Two Ways to Save the Planet, Fashionably Speaking
There are so many reasons to shop resale–as we like to say, used is the new new. But our favorite reason to shop pre-owned pieces is less about reducing fashion’s impact on our wallets, and more about reducing fashion’s impact on our planet.
Fashion moves fast, and its fast-paced production cycle makes it the second-most polluting industry in the world. Besides the devastating effects that fabric production, factory emissions, and sourcing leather, feathers, and fur have on the planet, brands are over-producing in order to keep up with demand, which results in literal tons of excess merchandise. This excess then gets destroyed or dumped in landfills (for example: H&M is offloading $4.3 billion worth of unsold items; Burberry recently burned $33 million of the excess product rather than sell to secondary markets). Not so chic.
FASHIONPHILE has championed less waste (and more luxury) since we launched in 1999, and lately, the rest of the world is catching on to the whole recommerce thing, too. That’s because buying pre-worn items (and then re-wearing them or re-purposing them) is a super-simple way to counteract fashion’s effects on the environment. Besides reducing the demand for new-new-new, resale extends the life cycle of bags and accessories and keeps them out of landfills.
Now, here’s the best part: you can double the deal by supporting eco-friendly luxury brands like Stella McCartney when you shop resale.
Stella McCartney pretty much stands alone in the high-end accessories space as a designer who’s seriously committed to sustainability. The brand is the first to make cruelty-free materials (think vegan leather and faux fur) feel every bit as luxurious as buttery leather and is completely transparent when it comes to its environmental impact.
“At Stella McCartney, we have been working for years to ensure that our supply chains represent some of the most traceable and sustainable in fashion while also continuing to ensure that our products, which are made to last, have long lives and never end up as waste,“ the designer herself has said. Thanks to that attention to detail and craftsmanship, a Stella McCartney bag is one of the smartest resale investments you can make: small environmental footprint, a big impact on the Earth (and your closet).
