8 Comments

That's such a great tip when dealing with impulsive buying: put it in your cart or save it and then come back to it later to see if you ACTUALLY want it. I hope slow shopping with more intentionality is going to become more popular rather than buying based on impulses and trends. When I shop slower and with more intentionality, I find pieces that I love and want to keep in my closet for longer than a season.

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As a lover of fashion, a shopping addict, and a 23 year old who is still determining her sense of style, I’ve found that my cure to over consumption / overspending has been clothing rental companies like rent the runway. I have full access to a library of clothing that I can scroll and heart and fantasize about wearing, and at a whim I can just rent any of it and wear it for a few days.

My biggest struggle was I would buy cheap clothes, thinking that I would love it forever, only to hate it after a season and have it collect dust in my closet until I inevitably had a breakdown and donate everything in my closet. I’m just starting to fully understand the transience of trend cycles, but being so young I felt like every new trend was here to stay.

Ive also been able to keep pieces I truly love and wearing something out and about is so different than trying something on in the store (ex. The reformation dress I rented for a bridal brunch that got unbelievably wrinkled after sitting in it for 2 hours)

I feel so much more intentional with pieces I buy, building out a wardrobe of actual staples and pieces that I know I love and make me feel special. This is in tandem with being able to wear out the trendiest, only wear it once, pieces that were perfect for an event I’ll never go to again.

I think there is a lot of fatigue for subscriptions these days- but this is one I really like.

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Though it doesn’t solve my contentedness with myself or my current belongings- it does at least act as a solution while I attend therapy to find out what’s truly causing the void 🤪

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Love and can totally relate. It’s so hard tho, when clothing is so pretty and fun to wear and put together! 😫😅… but I definitely buy way less fast fashion, hit pause before purchasing in an effort to be more thoughtful, and make an insane amount of carts that I abandon lol 😂

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I am traveling for about a month, which brought up a lot of thinking on the overconsumption topic knowing that the majority of my clothes will be collecting dust while I'm away. While I prioritize sustainability over fast fashion (which means I'll rarely make an instagram purchases) the desire is definitely still there & my wardrobe is larger than it needs to be.

Loved your insights on this topic, especially the distraction technique. Something I'm trying now is to donate or sell an item when I buy something new. Did this recently with a denim shorts purchase & felt better about that.

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my first semester in college i decided not to work, so I had wayyyy less disposable income, this really forced me to look at my consumption habits. this situation also caused me to become more creative and appreciative of what i already had. all this to say that I enjoyed how your article held us consumers to our contribution to the fast fashion issue, while still acknowledging the difficulty. and I also completely understand the privileged nature of my aforementioned problem.

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Donate, trickle down economy and all.

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I feel believe that people that really love fashion opt for sustainable/ slow fashion because they really DO want to it see fashion succeed.

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