Work from Home Vibes

Fashion reflects your personality, on a day to day styling potential is endless, but since Covid started, hands up if you’ve taken a more relaxed approach to dressing; when it comes to working from home or even your new normal dress code is a relaxed option.
 

Blouses, tops, dresses, dungarees or trousers, however you style them. If you’re stumped for inspiration, our selection of styles is bound to prompt you for a long term sustainable wardrobe.

Hunter - Blouse

Charlotte - Sweater

Laverna - Blouse & Fern - Trouser

Charlie -  Jumpsuit

Angelica - Blouse

Jean - Trouser

Kirsty - Top

Meg - Tunic Dress

Sincerely Madia & Matilda 

A Guide To Decluttering Your Wardrobe

As, this week we have been discussing ways to clear out your wardrobe on our Live stories here are a few tips to organising a timeless wardrobe 

If you have reached the point where you can not get in or out of your wardrobe.. Its time.. We always thought you can never have too many clothes or shoes 

Tip one make sure all styles are folded the same way, separate by category, check all hangers fit the same or are replaced if broken.

    

 Deciding which items to keep can be tough, if you are struggling to find away, why not invite a family member to help or after lock down invite a style service, like our own, which currently we are able to offer advice online via voom 

Ways to tackle decluttering

Start with the Four-Box Method. Where you use four boxes and label them: Alter, trash, give away, keep. (Sidebar; as well as your wardrobe, this can be done for any room in your home.) Place each item into one of the boxes - be brutal if necessary. Don’t skip a single item, no matter how insignificant you may think it is. This may take days, weeks, or months, but it will help you see how many items you really own and you’ll know exactly what to do with each item. 

If you’re new to decluttering, and you want to do more than just your wardrobe you can slowly ease yourself into it by tackling one room at a time. Storage boxes, are also useful when organising. Label or plan each box, folding bags, vacuum bags, jewellery stand, more hangers or suitcase to name a few. 

Another useful tip, but will only happen over time if you want to declutter in a less harsh manner, if you are unsure of what to get rid of. Donate clothes you never wear. To identify them, simply hang all your clothes with hangers in the reverse direction. After wearing an item, face the hanger in the correct direction. Discard the clothes you never touched after a few months.

Create a decluttering checklist. It’s a lot easier to declutter when you can visualise how it will look or where you need to get started. 

Ask yourself tough questions, like: 

Have you worn it in the last year? 

Does it have a special meaning/ Sentimental value?

Does it fit?

Is it in good condition?

Does it need fixing or will you take to be altered?

Does it make you feel good?

Does it go with other things in your wardrobe?

Is it annoying or uncomfortable to wear?

Sometimes the best styles, get worn out, tired and you feel its time to put those loved items firmly behind us, in this case getting rid and making space for new items is okay. There are lots of sustainable ways to let go of old items without letting them go to landfill. 

For instance Depop and Loved clothes last are great initiatives 

Depop 

Is a marketplace for unwanted clothes that perhaps no longer fit or are not to your taste any longer. Rehoming an item of clothing is better than it going to landfill, it provides that garment with a longer lifespan for someone else to enjoy and helps the planet. 

Check out our depop here for discounted items as we use depop as an outlet for unsold stock instead of sending to landfill

Love your clothes 

With a similar ethos to us; love your clothes is a great resource, perfect for finding out care tips or sourcing recycling centers or even to sell your own clothes on their site 

For clothing items you just can not go without, find a local tailor or send in to us (after lockdown), as we understand how much a loved top or skirt, can bring so much joy and memories; so why not fix or amend any that are in need of some tlc. 

Check out our alterations price list here

Another way, is to hold swap parties or swishing; a fun way to get rid of unwanted items in your wardrobe. Once lockdown is over and government guidelines specify, invite friends over with their unwanted clothing and see what you can swap, make sure all clothing is laundered and you may find some great finds and come away with new things for your wardrobe that won't cost you a thing.

Sincerely Madia & Matilda

The Effects of Fast Fashion - Culture

As fashion week is in full swing we thought we would take a look at the processes behind Fashion Trends & consumers desires for new convenient collections. 

What is Fast Fashion?

It’s astonishing how quickly ‘fast fashion’— a low-cost, speedy way of shifting massive amounts of clothing from
stores world-wide— has taken over the globe. First conceived in the ‘80s, the concept has gripped the planet in a
way which has caused us to lose sight of how precious our natural resources are. Fast fashion runs on two basic
principles: low cost of production and at the time of selling, and speed of manufacture. The last is important as it
enables retailers to jump on the bandwagon and produce clothing in time for each new celeb/catwalk trend, as it
happens. Along the way, textile production has been outsourced to developing countries (the poorer the better).
All too often we know nothing about who makes our clothes, and we rarely hear about the impact this industry has
on workers and the environment. Is it really out of sight, out of mind? Not quite. Many organisations such as
Love Your Clothes and Remake work tirelessly to shed light on the effect our insatiable desire for fast fashion has
on both people and planet.

