Last night as I was rummaging around in my closet looking for something to wear it occurred to me that I have given, thrown or recycled a lot of clothes over the past ten years. Darn, I’d love to have some of those items back, and if not the items themselves the time it took for me to shop, clean, futz and manage them into my wardrobe. Especially now since I am no longer able to purchase any new apparel. I remember vividly, an amazing and probably overpriced DKNY sweater coat. A sort of retro 20s style with velvet accents. I wonder who’s wearing that gorgeous garment now. I wish I were.
This morning, right on the heels of my closet rummaging, I read an article in the NYTimes magazine about storage and consumerism. By 2005, according to the Boston College sociologist Juliet B. Schol, the average consumer purchased one new piece of clothing every five and a half days.
This eye-opening statistic got me thinking about a “slow clothing” movement. There are official slow food, slow money, slow travel and slow sex movements these days. Why not a slow clothing movement? I wondered. And is The Great Amearican Apparel Diet the beginning of it?
I googled “slow clothing” and “slow fashion,” and guess what…we’re slow to the movement. People have been blogging about this for a long time. “Wear local,” they say—is that like a sweater made with Fido the family dog’s hair? Or does it mean belting your neighbor’s old drapes and wearing them as a topper, a la Maria Van Trapp? Maybe we could learn from the Hispanics who wear huarache sandals made from repurposed flat tires? Buy from a thrift store and then remake your own, the experts suggest. Sew the arms of one sweater to the bodice of another, cut off pants and make them into a patchwork skirt, turn a tube top into a Rasta hair band. I am envisioning a renaissance fair.
In one article I read in the Christian Science Monitor, the author challenged US households “to create a single outfit for every man, woman, and child that is homemade.” Going back to a bygone era, she also suggested that people mend and darn their clothes.
Good idea for those people who:
a.) Know the meaning of darn in this context.
b). Know how to darn or sew http://www.ehow.com/how_648_darn-sock.html
c). Have a sewing machine. ( Investment Tip: Buy Singer, Ticker Symbol: SEW, you heard it here).
Darn (as in Darn-it), I wish I had that DKNY sweater coat and that brown Liz Claiborne maxi, corduroy coat from 1987, and let’s not forget the blinding Neon Obermeyer ski jacket I bought in 1992 to match the bottom of my K2s. Looking back, I admit, it was a wasteful, hedonistic and consumer-centric few decades—but we looked good.
Now, with my apparel budget cut to the quick and my participation in The Great American Apparel Diet, I am left fantasizing about my old wardrobe. I imagine a lovely waif of a “slow clothing movement” girl prancing down the runway of life in my old clothes and my Guess booties. I trust that she appreciates where her wardrobe began. I really hope, upon further reflection, that the “slow girl” hasn’t sewn the arms of my Obermeyer ski jacket onto the bodice of my brown Liz Claiborne Courdory Maxi coat. But if she has, all I can say is “you go–slow girl!”
Hi guys…anyone out there? Things are sort of quiet on the blog these days which makes me wonder….are you all still dieting? Remember only a few more months.
Tonight I was with my friend Portia who has been contemplating going on this diet for 11 months now. I told her that I have decided to extend the diet for one more year, in light of the fact that there have been so many people interested in joining the effort in the past few weeks (here we go again). When I told Portia it wasn’t too late to realize the benefits of clothing deprivation she hooped and hollered “That’s what I need, a closet colonic.” The visual made me gag. She went on to claim, “Deep within my big, fat, bloated walk-in closet there is a skinny one begging to be free.” Portia, warming to the idea, is going to “think about it,” before she commits. Let me be clear…I am not doing this for another year myself but I will moderate, facilitate, contemplate and write about life post diet. 
O.K., I am not proud. I have told nearly every woman I know that I am simply starving on this @#$%^& diet. The good news, my incessant complaints and whines have been rewarded with hand-me-downs from friends and family (maybe they just want me to shut up). Now, these aren’t Oliver Twist castoffs. Remember, birds of a feather flock together. My friends and family have hand-me-downs with tags still on them or barely worn items that they “bought on a whim,” and shouldn’t have (you know the story). I am sorry for their mistakes, but not really. I’m glad to be the one who can take these items off their hands. Most importantly their gifts are going to good use. Just last week I received a beautiful wrap from my mother, a white knit item, just like Meryl Streep wore in the movie It’s Complicated. I am now wearing a pair of pewter Donald Pliner slides and a great pair of lulu lemon tights my yoga friend gave me (she has three of the same pair). So my point? Tell people you will gladly take their shopping mistakes off their hands. They will fell great about it, especially if you wear them again and again. Now go forth and tell the world, “I am hungry, feed me your scraps!”
As a young adult who works in the fashion industry, I witness consumerism and the short lifespan of ever-evolving trends on a daily basis. One day it’s in, the next day it’s out. This is why I believe developing your own style is important. Not only do you become less immune to these trends, but you can stand out from the crowd. Why wear something just because it’s “in right now”? Your style is what makes you, you. This challenge is an opportunity to continue developing my style by looking into my closet and exercising some creativity! The other goal is to free up, time (and space) to invest in what is important to me. This will be an interesting challenge because all day I am surrounded by clothes, and I occasionally wholesale-buy for clothing. I guess the perk of saving aside a pair to stow away in my closet will be gone until September 1st, 2010. I want to see how strong I mentally am. Bring it on!
All right dieters, for many of you this diet ends in 85 days. I am trying to prepare as best I can for the day when we are “set free.” The last thing I want is a mass binge on crappy, (earth damning) clothes all made in inhumane factories in China. 
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