Slow it down

“Stop the world I want to get off!” was a lyric from one of my friend’s Steve’s songs. It always impacted me because at times I could totally relate to it. It seems especially true these days, when I feel like there are a million things coming at me and they are all coming at a massive speed. The juggling act that most of us are trying to pull would make a professional performer look stupid with a mere three fire-lit bowling pins.

But in the last few days as I dig deeper into this sustainability concept, it is becoming clear to me that it is not about stopping, but maybe simply slowing. Slowing the pace that we’re all going at. Slowing the need to achieve more, faster and maybe simply looking at what’s important and sitting there for a minute.

The term “Slow-food” has been around for a while now. The first time I heard of it was about ten years ago when my boy was a toddler.  My friend’s husband who is a chef was all over this, and it made sense to me: buy ingredients that are physically close to you and cook them the old fashioned way, do not use any shortcuts, and leave the products as whole as possible.

Professor Guttorm Fløistad summarizes the (slow movement) philosophy, stating:

“The only thing for certain is that everything changes. The rate of change increases. If you want to hang on you better speed up. That is the message of today. It could however be useful to remind everyone that our basic needs never change. The need to be seen and appreciated! It is the need to belong. The need for nearness and care, and for a little love! This is given only through slowness in human relations. In order to master changes, we have to recover slowness, reflection and togetherness. There we will find real renewal.” (from Wikipedia the free encyclopedia, Slow movement article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Movement)

The Slow Movement is very popular today and it is influencing other areas including fashion. There are some people who have started calling the sustainability of fashion: “slow fashion”. It is simple, in some ways it is almost just the opposite of fast fashion which dictates a new fad every two weeks and which made cutting corners acceptable in order to keep deadlines. But I think there’s more to it and this is what I’m trying to dissect.

The way I see it there are four different areas that will make a clothing product sustainable:

1.       Economic: How does it affect our economy? Are we able to buy local? Are we supporting our small businesses?

2.       Ethical: If not made locally, is it upholding the dignity of those who make it? Is it providing a job that supplies the person with enough to make a decent living? Is it putting the person at risk by working under conditions we would never tolerate in our part of the world?

3.       Environmental: Is it too much for Mother earth to handle? Does it break down? Is it eating away at the only resources that we have? Does it meet the three R’s (Reuse, reduce and recyle)?

4.       Extra Consumption: Is it serving our needs or our wants? Is it truly necessary? Or is it just adding to our "stuff"?

In some cases we’ll get all 4/4 whohoo! Call yourself a winner. In others we’ll barely scrape by with one. But I think the point is to strive to achieve all of them most of the time. And don’t get me wrong, this is probably the hardest thing I’ve set myself out to do, especially when I have a champagne taste on a beer budget. A lot of people have given me the look, you know, the one of ‘where are you going to buy stuff like that at reasonable price?” And the truth is that I don’t have an answer yet. I have found lots of sustainable fashion sites that have a fair amount of options, but a lot of them ARE more money than what I’m used to.

Yet, I am determined to keep on, to move forward and find answers. I know for instance, that one of the answers is simply to buy good quality used clothing. This is becoming increasingly harder because a lot of the donated items are often from a fast fashion source. But it is not impossible. Another answer is to shop more sporadically and buy investment pieces, something that is classic and will last for more than a year. And then, for some of us lucky ones there’s making our own clothes, starting from scratch, calling the shots of how it’s made and what it looks like.

There are many more solutions and it will only get easier once I start. Yet I think the main stumbling block for many of us is: convenience, it’s this need for immediate gratification and the need for the ultimate and greatest thing as fast as we can without even thinking about it. But the thing about convenience is that it is not always good for us in the long run. You just have to think about the convenience of having fries at a fast food place vs. the work it takes to go buy the vegetables and make something from scratch at home. Not as convenient, but definitely worth it.

Once we change our mindset to think “slow”, to think the way we used to, when everything had a process that we had to wait for, that made things worth it, then slow fashion will make sense.

Yes it is a big undertaking but not an impossible one. When you think of the waves that slow food movements (i.e. Jaime Oliver Revolution) have made in the last few years over the fast food kings, it is encouraging that we might be able to change the status quo in fashion too.

And in the process we might be able to slow down and smell those roses after all!

For more information on the slow movement check out Wikipedia’s description and sources, great information!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Movement