So what’s really so bad about Fast Fashion? Let’s take a look, from the production of weavable fibres to the factory
workers who stitch them together.

Infographic 3

Fabric Production and Treatment

Fibre production and fabric manufacturing, regardless of whether it’s natural (plant/animal based), man-made
or synthetic, uses a vast and colourful array of insecticides, petroleum derivatives and processing chemicals,
at almost every step of sourcing and production. It uses a lot of energy and natural resources including water,
chemicals and oils. Cotton farmining particular utilises an enormous amount of fertiliser chemicals, along with
a staggering 25% of insecticides used worldwide.
It’s also estimated that genetically modified cotton occupied 43% of cotton-growing areas across the planet, as
of 2007. This figure has undoubtedly risen since. The fast fashion trend puts an enormous amount of pressure
on this process, increasing the number of chemicals used and resulting in some manufacturers cutting corners
on the safety of their workers.

Most people aren’t aware of the number of potentially hazardous chemicals used to make their clothes. These
chemicals put the manufacturers of textiles at risk of many serious health problems, such as cancer, infertility,
allergies and diabetes. For more information on the ways textile manufacturing harms people and communities,
check out fast fashion documentary The True Cost on Netflix, directed by Andrew Morgan.

Infographic 1

An Environmental Disaster

“Textile dyeing is the second largest polluter of clean water globally, after agriculture”, according to
Patsy Perry, writing for The Independent.
For those in developing countries, who sometimes have difficulty in securing clean drinking water, this
is a dire issue. Poisonous cleaning and processing chemicals are released into the water and often leach
into rivers traditionally used as a source of drinking water.

The True Cost cites the leather industry as one of the worst contributors to this. Kanpur, India, supports
the production of cheap leather. The chemicals used to tan, treat and colour these products are often toxic
and can easily run into water used in agriculture, or even drinking water. The biggest culprit here is chromium-6,
a toxic chemical and confirmed carcinogen, and many of the people who live in close proximity to sites of leather
processing suffer from a number of issues caused by its contamination of groundwater and soil.

On another note, the fashion industry’s CO2 emissions are predicted to increase by 60% by the year 2030,
to a rate of nearly 2.8 billion tons per year.

Infographic 2

The Human Angle

The fast fashion industry is extremely problematic and riddled with complex environmental and humanitarian issues at every turn.
Ayesha Barenblat, founder of Remake, (mentioned above), reveals that 80% of clothing worldwide is made in developing countries by
women between the ages of 18 and 24 years of age, and that “the biggest corners fast fashion cuts are human”. Many people heading
up big corporations argue that the practices they display and their attitude to human labour in factories is beneficial to communities.
They justify their actions using excuses like, “A job is a job, regardless of working conditions or relative pay. We are fighting unemployment
in underprivileged communities”. When governments attempt to pass bills which will outline a specific code of conduct, calling for a set living
wage to be paid to all garment workers, for example, the companies who rely on the cheap labour of the workers will nearly always oppose it. John Hilary was until recently the executive director of War On Want, which describes itself as being “against the root causes of global poverty, inequality and injustice”. Hilary comments during The True Cost that, “when everything is concentrated into making profits for the big corporations, what you see is that human rights, the environment [and] workers’ rights get lost altogether. You see that workers are increasingly exploited because [labour costs] are pushed down and down and down, just to satisfy this impulse to accumulate capital”.

Pic from Madia & Matilda - photography Kathy Anne Lim

What Can I Do?

Head over to Love Your Clothes for loads of amazing tips on how to recycle, reuse, alter or mend your clothes!
An estimated three quarters of people in the UK throw away old clothes rather than recycle or donate,
so it’s important that you avoid putting clothes into landfill as much as possible. Ways of avoiding this may include:

• Buy clothing made from pre-used garments or textiles
• Mend old clothes
• Buy second-hand or vintage
• Avoid buying polyester or similar, where possible. Polyester is a synthetic fibre which, when washed, sheds

microparticles which don’t biodegrade and cause widespread oceanic pollution. Plankton ingest these fibres and
pass them up the food chain, where many of them eventually end up in us after we eat fish or shellfish

• Shop at Madia & Matilda! We use end-of-line or second-hand fabrics where possible, helping to reduce the

volume of textiles which go into landfill. All our original garments are made by our little team in the Cotswolds, so we

know exactly who makes each garment. Traceability and ethics are paramount to our business model!

If you have any comments, insights or ideas on the subject of fast fashion, please get in contact!

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Sources:

Wikipedia

Chemsec Textile Guide

The Independent

Infographics from Remake website


Sincerely Madia & Matilda