idée recyclée #3: collapse awareness, glitter, and sustainable fashion myths

A bi-weekly roundup of sustainability storytelling

Uman, Snowfall: winter in Roseboom #4

The frenetic energy that always characterizes the weeks leading up to Christmas seems to have doubled this season. I’ve been busy—that’s the best abbreviation I can muster. I’m struck lately with the feeling that there isn’t enough time for anything. Everything feels like a preoccupation. I’m attempting to stay grounded amidst that undercurrent of rushing; finishing a novel for book club I swore I’d read to the last page, going to acupuncture, making the time to call friends and really listen when we talk. But priorities, of course, love to conflict with each other.

I love this time of year, I even love its chaos and conflicts—I love what it builds up to and what settles after it ends. I collected bits and pieces for this week’s roundup of sustainability storytelling in what felt like small cycles of building up and settling, keeping it short-form and leaning into the brevity. I’ve been thinking a lot about consumption and influence these past few weeks, catching myself feeling spendy and impulsive as I’ve shopped for family and friends, caught in the flurry. Each piece highlighted here presented an opportunity to re-prioritize and ground. Read on for incredible pieces of sustainability storytelling on collapse awareness, glitter, sustainable fashion myths, and more.

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• Vestiaire Collective is launching a sustainable fashion influencer education program. “Change your Feed, Change the World” is the first campaign of its kind, aimed at addressing fast fashion overconsumption and shaping consumer habits. The campaign is a collaboration between the secondhand luxury retailer and “haul” influencers who previously worked with fast fashion brands. Vestiaire Collective will work with these influencers over six months. The influencer cohort’s millions of followers will be engaged in interactive discussions, content produced by the influencers about what they’re learning from Vestiaire Collective’s campaign, and a field trip that will be taken with the influencers to a clothing landfill site. Their influencers are contracted to post three times over six months. I’m really excited to see how this campaign will unfold, who it will reach, and the broader impact it may have—it’s an incredibly smart and innovative way to address overconsumption and potentially shape consumer shopping behavior. It’s also a fascinating experiment in the power of influence and influencers when it comes to sustainability. I’m so curious what its successes and failures will be—there will be so many lessons to glean from this program.

• Tiffanie Darke
  ’s “And Yet, Fashion Persists” highlights the impact of festive styles that feature sequins and glitter. I didn’t learn that sequins and glitter were plastics until last year, and I hadn’t thought about the impact of those items in the past when I bought them. These items, from glittery tops to sequined skirts, are a source of microplastic pollution. Sequins, Darke reminds us, are likely sewn with synthetic thread onto synthetic fabric. Her piece is a reminder that we should avoid buying shiny new items from H&M, Anthropologie, and even Reformation for holiday parties and wear something already in our closets instead.

And Yet, Fashion Persists

• Katie Robinson broke down some of the myths we’ve built up around sustainable fashion in a recent YouTube video. She touches on recycled polyester, the affordability of sustainable fashion, and over-consuming second-hand clothing. I especially loved her deeper dives into circularity schemes (i.e. resale, recycling, and repair) and the idea that sustainable fashion is boring.

• I’d just about given up on finding a bra free of synthetics/plastics (or at least mostly free) until reading S. Jane Kim’s recent

  Silky Crunch
  piece! She raises the issue with so many “natural” bras—that inner cups are often made of polyester or other synthetic fabrics. The list she pulled together and the amount of research done to source the “crunchy” and “scrunchy” bras in her piece is amazing.

  Would you buy one, plastic-free bra?

• In a snippet I saw circulating on Instagram, Sage Lenier brilliantly speaks to overconsumption and the circular economy. It’s a short clip of a longer conversation that I suggest watching if you’re unfamiliar with the concept of circularity (segmented from Watering Hole Media’s “What is the Leading Cause of Climate Change?”). Lenier breaks down how imperative it is that we keep resources we’ve already extracted in circulation.

• I cannot praise

  Rosie Spinks
  ’s “How I Became Collapse Aware” enough. Not only for the brilliance, depth of research, and generosity but also for doing what great writing does—which is giving language to something that was there but was previously so hard to describe and talk about. I’ve shared this piece with friends and told them that reading it was like therapy. With an impending Trump presidency, a disappointing (and controversial) COP, and stalled Global Plastic Treaty talks, I really needed to read this piece and strongly recommend you read it too.

How I became 'collapse aware'