Is anti-consumption trending right now?

On the Hard 75 style challenge, 'No Spend January' and more...

I recently read a tweet that was something along the lines of, “If you don’t write your book, you will be forever consigned to see it in bits and pieces you didn’t write for the rest of time.” 

Somewhere in the recesses of my desktop folder there exists the skeleton of a several years-old book proposal exploring the question of whether or not it’s possible to teach oneself how to consume. I’m constantly unsettled by the fact that I’m a fashion journalist who writes extensively about sustainability and the need to consume less, yet I cannot seem to take my own advice. I have a massive closet full of beautiful clothing — more than one person could ever possibly need! — and yet I cannot resist the siren call of owning a Beautiful Thing. It’s borderline sick. 

So when I saw CBC Life publish this story on “How to stop wanting more stuff,” my brain immediately raced back to the tweet, which sadly, I can no longer find. Then Blackbird Spyplane’s end-of-year essay came out, pronouncing that society has reached “Peak Clothes.” It was then I realized the years-in-the-making reckoning with how much stuff it is morally defensible to own has finally arrived. “It’s a concern that gnaws at the edges of contemporary jawns enthusiasm, as you wonder whether your desire to cop mad fly s**t all the time is an unhealthy compulsion, and as you fear that, through this compulsion, you are to some nagging degree implicating yourself in a decadent, destructive, world-clogging glut of consumption,” Weiner writes.

It’s as if somebody turned the lights on and we can all see the rats scurrying towards the edges of the room. I am sensing that we’ve reached a critical mass in which people are finally beginning to question how much is “enough” and are more willing than ever to examine their own purchasing habits in the context of how well they align with their beliefs. January is always rife with new beginnings and this month I’ve noticed a number of social media challenges floating around aimed at inspiring people to shop less. There’s ‘No Spend January’ which commands participants to not spend money on ‘non-essential’ items. So basically, nothing other than food. Then there’s the Hard 75 style challenge, created by @oldloserinbrooklyn, which requires a commitment to document one’s outfits and not buy new clothing for a total of 75 days.

@oldloserinbrooklyn#75hardstylechallenge day 1!! Dressed down a piece i usually save for special occasions. I love this dress and want to wear it more casually. #personalstyle #getdressedwithme

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While anti-consumerism is hardly new — Judith Levine’s sacred text Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping came out in 2006, and counterculture magazine Adbusters has been promoting “Buy Nothing Day” since the late 90s — it seems we’re ready to let go of the orgiastic culture of consumption that has defined the past decade. The prevalence of “haul culture” — even thrift hauls, which are supposedly sustainable because all the clothing is secondhand — tend to put forth this mindset that the more clothes we own, the happier we’ll be. I’m delighted to finally see people wrestling with the idea that we’ve been sold a false bill of goods and maybe making more money in order to afford more things is not necessarily the healthiest way to live one’s life. 

I don’t think I truly understood the compulsion to acquire until I stumbled across this line in a New Yorker article about a guy obsessed with collecting civil war artifacts: “Among the things Erquitt left behind were a set of journals. In one entry, he wrote, “I love the items on my shelves and their memories and secret thoughts but even with all my love these things don’t love back. They are manmade objects that happened to be involved with my life . . . traumatic, eventful, pleasant or not the secret emotion lingers until called upon.” The entry concludes, “These things fill a ‘gap’ in my life.”

So there it is. Buying stuff is about filling a gap in one’s life. Without a gaping maw of need at the very centre of one’s soul, it’s unlikely one feels the need to fill it. But I’m not convinced there’s a solution to being human. Unfortunately, I’m probably never going to write that book. But I do have an essay on the idea coming out in an upcoming issue of FASHION. I’ll be sure to post about it when it comes out.

Lately:

-I was interviewed for this Yahoo style story questioning whether or not the “indie sleaze revival” will lead to a rise in toxic diet culture. Spoiler alert: I do not think it will.

-I wrote about Othership, the cult-y sauna/ice bath chain in Toronto and how it ties in with the tech founder obsession with wellness culture.

-I’m obsessed with all the relatively affordable antique couches I see on Facebook Marketplace….I need to get one before Victorian furniture becomes the new midcentury modern and they start getting expensive.

-I bought this wildly oversize brown wool sweater in Babaa’s winter sale and unfortunately I love it so much that now I can’t stop thinking about how much I want the blue v-neck sweater too? (An online shopping problem? Me? Never.)

-Is the next big thing…hip panniers?

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