fast fashion and teenagers

I have had a bit of a mental block, or inspiration block I suppose, so I haven’t been sewing quite as much. I’ve been thinking a lot about fashion trends since I’ve been in a mall more lately thanks to a certain person I birthed 13 years ago. I remember being 13 and loving the mall, loving walking around and admiring all of the different options that were available (which were minimal compared to the offerings of Forever 21 these days). I hate the mall now. I have become that crotchety old lady that hates seeing young girls wearing too much makeup and the sea of ugly clothes, but most of all I hate seeing things like this:

Most people (as I once did) get happy when they see this. Eight bucks for jeans? Nice! But now, I think to myself, how in the hell are jeans only eight bucks? Denim isn’t the cheapest fabric, and construction of jeans is more involved than other pants. It would cost me more than eight bucks in just materials to make a pair of jeans, so how are they able to charge so little? With all of the advertising, shipping all over the world, paying garment workers, paying retail store employees, etc, etc, where does the money come from if they’re charging eight bucks for jeans? How is this possible?

I watched a documentary called The True Cost, and it answered a lot of questions.  Or if you want a funny, shorter version, watch John Oliver break it down. But one question is left, which my daughter asked and I had no answer for. Where am I supposed to get my clothes then? The documentary includes the work of The People Tree to empower women in developing countries and provide fairly traded clothing for people who can afford it, but unfortunately they are a UK company, and from what I can tell do not supply to U.S. stores or have trendy teenager styles. If you’re wealthy, you can afford to pay a designer to make your clothes or shop at high end boutiques, but teenagers are usually on a tight budget and trying to get the most for their money.

I began looking into what options we have in the Twin Cities area for kids who are between the cutesy girls dresses and the more mature women’s styles. Fast fashion is perfect for teenagers, since their preferences change depending on the day as they begin to develop their own personal style that they are likely to keep for the rest of their lives. When they’re little they can wear the same dress two years in a row (if it still fits), but teenagers are not likely to wear the same dress for two months. Because of fast fashion, every trip to the mall brings new styles and colors, and all at disturbingly low prices so it makes it easy to throw or give away something they don’t really like anymore.

So, I haven’t found anything that I think she would like yet, but I’m not giving up. In the meantime I did find some really great shops that are making clothes locally that I would like to share. Check out my list under the "Where to shop" heading on the right (I intend to expand the list as I learn more). I also discovered Minneapolis is a kind of a hot spot for fashion and potentially textile manufacturing. I’m planning to take a closer look at these places and feature at least one in my next post.

As I talked to my daughter more, I began to realize that things have really changed in the fashion world. People used to wear certain brands as status symbols, and the style was often secondary to the prestige of the brand (example Ralph Lauren Polo). Everyone wanted that one pair of pants or that one type of shoe. Now, kids seem to want to be different, and brands like Polo or Abercrombie are not even on their radar (see this article for more on that). So can “slow fashion” work with teenagers?

I know this is going out on a limb…but what if teens had sewing machines and knew how to use them? I think we would see an outburst of creativity and innovative ideas from young people, and it would be the perfect “stick it to the man” kind of thing to do, right? So, with that I’m going to end this post, and ask you to contact me if you have or know someone who has an old sewing machine that’s just collecting dust, whether it works or not. I have a mini, tiny hatchling of a plan to subvert the fashion industry (haha, yeah right...), or just to get some teenagers psyched about making their own clothes, but I will definitely need sewing machines! I've worked on a couple of sewing machines in my life, so I think I can give them a new life!

Thanks and have a super day!

Georgia