Would you wear this sweatshirt in 30 years?
British designer is fighting the glut of fast fashion with clothing built to last
The average woman wears a new item of clothing just seven times before deeming it passé and relegating it to the back of the closet, or worse, to the trash bin, according to a survey by a British charity shop Barnardo’s.
Yes, even as style bloggers swoon over the Duchess of Cambridge’s thrifty habit of recycling outfits for her official doing-good photo ops, the relentless drive to fill one’s social media feed with newness is still driving sales of fast fashion.
Paddling against the tide, one young British fashion designer is getting a great deal of attention for his radically old-fashioned idea: making clothes that last.
Hearkening back to an era of fuzzy nostalgia when a person saved up to buy one new investment piece each season (while also allocating more to repair existing wardrobe pieces), Tom Cridland, a 26-year-old designer from London, England, and his girlfriend, Debs Marx, created the 30 Year Sweatshirt. The pair also has a boutique PR company and a rock band.
But it is this humble sweatshirt that has been feverishly written up in think pieces in the Atlantic, the Guardian, on NPR and in GQ and Esquire that examine how a new generation of consumers is reacting to the sickening glut of fast fashion by demanding high-quality goods that are built to be
come heirlooms.
Cridland says he chose the sweatshirt because it was an example of a “less stuffy” product.
The key concept for Cridland, who also offers trousers and “entrepreneur’s” button-down shirts and jackets, is price per wear. He wanted to provide a fade-resistant product in a classic cut that will still look good after umpteen washes.
It is working: his fan club includes Hugh Grant, Rod Stewart, Leonardo DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood, Daniel Craig and Kendrick Lamar.
“The 30 Year Guarantee is no gimmick and invokes a bygone era when clothing was made with care,” Cridland says.
“We developed the 30 Year figure with our seamstresses in Portugal who have been making beautiful clothing since 1964. The sweatshirts, T-shirts and jackets are made out of luxury fabric that we source from Biella in Northern Italy, and are now crafted in both Parma, Italy and Serra da Estrela, Portugal. Technological advances allowed us to develop a special treatment to protect the garments against shrinking.”
Because they sell only online direct-to-consumer, Cridland says he can keep costs down. The sweatshirt rings in at about $170, which is quite an investment in a world of $5 Tshirts, but cheap when amortized over three decades.
Cridland’s mission puts ideology and function before fashion: “Fast fashion is damaging the environment, putting responsible brands out of business and ripping off consumers. We are fighting the corporations that are treating both clothing and those who make it as disposable by offering consumers something better: should anything happen to your garment in the next 30 years, we will repair or replace it free of charge.”
In Canada our guilt is piling up, quite literally. Canada’s own Value Village had a hit this year at the March round of Toronto fashion shows with a reworked vintage “eco” collection called VV by EB (for fashion designer Evan Biddell, the first Canadian Project Runway winner).
The second-hand clothing chain has also produced what it calls a State of Reuse Report (valuevillage.com/reusereport) that says there are now 80 billion new items of clothing produced around the world each year.
It breaks down some grim figures, to wit: each new pair of jeans costs 111 kilowatt hours of energy to create and up to 1,800 gallons of water. That figure comes from “The State of The Apparel Sector 2015 Special Report On Water.”
In North America, we each threw away about 37 kilograms of clothing last year, despite the fact 95 per cent of that could have been recycled. Much of this goes to landfill, a toxic proposal considering the components of many modern clothing dyes.
In terms of creating a “reuse” habit, the men’s market is far ahead of women’s.
Indeed, the men’s clothing tradition is much more geared toward longer term value and satisfaction. The brands that offer the best guarantees tend to skew male: for instance, Harry Rosen offers a lifetime guarantee on all its tailored garments.
Outdoor stores often go even further. The gold-standard in guarantees is L.L. Bean, which has always offered a lifetime guarantee on all its gear, a directive passed down from its founder.
And see the individual brands’ websites for all the fine print, but Patagonia, the North Face, Columbia, Filson, Jansport, Canada Goose, Eddie Bauer, Land’s End and Tilley all have progressive long-term product guarantees and will cheerfully replace or repair items that don’t perform or get damaged (do note, sometimes for a fee).
In the women’s sector, U.S. online shops cuyana.com and everlane.com both market their clothes with social justice concerns upfront and quality-that-lasts identities.
They tend to basic wardrobe pieces and Cuyana bears the generationally on-point slogan: “Fewer, better things.”
In shoes, docs are a solid long-term investment: the Dr. Martens brand- has a “for life collection” that guarantees repair or replacement if you wear them out in any way you see fit. Blundstones has a guarantee of workmanship but reserves the right to refuse repairs if you haven’t properly cared for your boots. Either way, looks like another generation of toes will remain safe for slam dancing.
Also guaranteed (variously) are Oakley sunglasses, Zippo lighters, Le Crueset pots and even Gibson guitars: these lifestyle brands will stand behind their products under many, but not all, circumstances.
A great website for info on items that last is buymeonce.com, which has U.K. and U.S. shopping functionality, but more importantly, a blog and feedback section that allows conscious consumers to share their good and bad experiences in shopping for life.