How to Keep Your Wardrobe Fresh Without Spending Money
For many people, our attitude towards clothing has changed somewhat this year. Just a few months ago, we were putting together outfits (and I’m using the term broadly) to go to work, meet friends, or do other things outside the home. Now our everyday dressing decisions boil down to regular padded pants, smart padded pants, and pajamas all day.
Yet for some, the temptation to buy new clothes and accessories for their post-pandemic lives still exists. What season will it be? Fashion trends are no longer relevant? Will we be able to maintain a certain level of comfort that we are used to? Who knows! But while we’re still inside, this is the perfect time to refresh our wardrobe. Here are some tips from a recent CNN article on how to do it without spending (or at least a lot) money.
How to breathe new life into your wardrobe
At this point, we are aware of the many flaws in our fast fashion culture , from unfair work practices to thrown away things that end up in landfills. So, instead of adding to that, here are a few things you can do to make the clothes you already own last longer and use them to create new additions to your wardrobe, courtesy of Hyuna Sharma and CNN’s Allissia Alleyn …
Learn the basics
Do you have a bunch of clothes that you want to wear again but don’t have a button, or have a hole or a broken zipper? These sewing basics are probably not as difficult as you think, and there are many tutorials out there to walk you through the process. Once you’ve mastered a few techniques, you can put some of your favorite things back into circulation.
Visible fix
While you may be concerned about whether it is obvious that you were repairing your clothes, in some cases this “mistake” can work to your advantage. In fact, it might be a way to make something that you’ve had for a while new and different. Per Sharma and Alleyn:
“Visible fix” refers to the process of removing holes and wear marks from clothing in a greasy and obvious way. In Japan, such shortcomings are embodied in the work of Japanese sashiko (literally “little pricks”), a practice that uses hand embroidery to create a subtle pattern over rips on jeans, sweaters or dresses.
They recommend following Lily Fulop , author of Wear, Repair, Repurpose: A Guide to How to Repair and Recycle Clothes, on Instagram for inspiration.
Your wardrobe: remix
If you have something that you no longer love, think about what else you could do about it before putting it in your distribution. Yes, it depends a lot on your sewing ability, so if you don’t know what you are doing, don’t expect to be able to turn an old cardigan into a pair of nice slacks or similar magic.
But there are many things that those of us who do not have advanced sewing skills can do. For example, you can turnan old shirt into a face mask with a matching headband (or a bandana if you like), without any sewing at all:
Basically, this is the 2020 version where we used discarded clothes to make our own hair ties in the 80s and 90s, although they seem to be in vogue again? Anyway, there areplenty of videos to guide you through the process.
And these are just the very basics. For other ideas, Sharma and Alleyn recommend checking out YouTube users Annika Victoria and April Yang (aka Coolirpa) who post all kinds of upcycling and video repurposing.