FIBR300 - Clothing Quiz

[calzephyr]

I'm back at art college, although technically it is a university now! My first class yesterday was great. Our first mission for next week is to find some used clothing we can repurpose. The title of the class is Selvedge/Salvage. A selvedge, in fibre terms, is the manufactured edge of fabric that looks like a tape. It's meant to kept the fabric from unravelling and is usually discarded.

One of the cool things about this class is that it involves material culture. I took a material culture class five years ago and loved loved loved it. Demystifying the how and why of everyday objects is so cool and we especially take clothing for granted. We buy it, we wear it, we wash it, we mend it, we thrift it, we discard it...clothing is extremely personal. The instructor handed out a questionnaire for us to think about our clothing habits. My answers are under the cut.

Strangely enough, the clothing and fashion industry, particularly fast fashion, is a major polluter and exploiter of cheap labour. Thinking about our choices and changing our behaviour can make a world of difference to someone who has to live next to a polluted waterway or struggles to make pennies an hour.

• How often to you shop for clothes?


• Do you wear second hand clothes?


• Where do you shop for clothes?


• Do you have a favourite retail store?


• Is there a retail store(s) you avoid?


• Are you drawn to specific fabrics or colours?


• Do you mend anything?


• Do you modify any of your clothing?


• How often do you wash your clothes?


• Do you use a dry cleaner?


• Do you use a dryer?


• How long do your clothes last?


• How old is your oldest piece of clothing?


• Would you pay more for better quality, longer lasting clothing?


• Do you have a favourite piece that you care for more than others?


• How many pieces of clothing do you have?

• How often to you shop for clothes? Twice a year.


• Do you wear second hand clothes? No.


• Where do you shop for clothes? Penningtons or Northern Reflections


• Do you have a favourite retail store? See above.


• Is there a retail store(s) you avoid? I avoid most of them because I'm petite, short and wide in different parts :-D


• Are you drawn to specific fabrics or colours? I like solids and easy care natural fabrics.


• Do you mend anything? Yes, all the time!


• Do you modify any of your clothing? No.


• How often do you wash your clothes? Weekly--whenever the laundry basket is full!


• Do you use a dry cleaner? Annually--for coats


• Do you use a dryer? Yes for my regular clothes. No for my work clothes. I have a drying rack downstairs.


• How long do your clothes last? They generally last a long time. Solid colours never go out of style!


• How old is your oldest piece of clothing? I have a plaid sweater from 1998. I have a coat I wore when I was 3.


• Would you pay more for better quality, longer lasting clothing? Yes--I always do.


• Do you have a favourite piece that you care for more than others? Not really these days. Years ago--for sure! I had some favourite pieces


• How many pieces of clothing do you have? I had to guestimate, but: 4 pairs of jeans, 4 dozen t-shirts, 6 sweaters, dozens of socks and underwear, a dozen hats and scarves, at least 4 or 5 pairs of mismatched gloves, 3 pairs of shoes, 3 pairs of slippers, 25+ fancy scarves, 2 winter coats, 3 spring jackets, 5 blazers/work coats, 1 pair of leggings

Comments

[frith]

My oldest piece of clothing is probably a black short-sleeved sweater that had belonged to my Grandfather. He died in the early 1970's. I also wear two of his belts, which may be even older.

My shirts last forever, I'm still wearing shirts from the 1980's, if not the 1970's.

I have about three dressers full of T-shirts, socks, sweatshirts, shorts, sweaters and so on. My coats fill one closet, and pants/button shirts/sweater vests/etc fill another, larger, closet. I hate to throw away clothes.

Perhaps the worst aspect of modern clothes is that they shed microfibers made of plastic. That ends up in the food chain in the oceans and it could be a very, very long time before that microplastic degrades.

[calzephyr]

I hate throwing clothes away too, especially if they still have some life in them or a little mending is needed.

Yes, I only recently learned that washing clothes sheds microplastics. It's so hard to win. Either we go naked or wear burlap sacks :-)

[daryl_wor]

So good (and fun) to hear more about re-purposing. I almost feel like that's what I spent a lot of my time doing with what I wore, some kind of alteration. (Hence my icon. That's tie-dye and paint.) I don't use dry cleaning too often. (Pedestrian living.) I used to mend more and ought to again. But I'm a big second hand shopper whether it's clothes or other things. Just supporting that recycling mode and the oddities one can find. But other times something wearable will be bought new. Less so these days. Collected plenty and I might have actually run out of stuff to alter.

Thanks for sharing this. ^_^

[calzephyr]

You're welcome! I will be posting more on my art LJ this weekend. Thrifting is really a necessity, especially when one is on a limited income. One of the odd side effects of Marie Kondo is thrift shops getting nicer clothes. The amount of clothing people had on that show really bowled me over!

[daryl_wor]

Whoah, Marie Kondo went that far? (I only got the book, still unfinished.) But I can see that. Much of our lives are very consumerist. I keep hearing, generally, of purges happening among various friends, which is stranger since I randomly seemed to start doing it too.