The story of this blue skirt begins a few years ago. I first started becoming interested in sustainability passively, through friends, media, and educational talks I attended when I was in community college. The more I learned about sustainability and climate change, the more urgent it felt to make eco friendly living a part of my daily life.

Over the past two or three years, but especially this last year as Matthew (my husband) and I moved in together, I’ve done my best to continually make choices that reflect my love of mother nature and the environment. These have included but aren’t limited to the following efforts:

  • reusing jars, containers, and bottles from store bought items (some of you may recognize this method from your childhood, see meme below)

  • whenever possible, purchasing items without packaging, (eg: shampoo bars and buying beans/rice/oats in bulk
  • choosing to walk/bike (lmao until my bike got stolen #collegelife) to school, instead of driving our car
  • growing a small veggie garden to feed the pollinators and feed ourselves
  • buying from/supporting local farmers and businesses
  • using a tap water filter and reusable water bottle!
  • etc.

Needless to say, as a consumer who sees her money as a vote to be used in support of the things I stand for, I spend a lot of time thinking about the things I buy and making sure they align with my sustainable living focus.

A few weeks ago, I decided to start making my own clothes. There are a lot of issues with how the fashion industry is currently run, primarily labor abuse and hidden plastics in fabrics. Often, most of the clothes we wear are made of plastic: polyester, rayon, spandex, etc. When you wash your clothes, unless you use a filter like the ones Girlfriend sells, you’re releasing microplastics into the wastewater that take a reaaaaally long time to decompose. The stats are alarming. *include stats or sources*

And it’s really disconcerting to buy a comfy cute skirt but not know for a fact that a child in a foreign, poverty-sticken community didn’t get ripped off for their labor. *include source on slave labor in other countries commonly used by fast fashion brands like american eagle*

Since sewing has been one of my many quarantine hobbies, second only to baking, it seemed only natural to choose to abuse my own labor, instead of somebody else’s. (just kidding, my two big sewing projects so far have been very laid back) This blue skirt *was* made with polyester fabric, BUT. BUT. I feel like I can justify it since the fabric was thrifted. If there’s anything I’ve learned so far on my sustainability journey, it’s that the most sustainable thing you can do is make use of what you already have and what’s already out there (aka thrifting clothes, fabric) as opposed to putting new waste out into the world, even if it’s “eco-friendly.”

All in all, this skirt was made fair-trade from legal labor, and from a fabric that was already out there in the world, looking for a good home to end up in as opposed to the trash because the store couldn’t sell it (which I have no clue why I mean it’s the cutest floral pattern amirite).

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