Curation is the key to changing fashion behaviours
I started a goal of my own a couple months back to only buy and wear worn clothing for a year, and to show that you can wear worn well. You can read more about that and I decided to do this here.
Since deciding to do this I have began to try and inspire others to do the same through ‘Wear Worn Well’ (Early stages right now)
In the first couple of months of this experience I have noticed some behaviours and attitudes in our culture and others that have got me thinking about tangible solutions to achieving slower fashion and decreasing the impact that fashion has on our environment.
In the UK when we think of worn wear there are two things that come to mind — vintage stores and charity shops. The UK vintage clothing scene has been around for a while but seemed to come into its own around 2010 with everybody suddenly rocking Lacoste Polo’s, Levis 501 shorts and the braver people even heading out in a pair of cowboy boots. Vintage stores are still rife if you head down Brick Lane or go for a day out in The Lanes in Brighton.
However vintage in this guise isn’t for all, and has more recently started to fall out of favour as the boxy fits and worn colours have taken a back seat to box fresh kicks and a different type of vintage — Hypebeast / streetwear vintage fits. Items that you’re not going to come by in a standard vintage store.
So what is the alternative? Well you could buy it new — that kind of goes against what I’m trying to achieve though. Also, you could buy it new if you’re lucky, this stuff sells out pretty fast. The alternatives in the UK right now are really eBay, the problem with eBay is although you can find these items it feels more like a treasure hunt, a scavenge to try and find anything good rather than a good shopping experience.
What if there was a better way, a way to get the clothes you wanted from the brands you wanted at a lower cost, in a way that is good for the environment and still allows you to have that shopping experience.
On a recent visit to Japan I found that they had this shit down, or at least they do in Osaka and Tokyo. Both cities are covered in buy and sell stores; stores where you can buy last season’s clothes and pick up some new fits. This might not sound all that special but when I realised the stock they had I was pretty blown away.
Ranging from Hypebeast heaven with the rarest Supreme fits and collabs through to the high end with Raf Simons and Commes de Garcons rails and everything in between. All in great condition, all organised by brand and size, all in a nice shopping environment, all worn wear and therefore all at discount prices as well as getting you ethical points for not buying new.
Walking around Orange Street in Osaka I saw Balenciaga triple soles, Supreme x The North Face collabs, worn in Red Wings, limited edition Jordans and a load of more stuff that I never thought I’d see in an actual store.
If wearing worn is really going to become a thing in culture and amongst the fashionable then we need to have stores that sell worn clothing but also have a curated eye, a focus on quality. Depop feels like they have got the closest to this for me, a place where you can go and get rare, good quality items that have been used. A place that has built a brand around quality and generally more ‘cool’ youth fashion. They are also opening up physical stores in the US.
This post is really a bit of a stream of consciousness but where I’m at is a belief in a need for curation, bringing curated worn wear for current trends to a physical space if we’re going to successfully move away from fast fashion and decrease the impact fashion has on our environment.
We need to not only show you that people can wear worn well, but build aspirational places that are curated with the best in worn wear to make them want to.
