Making Your Clothes Can Battle Overconsumption and Save You Money

 The Cost of Fast Fashion: Rethinking What We Wear - By Jacinda Hall, Independent Writer

We tend to hear a lot about fast fashion when it comes to the topic of economic and environmental issues, but what exactly is it?

Fast fashion is a common practice that’s been around since the 1960s, when people, specifically young people, embraced cheaply made fashion and rejected the traditions of the generations before them.

Fashion brands had to keep up with the demand for affordable clothing, which led to massive textile mills being built. 

By the 1990s, fast-fashion retailers such as Zara and H&M started booming after starting out as small brick-and-mortar shops in the mid-twentieth century. The New York Times coined the term “fast fashion” in the 1990s when Zara stores reached the United States because of the retailer’s mission to bring a garment to life from a designer’s head in just 15 days.

Now, cheap and affordable clothing is good and all, but let’s look at the environmental impacts and human rights issues of fast fashion. Environmentally, 200 tons of water can be required to produce one ton of dyed fabric and in 2018, the fashion industry produced 2.31 billion tons of greenhouse gases.

When it comes to human rights, the numbers aren’t much better. In April 2013, the Rana Plaza factory located in the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed killing over 1,500 garment workers and injuring 2,500 more.

Since the disaster much has changed but the challenges that remain include improving issues to where employees are safe at work and making sure that occupational safety and health (OSH) standards and guidelines are met. Another thing that needs to be talked about when it comes to a human rights standpoint is fast fashion giants using child labor to make their clothes.

One fast fashion that has admitted to using child labor is online retailer, Shein. According to The Verge, in a sustainability report that was released in Aug. 2024, the company uncovered child labor in 2023. The company said that these reports were made through the company’s audits of suppliers working with the brand.

While buying cheap, affordable clothing may save you money, it can also be costly to our environment and, yes on your wallet too, because those purchases can add up quickly and they may only last you about two to three wears before they end up in the landfill because that’s where 80% of fast fashion clothing goes anyways.

Thrifting has been shown to have better environmental impacts, but thrift stores are also overflowing with fast fashion clothing from Shein and have gotten to the point where many consumers who go thrifting are often met with low-quality and cheaply made clothing.

This solution I want to propose is a bit more time-consuming than just going thrifting but you could make your clothes to save money and resources. Making your clothes isn’t anything new, in fact, before sewing became a leisure activity for upper-middle-class women, many people (mainly women) did it to save money.  

Here’s the thing, making your own clothes with just about any craft is not only environmentally friendly, but it can also have an impact on you, physically, mentally and habitually.

Physically, doing a creative activity such as sewing, knitting and/or crocheting, is shown to strengthen immune systems and improve cognitive functions. Mentally, crafts with repeated patterns have been shown to release serotonin, promoting relaxation and all crafts can become a social activity, which can reduce loneliness. Habitually, making your clothing can reduce your shopping habits and save you money.

Take it from someone who’s been making her own clothing for a few years now, it’s much cheaper, especially when materials go on sale. When you compare the price for 2 balls of Caron One-Pound Yarn to one sweater at Target, buying yarn is the way to go.

Another benefit to making your own clothing is you can easily customize your pieces to match your personal style and your size. Yarn comes in a variety of colors and YouTube is a great resource to learn how to make pieces ranging from beginner tutorials such as hats and scarves to expert tutorials such as sweaters, coats and cardigans.

If you don’t have the time or resources to make your clothes, you can ask a family member who knows how to make clothes and pay them (or don’t, that’s up to you and your family member) or you can support small businesses that sell handmade items.

To end on a good note about clothing, I wanted to say that it is okay to buy pieces you cannot make, but when you do, think about how the piece of clothing will last you and how much quality the piece has, because good quality pieces should last you months, if not, years.

You should also research the brands you are buying from and see whether or not they are sustainable or you can go thrifting for certain things such as a new flannel or a pair of jeans.