Thanksgiving, a season for school breaks, awesome food, and of course being thankful, but fashion? Normally, you wouldn’t find fashion and Thanksgiving in the same sentence unless it was a style guide for what to wear to your family Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving. However, I was recently reminded of the pilgrim’s story and how they shared out of their abundance, in that case it was food, but one could apply it to anything really. As Matthew 6:25 says “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (ESV). Many of us have plenty of clothing, and what we do with it could fill a whole book. Below are some basic ideas and encouragement on how to use and buy clothing wisely.
Thrifting, or thrift shopping, is secondhand clothing shopping. The clothes don’t have to be sold by a particular store, or a particular style, they simply are gently used. Thrifting as an act of shopping is not exclusive to clothing items — though for this article the focus is on clothes — ranging from garage sales to specialty used-goods shops, the offerings and pricing vary based on the store. Thrifting is almost always a process of searching through rows of items looking for some specific item or on the other end, piling through one’s closet for items to give away.
Given that thrift shopping is somewhat time consuming, why would you do it when you could pick up a new t-shirt at H&M or another fast-fashion hub? For starters, it’s more sustainable. Second, it’s often cheaper than buying a new product, and finally it allows you to make more of an impact with your time and money.
Shopping for second-hand clothes saves both water and energy. Did you know it takes 400 gallons of water to grow the cotton and produce one simple t-shirt? Not to mention the energy to manufacture cotton into a shirt you can wear. Shopping at thrift stores encourages the re-use of clothing and items that have already been created, decreasing the need for additional wasteful production.
It’s also cheaper, which is good news for your average semi-broke teenager. Many items are hardly used and are sold at steep discounts, roughly ⅓ of retail prices. Another bonus is if you have a thrift store near you that will buy your old clothes for cash allowing you to pass on what you have for someone else to use and giving you something extra. Thrift stores also are great places to find single use items —
If you need to find an ugly sweater,
If dress-up can make you grin…
If you like to paint with your fingers,
And keep your clothing squeaky clean…
Then, have we got a thrift-store for you!
(Sing to the tune of the VeggieTales theme song, if desired.)
As a final benefit, thrift stores offer great opportunities both for you and others: you get rid of your old clothes, allowing others to use them, the thrift stores can hire employees, and many of them help fund charities, and on top of all that you can find some pretty cool stuff while you’re there.
Enter the Street Stichers, another way to use what you have well by keeping it longer. They’re basically a group of people who promote mending your own clothes instead of buying something totally new. According to their Instagram page, they are “[a] mending movement by craftivist Suzi Warren to bring the joy of garment repair to areas of fast fashion stores with the message #stitchitdontditchit.” What happens is a group will go out to an area and set up lawn chairs in a line and do their mending in order to encourage others to do the same. Intrigued passers-by are invited to ask questions. The needleworkers hope to show that mending is a source of pleasure as well as a benefit to sustainability.
Finally, a way to bless others this holiday season is to simply donate your old clothes to those in need. Often in the winter, organizations like One Warm Coat will hold coat drives where you can pass on clothes to those who need them. You can also give your old, too small, or just the wrong style clothes to any number of charities. This serves a double purpose of keeping your closet decluttered and sharing your excess with others.
Of course not all of us can do these things all the time, but with the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons rolling around, it’s good to keep in mind ways we can share out of our abundance or just show good stewardship and be grateful for what we already have.
Citations:
www.barrons.com/news/london-street-stitchers-take-on-fast-fashion-01631810707
www.streetstitching.com/
www.vogue.co.uk/news/article/reduce-your-water-footprint
www.shoppingonchampagne.com/
my.neighbor.org/reasons-why-shop-thrift-store/
prettyoldclothing.com/blogs/news/what-is-thrifting-lets-go-thrifting
worldwatch.news/features/street-stitchers
pinterest.com