Alice & Chains
Long before thrifting was a fashion movement and conscious sustainability choice I have thrifted. Growing up many of my clothes were hand-me-downs from my three older girl cousins, carbooted or handmade. While I have had hoarding and shopping addiction issues over the years and have bought clothes from literally any and everywhere with no thought to how it was made or who made it or whether I actually needed it or even wanted it, I have still maintained a love of thrifting. Rifling through the rails of a charity shop to see what one off treasures emerge, haggling for a bargain at carboot, scouring a vintage fair for the most beautiful dresses or a dropped off bag of hand-me-downs for myself or my kids from a friend. It doesn't matter where the clothes come from, I love discovering new prints, and fabrics, and cuts and styles. Which is where my hoarding and shopping problems started really. I love it all. And I wanted it all. For two years now I've been consciously buying only what I truly love or need, and more importantly, can afford. I've also been slowly making more sustainable choices, thinking about what ethical and ecological paths I want to invest in. More and more we choose not to buy, we choose to make do with what we have, mending items, repurposing them. But if we do need something our first choice is second hand. If we can't get it second hand, which has become a little harder due to lockdowns, we choose small, handmade, vintage or businesses with trusted green and ethical credentials. Likewise we choose those businesses for gifts, thinking about who and what we are supporting with our choices. Today we chose something a little more unusual. We chose fly-tipped. At the same time as sharing my old posts, I am going out each day and shooting new outfit posts. Today we revisited a location we've used a few times before and as we walked through the field to get to the graff wall there were bundles of clothes and soft toys strewn everywhere. Not ones to leave litter if we can we bagged them up and brought them home with the intention of either binning them if necessary or washing them and sending them to be recycled or to a charity shop. When I went through them, they nearly all still had charity shop tags on them and most looked almost brand new and never worn. They weren't even wet so must have only been dumped today, hours before we found them. I just don't understand it. Perfectly good clothes left to rot and ruin and become a blight in the countryside. There are some beautiful dresses, that just happen to be my size, so I'll be trying them on to see if anything suits once they're all clean. I have no embarrassment about where I found them. They're clean now. They're perfectly wearable. Would you wear clothes you found dumped? Have you ever found anything else fly-tipped that you've taken home and restored to use? Do you find the idea disgusting?
I'm wearing:
Photos taken by Dakota
Photos originally posted October 17th, 2012 here
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