The Fall of Fashion and the Return of Self Satifaction

When I started exploring the idea of minimizing my closet, Dom got me this pretty little book loaded with beautiful illustrations and food for thought.

After I read it. I downloaded, “Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion” by Elizabeth L. Cline. I have been spent the last few weeks pouring over its pages and broadening my knowledge on something I knew nothing about.

I assumed by the title that I’d be reading about sweatshops and poor working conditions. But I also received a history lesson on the luxury fashion industry, the rise of American consumerism, and a behind the scenes look at how shops run their business.

In the book, the author meets Sarah Kate Beaumont who decides to start making all of her clothing and documenting her progress on a blog. This idea sent me back to my childhood. I come from a long line of women creators whose chosen medium was sewing. One of my only memories of my granny was learning to make a little-cross-stitched box. It was hunter green with a white lid and a little pink flower on the lid.  My mom patiently sat with me while I made my first dress on the sewing machine at fifteen---it was a light purple floral cotton sundress. And on one of my last trips home, my Aunt Dessie taught me to crochet.

I can remember the exact details of the items I created. I can't remember my favorite items of clothing from the last ten years. I haven’t done any sewing in years. But the lack of inspiration in my closet and the clothing in my price point could lead me to dust off the sewing machine in the back of my closet.

From 1810-1910, the Arts and Crafts movement flourished right after the industrial revolution. The Arts and Crafts style started as a search for aesthetic design and decoration and as a reaction against machine production.  Owen Wilson, one of the fathers of the movement, declared, “Ornament must be secondary to the thing decorated.” Form follows function.

I wonder whether we have an “Arts & Crafts Movement” in our future?  The quality of products continues to lesson, and the availability of cheap products broadens. How much more satisfaction would we feel if we created our style instead of wearing latest fad from H&M?

For most of my life, I’ve considered fashion a preferred form of self-expression. But when I turn a discerning eye on my closet, the items there seem to be almost identical. My self-identified expression has been taken over by cheaply made replicas of eras gone by and trends that move at the speed of light. There is very little creativity in what I see hanging there.

I am thirty-two years old and yet I vividly recall the texture of the yarn, the feel of the needle as I pushed it through the plastic squares, and the satisfaction I felt in creating something both functional and beautiful when I was just seven or eight years old. The memory alone is enough to really make really reconsider my choices.