The Everyday Luxury of Sustainable Fashion
If you enjoy using beautifully created, artisanal skincare you know what everyday luxury means. It’s the satisfaction you get from looking after yourself, ignoring fancy labels and caring about quality ingredients.
And if it’s important to you to know everything about the products you put on your skin, you are probably a little curious about the clothes you wear. And you are not alone. A growing number of women want to know more about how their clothes are made and what they are made of.
Especially this week – we are celebrating the 5th annual Fashion Revolution Week raising awareness of the need for greater sustainability and transparency in fashion – is a good opportunity to be curious about what we wear.
Here is why artisanal skincare and sustainable fashion go so well together.
What you put on your skin matters
If you care about what cosmetics you put on your precious skin, that they are made of high quality ingredients and toxin free, it is worth considering what clothes you wear, too. Far from being completely natural, conventional cotton for example is a highly pesticide intensive crop. If your skin is very sensitive, you may well benefit from wearing clothes made of organic cotton. In any case we bet you’ll feel the difference, as organic cotton is supersoft.
It also pays off to check labels when shopping for new clothes. Even pricey knitwear from premium brands is very often mixed with cheap synthetics, which are essentially plastic. Which is probably not what you would expect to put on your skin.
Little luxuries that last
Most likely you are someone who puts a lot of thought into their purchases, wants to know they are buying something of quality, from a brand that is transparent about how they work. And with good reason. Thoughtful purchases tend to be the ones who gives us most lasting pleasure.
Sustainable fashion celebrates the same. Buying a little less, but buying beautifully tailored pieces made of quality materials, is a big step towards a more sustainable wardrobe and means we can afford key wardrobe pieces that will make us feel amazing years down the line.
You care about the earth and future generations
A lot of people who invest in quality products like artisanal cosmetics and organic food also care about the environment. Not just since Blue Planet do we know that plastic and other types of pollution are a big hazard for the environment, and how we leave it for the next generation.
Many big fashion brands, particularly though not exclusively those producing cheaply in far-flung places are having a detrimental fact on the environment. And low quality clothing that gets damaged only after a few washes is creating huge amounts of waste. Quality is key.
Stories over labels
Buying from small, thoughtful brands almost always guarantee there is a beautiful story attached to the your purchase. Being interested in carefully made, high quality skincare is just like ethical fashion in this regard. Ethical fashion brands, unlike many on the high street, are not about creating an illusion. They are transparent about where their pieces were made and what they are made of. And in the case of the brands we work with, who pride themselves on ethical production and using only high quality, sustainable fabrics, that’s a beautiful thing.
Paula Haunit is the founder of Sheer Apparel, an online boutique stocking a curated selection of women’s fashion that is ethically produced and from high-quality, sustainable fabrics such as organic cotton.
