I knew I should keep my expectations down after I saw online that the average maximum temperature in April, which is already Spring, was around 15°C.
And the information wasn’t mistaken.
I arrived in London on April 3rd and, as expected, my thin sweatshirt and the two pants (one of which was ripped on the legs, which could be stylish, materially detached or whatever else in Brazil, but in this cold only meant I had little experience and that I’d shiver a lot) that I brought in my backpack from India were not even close to enough.
It was a fact that I needed to buy some winter clothes to spend my 3 months around here, otherwise I just couldn’t stick around.
I though this would be a great opportunity to make an experiment and act accordingly to some things I’ve been reflecting about the fashion industry: I decided I wanted to be mindful about the origen os the clothes I wanted to buy.
In my mind, this implied in a few things.
NOT BUYING FROM FAST FASHION BRANDS
Fast fashion a clothing category in which the companies produce and market clothes at very low prices and a quick turn over of collections. This category features brandes such as Zara, H&M, TopShop, GAP, Forever21 and the list goes on.
I’ve been seduced plenty of times buy the new models and styles offered by these brandes at a low price. I used to love going out to shopping malls just to check out what was available and maybe buy something that had a good price, even if I didn’t need it. When I’d go to the United States, this was a priority: I had to buy as much clothes as possible to take advantage of prices.
Two things would happen to these clothes: they’d shrink and fade after a few washes or, as I purchased new things, I’d forget about what I had, even if they could still be used.
I turns out that, a while ago, I found out that the prices were low, but the real costs were extremely high.
These brands (and many others that aren’t Fast Fashion, but that also take on violent practices) produce in underdeveloped countries, such as Bangladesh and Vietnam,where a large group of people, composed majorly by women and children, works extremely long shifts that go up to 16 hours a day, in horrible conditions, for ridiculous salaries of a little more than a dollar a day.
In general, these brands use non-organic cotton — one of the most polluting and water consuming process in the world, according to Environmental Justice Foundation — , synthetic materials like polyester — which is made out of petroleum and takes 200 years to compost — and even lead, as The New York Times Points out. All of this not to speak about the chemicals used to dye fabric, that are extremely harmful to the health of the workers and to the environment.
Besides all that, transporting all this clothing pieces from where they’re produced, mostly in Asia and South America, to where they will be consumed, mostly in Europ and North America, requires a lot of energy and adds up to a destructive ecological footprint.
I’ve already decided that I don’t want to follow on collaborating with these unethical practices that are killing pachamama and because of that I’ve quit buying clothes a little while ago, at least until I wear out the clothes I’ve gathered over the past few years — which is clearly more than enough for me to feel comfortable and be accepted inside society.
But now, that I needed to buy clothes and wanted to do it in a conscious and ethical manner, I was facing a challenge, to which I could see two sollution possibilities.
BUYING SECOND-HAND CLOTHES
Thrift Stores are not a recent thing, but I’ll tell you that until just recently I had never considered going into one to buy my clothes — or not even to sell them. Even if I had clothes in good conditions, I ended leaving them inside the closet long enough for them to get stained or eaten my moths and a long time later I would finally donate them more as a way to get rid of them than to help people who needed or to value the resources and energy used to produce them, continuing to make them be worn.
Before I resumed my travels, in order to give financial and non-financial resources their due value, to recognize the sacredness of the objects I consume — which take a lot of natural resources, sweat and work of many people that I’ll never get to know and a lot of accumulated knowledge developed by humans over history to be made (even if not in a very ethical way) — and the honor the privilege of having the needed resources to satisfy not only my needs but also my desires, I decided to undertake the challenge to sell some of the stuff that was standing around the house getting dusty and taking room and that, otherwise, would stay there and end up rotten.
I can see that this pattern of accumulating things and leaving them laying around has been present all my life and I believe it happens because my access to financial resources was always enough to provide me more than I needed and, therefore, I never needed to sell one thing to buy another. And also because the logics in which I’ve always been inserted never suggested I reflected about the real value and cost of things I had access to.
At the individual level, I’m extremely grateful to all the forces and efforts that enabled me to have all this safety an comfort all my life. But I’ve noticed that, at the collective level, this accumulating behavior is not very healthy because, besides existing due to a social and economic unbalance — which allows me all of this while there are people working 3 jobs to barely support their families — , it’s also the consequence of a consumerist thinking that puts a lot of pressure on natural resources and stimulates unethical systems like I’ve just presented.
So there I went.
I organized the things I could sell, took pictures of the products, posted them online, shared with friends, called some stores to understand how their purchasing process worked. I spent a few days doing it, but it worked.
I sold a turntable, 60 vinyl discs and a slackline online and, to my own surprise and delight, I also sold a lot of clothes to a thrift store.
And in this process of selling clothes to a thrift store, I became very impressed by the amount of high quality stuff in great conditions they had available. I purchased a belt that I needed which made me feel very satisfied and made me keep this subject in mind for when I really needed to buy clothes.
Here in England, more common than thrift stores, which buy used clothes to resell them, are the Charity Shops, which are stores linked to a social cause that resell clothes they’ve received by donation. Therefore, the clothes are not always in the best conditions, they’re not necessarily presented in a tidy and organized manner and they do not follow a consistent style standard.
