Background
We are Lisa Barrington & Rose Arnold.
"We promise to go one year without buying a single item of new clothing" Rose & Lisa -16th May 2008
Welcome to Style and Substance, our website dedicated to not buying any new clothes for a year. Why?
Well following several passionate (if a little drunken) discussions surrounding the origins of our favourite fashions, we found that we could no longer justify our fondness for the latest trend-for-a-tenner as we became more aware of the horrors involved in producing such garments and the environmental impact.
As our interest grew with self-education, so did our confusion as to why our otherwise caring friends & colleagues appeared to have a mental block when it came to the origins of their increasingly cheap & not-so-cheerful clothes. We concluded that this was almost certainly due to a lack of awareness and limited options, rather than the lack of a conscience (we know that most have consciences)!
Our S&S mission
• To share the information we progressively discover about the Fashion Industry & it’s suppliers in bite-sized, easily digestible chunks with you
• To spread the word, without any hint of preaching or lecturing (promise)
• To promote the splendour that is the charity shop & spread the love for vintage
• To prove how (relatively) easy it is to live a full & happy life without disposable fashion
• To buy no new clothes for a year to prove just how happy & fulfilled you can be (watch this space in 6 months to see if we are in fact still happy!)
• To provide a regular commentary on our trials & tribulations of our year without the high street – How hard could it be?!?
• To provide you with a list of reasons to contradict your own reasons not to do it too!
• To promote & publicize any events, services, tips & news regarding living without disposable fashion
And finally…
To hope that the simple act of checking out our website may provoke you to think about whether you really need that last-minute-impulse-buy-copycat-floral-teadress after all? And that maybe you will think that as the costs to you are driven down to fight for your business, the human cost to your counterpart across the other side of the world is rising as a consequence.
It's worth it. You'll still look fabulous, you'll be a little richer and you'll feel happier!
The Pledge
As we became more educated & engrossed with these issues, we discussed how best put our passion into practice? What could we do to raise awareness? Surely people were still unaware of these horrors? How best to evoke & encourage?
Without preaching or boring, ranting or re-iterating, how could we convince our compassionate friends & neighbours to ditch their high street habit (well at least, make a more informed choice?)
‘I’ve had an idea’ said Rose, ‘Let’s not buy any clothes…for a year’
‘What?’ I exclaimed in horror, ‘Nothing?’
Two hours & two gin & tonics later we were toasting the idea & ready to give up the high street all in the name of Style & Substance
Our Thought Process
Our mission is certainly not to preach or even propose that you take the same drastic action of completely giving up the High St.
We aim to evoke the same thought, passion & intrigue as we had when we started finding our about the conditions of garment workers, and possibly change your buying habits in the process.
We all saw the positive (or negative depending on whether you’re a director of Tesco) effects that Hugh-Fearnley Whittingstall had upon cheap battery-farmed chicken sales – you can’t argue with public demand. This inevitably worked because of the passion involved with his campaign – the tears were real & he was willing to gamble his public reputation & his livelihood.
Throughout his campaign, it was never illustrated that only evil people eat battery-farmed chickens, moreover that people didn’t realise the consequences, or didn’t feel like they had a choice because of the cost.
This is how we feel – but about people (& chickens). The sad truth is, is that this isn’t something that we would accept in this country, so why go on oblivious. We all know it isn’t right. In an ideal world we would like to be super-heroic fair-trade campaigners – but we are certainly not! My bin has been full of glass bottles for weeks, awaiting a trip to the bottle bin & my chocolate of choice is often based on factors of tastiness – rather than ethics. The point I’m trying to make is that it doesn’t take a lot to do a little.
Our aim is to give people a better insight into where their clothes come from –, and to help them appreciate the work involved that brought them to you!
10 years ago, there wasn’t the facility to buy a cheap new outfit every week, but we still managed to look just as good.
The aim of our pledge is to raise awareness so that people make their choices more carefully.