Sustainability will force me to raise festive game

SUSTAINABILITY has my heart broken. I am riddled with guilt. Over the years I have trained my extended family to buy me cheap rubbish at Christmas. And I return the favour. I have annually lowered the standard of dress on Christmas Day. The anticipation as to how awful my garb will be when I emerge from my bedroom leaves Ryan Tubridy’s pre Toy Show excitement in the ha’penny place.

Over the holiday period there will be a number of outfits, all of which could not possibly the worn outdoors. Visitors will be subjected to this barely human vision, but they are usually polite, and it gives them food for conversation back home. Needless to say none of these suits, socks, ties, shirts or pullovers have anything sustainable about them. They are so throwaway that a charity shop would probably decline. The notion of some day turning on the Channel 4 news and seeing Jon Snow reporting on a famine in darkest Africa where desperate children are wearing my Santa outfits in 100° sun haunts me.

I do try to wear some of these garments privately at other times of the year to reduce my guilt. People have arrived at my house in spring to find me chain sawing in my Santa sweater. But such is the quality of workmanship on disposable clothing that I would be wearing Christmas gear from now to eternity. Which may remind some of the days when that would be rectified by a leather patch. Sometimes throwaway clothing can be pressed into service on cold nights in bed, but I live in fear of a fire in the early hours and being photographed (everything is photographed these days) making my way down a ladder in June dressed like Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.

If we are to stop relying on rubbish then the entire fashion industry has to fold up its tent and go home. Glossy magazines will be a thing of the past. Photographers will be reduced to wildlife shoots. I am not sure if Shakespeare gave us “clothing maketh the man” but he definitely wrote that “apparel oft proclaims the man”. Most of us now have 20 years of camera photos to look back on. We never look at the ones that were actually printed on paper because they are in the attic. I look back on the thousands of photos when I am doing some unsustainable travelling. There is not a lot to do on a plane in the cheap seats. Browsing the other day while Mr O’Leary took me from A to B, I was horrified to see how many favourite jackets I have that must have been bought before the iPhone was invented. I was happily wearing my brown suede jacket last week totally unaware that there must have been people saying that I had been seen in that for quarter of a century. It would break my heart to give it away. I still regret parting with a leather jacket years ago. The Obama Inauguration Day hoodie I am sporting today will outlast Trump.

What we wear, and what we do to the environment, is a complex issue. I was happy to have far too many T-shirts because I was helping develop some third world country. Now I discover I am also choking whales. If I decided today to forego rubbish and live in the Levis and Doc Martens that are upstairs I would be six feet under before any of them wore out. But then Levis keep on bringing out tempting new colours. And you can buy fancy Docs with flowers.

This Christmas I will wear my regulation black, head to toe, and Velcro a Santa on for the big day. Everyone will be disappointed and I will get into trouble because Velcro is probably not recyclable.

‘The Obama hoodie I am wearing today will outlast Trump...’