A fashion community wants to help people renew and update their clothes instead of throwing them away and buying new ones
Fashion Clwb and The Sustainable Studio will partner up for the High Street Fashion Hack where people will have the chance to transform their unworn, unwanted or old clothing.
The Sustainable Studio is a grassroots community studio founded by Julia Harris and Sarah Valent in 2015. It is based in Cardiff and will host High Street Fashion Hack on 30 November from 10.30am a. It costs £6 to attend.
Fashion Clwb and The Sustainable Studio’s event gives participants the opportunity to create new garments out of old ones with the help of experts, making it suitable for beginners.
Sarah said: “We hope to encourage and show people what they can achieve with simple hacks that can help them not only value the clothes they already own but also keep up with current trends.”
The fashion industry produces 20% of global wastewater and 10% of global carbon emissions. It is estimated that more than half of fast fashion products are disposed of in under a year.
Fashion Clwb added that the climate crisis will only get worse if we don’t act and think differently towards our clothes. On average, we only wear our clothes seven times before purchasing another item. Learning to look after, repair, and rework our clothes is the solution, they said.
Patsy Perry, senior lecturer in fashion marketing at the University of Manchester, said that most fashion retailers now are doing something about sustainability and have some initiatives focused on reducing fashion’s negative impact on the environment.
She stated there is a fundamental problem with the fast fashion business model where revenues are based on selling more products, and therefore retailers must constantly offer new collections. For instance, Zara makes 24 collections and H&M between 12 and 16 a year.