On my first day in London I went out hunting for a sweatshirt and a jacket, which was the basics for me to be able to move around freely outdoors in the local temperature.
I visited some charity shops around Streatham Hill and Brixton, checked thm out, but did not feel attracted buy anything. I would move the hangers around, but my sensations was that “there wasn’t anything really beautiful there” or that “nothing was worth it”. On the following day I went to Camden and kept on searching, but the sensation didn’t change much. I wouldn’t like how things looked and, those I did like, I did not like how they fit.
After two days on the hunt, walking around a lot and feeling cold, I came back home and decided to look online for tips on how to purchase clothes in a mindful way.
So I got to the second possibility.
BUYING NEW CLOTHES FROM ETHICAL AND RESPONSIBLE BRANDS
I found out that there are a lot of people engaged in changing the logics under which the fashion industry works.
Organic cotton, local and handmade production, fair trade and salaries that value the work of those who make the clothes, pieces of clothing of higher quality that last longer, so you don’t need to buy other pieces frequently, and a lot of stylish things.
Then came the part that generated good new reflections on me: theses clothes cost a lot of money — specially in England, where EVERYTHING is expensive and the pound is currently worth around five Brazilian reals.
I researched, researched and researched a little more.
I found a few things that would cost a little less money, but they would still cost high amounts of it. And my current financial situation is that of someone who hasn’t had an income for the past 9 months and I’ve been traveling exchanging money for accommodation and food, so I’m not in conditions to spend much money.
Beyond the reflection on how, by costing a lot of money, these ethical and responsible products end up being unaccessible to most of society — even in a country like England — , I kept thinking about how this high price is, actually, just the real cost to produce clothes with respect all throughout the chain.
I spent a lot of time researching and I became tired and frustrated.
I felt like I couldn’t scape the system.
For a moment I wished I wouldn’t have made this decision to change my behavior and I wanted to be able to just go into any store, buy what I needed for a good price without thinking about all this and finish the whole thing.
But the idea of taking responsibility for the consequences of my acts in th world would always come back.
I kept thinking about how crazy it is, in the first place, to have the possibility to decide if I want or not to be responsible on with my actions. And also about how easily I could just turn my face to this devastating reality that we created with our globalized society.
If I were to enter H&M to by my sweatshirt and jacket I’d have less work, I’d save money and my life would go on normally.
Normally because I don’t have any dear person nor am I one of the women and children from Bangladesh, who are suffering day in and day out with the oppressive market that makes it so that working 16 hours daily for a littl oveer 1 dollar per day is better than not doing it.
Normally because in London, at my friends’ place, I’m very warm, with clean water to drink and I’ve got my fruits to eat. And, even in São Paulo, where sometimes there’s water shortage, I’m protected because the region where I live is too important to not have water. And, even when there’s only a small part of rivers accessible with drinking water and the prices of food rise, I’ll probably be in the small percentage of people that can pay to go on having what to eat and drink.
Normally because it’d be very comfortable to go on with the patterns of blaming others for the ethical and environmental disaster we’re currently living while I live my life without being directly affected, at least material wise, for all this mess.
The organics movement also suffers a little with this. Organic food is usually perceived as too expensive and a lot of people choose to go on buying non-organic food because they’re cheaper and they don’t see a real value in paying more for organics.
As well as with organics, if I really need to buy clothes, I’ll always do my best effort to support an ethical and, preferably, local clothing brand.
On the following morning, while I was having breakfast, in order to try and solve all this question inside me, I started investigating my consumption patterns with clothes and brought to consciousness the fact that I’ve always prioritized aesthetics and style over functionality on the clothes I bought.
Moreover, I realized I was going into the charity shops with the same mindset I used to go into brand nw clothes stores — wanting to see shiny new clothes and being able to pick and choose sizes and colors as I wished.
Not that I wouldn’t search for good looking clothes, but I came to realize that maybe this mindset wouldn’t work with the choices I was making. I decided to go back to the same charity shops I’d been to on the first day, now with an open mind, to look at what was available and ponder mindfully if it’d be possible not only to wear some of those clothes to get warm, but also to feel well while doing it.
And the result did not disappoint.
I found a black jacket and a dark blue sweatshirt with beautiful red flowers that fit me at accessible prices.
As a plus, when I went to confirm the price of the jacket, that had a tag of 25 pounds, the sales woman looked at it and said “you know what, there’s this little stain here, so I can sell it for 20”.
I smiled and said her help was much appreciated specially because my money had a very bad exchange rate in England. She asked where I was from and what I was up to in England. I shared that I’m from Brazil and that I was heading to Schumacher College to volunteer and keep on with my research on community living.
She smiles back and said she could sell the jacket for 15 pounds.
In fact, while I write this text, new in a cafe in Totnes, I’m wearing both things I bought because it’s 5pm and it’s 9°C out there.
They say the first time is unforgettable, right?
About my first time buying second hand clothes, I’ll do my best not to forget that the challenge in doing things differently were more related to my patterns and costumes than in the system itself — after all, the system is supported by our patterns and costumes, isn’t it?
I go on with one more experience that comes to reinforce my idea that for change to happen in the world it needs to happen inside me first.
