The Power of a Dollar (But Make it Fashion)

A lot of the systems operating in the world seem like they are terminally locked in a viscous death spiral, destined to drag us into our own demise. Most days, humanity feels like a failed evolutionary experiment.

However! Despite being fairly black-pilled and cynical, my heart of hearts bleeds for humanity and the cesspit we’ve created around us. I do want to see change, and I do believe that the chains we’ve created for ourselves won’t be shed anytime soon.

So, in order to reinvigorate my faith in a brighter future, I spoke with Jaclyn Patterson, professional stylist and founder of Shopwise, an online fashion retailer dedicated to promoting sustainable and ethical fashion brands. She has a refreshing and uplifting message – that while, admittedly, things seem very bad, there is something we, as individuals, can do to make things just a little bit better.

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E: So first, tell me a little bit about how you got started in this industry.

J: After pursuing a degree in fashion, and learning about how dark the industry can be, I soon realized my passion was working with clients one-on-one and connecting them with purpose-driven brands and clothing solutions – marrying my love for fashion with my values of environmentalism and sustainability. I’ve been a personal stylist for eight years, and two years ago started Shopwise, a one-stop-shop for ethical and sustainable fashion.. I’m a passionate sustainability advocate and believe both style and sustainability can co-exist together.

E: What makes the intersection between fashion and sustainability such an interesting space to think about?

J: Well fashion I love because it’s so universal. Everyone needs clothes. But the industry that has evolved over time is one that is quite harmful, and I was inspired to try to make it a little better. Once you start learning the figures, it’s insane – both in terms of the human and environmental catastrophe. Only 2% of garment workers worldwide (80% of whom are women) earn a livable salary. And that includes all fashion production – so everything from luxury brands to fastest fast fashion brands. Even the Chanels of the world are not necessarily producing their goods by the most ethical standards possible. 

E: I also heard recently about how secondary markets, like resale stores and outlets and charity shops, aren’t capturing all the clothing that doesn’t make it off the shelf in the first go.

J: For sure. Cheap clothing produced in countries such as China and Bangladesh gets shipped to North America and Europe. But those items that don’t get sold here hit tertiary markets in South America and people will either try to sell them or wear them. Then, if things don’t get worn, they get burnt. And that’s how they get rid of them because if you’re dealing with so much waste, at a certain point the easiest thing is to burn it – or throw it into a landfill.

Even when we discard clothing here, say we donate to Salvation Army or Goodwill, only 10% of items in a thrift store get sold, which is just so heartbreaking. We’re creating unethical clothes to be worn for a bit for someone to throw out or donate in hope a that it gets a second life. And then if it doesn’t, it just gets shipped overseas to then maybe be worn by someone in a developing country, but more likely to get burnt or thrown into a landfill.

That’s why I love the concept of “there is no away.” Whatever we toss out or discard, there’s this fantasy that it just disappears. In actuality, however, there’s somewhere that it’s going, so really, it’s more, where’s it going now? And it’s such a good point. We have such a disociation with what happens to the things we discard, even from food to just general household garbage.

E: I think that our relationship to waste connects to this idea of total disposability, whether that’s this t-shirt or the person who made it, to the energy from the earth that it took to produce the fiber that this is made out of. In our current system, it’s all completely disposable.

J: Absolutely. It’s an out of sight, out of mind kind of thing. And there’s a lot happening out of sight. Between 7-10% of global carbon emissions come from the fashion industry alone. And that’s everything from growing the plants that will become textiles, things like cotton and linen, to weaving the fabric, and creating the clothes, sewing them, shipping and selling them. So, it’s an absolutely massive supply chain. And it’s second to oil, which produces approximately 10% of global emissions. And while a mere 100 companies are responsible for 70% of global carbon emissions, there’s so much pressure on the consumer. The messaging tells us that it’s our job to do better and whether it’s through clean beauty or what cleaning products we use in our homes. It feels like the onus is on individuals to be the solution.

E: Which seems like a massive scam, and the product of marketing by these very companies to obscure their role in the poisoning of this planet. We need these corporations to start doing things differently.

J: Exactly, and brands and big corporations are only just starting to catch up. It takes time to make big changes as well. So that’s where a company that has a social mission and touts the goals they have and how they’re achieving them is starting to be more attractive to consumers.

And we need evidence, not just their word. I look for things like global CSR reports, how they’re pivoting the company towards more sustainable practices and using more organic fabrics, for example. Where fashion brands tend to skip over is where they’re producing – since these practices are often very low wage labor in developing countries. There’s still so far to go, but I think it’s good to see brands making progress, but we also need to hold them accountable too.

E: So how do you combat this sense of helplessness in the face of these massive systems?

J: Instead of feeling we’re in this massive ecosystem of unethical fashion, it’s almost like connecting the dots between our items and where we get them from. When we kind of carry more ownership over the things we own, it’s more likely we’re going to do our best to take care of it and make it last and wear it with love.

Because that’s where I love the concept of voting with your dollar when you can. For the person that who has the opportunity to think about how they want to spend their money, that’s a beautiful privilege and it can be really empowering to be part of the solution to vote with your dollar.

E: I love that point about privilege – because the income and headspace are luxuries themselves. Even for people with the means, I also feel like the pressure to be personally responsible for one’s consumption and carbon footprint only causes people to stick their head in the sand…it just gets to be too much at a certain point. And all the paper straws in the world aren’t going to save us.

J: That is very real. It’s heavy and it’s hard to learn, to accept yet another thing to feel responsible for. The world is heavy, there’s a lot going on in daily life, too, so I understand it can be just easier to ignore these realities, and we have to protect our mental health in some capacity.

But I believe it really can be simpler.

I think sometimes we assume that being more sustainable is super expensive and that it’s going to cost us a lot when really there’s so many little lifestyle habits that we can fine-tune. Even thrifting, for example, is a much more sustainable practice than buying something new.

But often we do face situations where we aren’t getting things that are super sustainable or secondhand. That’s just part of life. But how can we take care of that item and make it last and maybe style it or use it for other things as well?

Or: instead of changing the amount we’re spending, it’s maybe changing how we’re spending it. So I always think of the example of someone who buys 10 new items that are from fast fashion places. I encourage people to – in spending that same $100 – consider buying 4 items for $25, or even 2 items for $50 – items that are a little better made, that will get more wears.

So that’s where I feel that as individuals, we have the buying power to vote with our dollar from brands that we see are making positive switches, um, towards reducing our overall footprint.

E: Right, so it’s just shifting the focus to be on quality over quantity. Which, in a North American context, is hard. It feels like we’re always after more, more, more.

J: Yeah, it’s just a mindset choice at the end of the day. The way I look at it, if you can make a few guidelines for yourself at a high-level, then the day-to-day level gets a bit more streamlined.

Shifting our buying and spending behavior to opt for more functional, sustainable pieces, but also that add more ease into our life as well. It’s less stuff, that will last longer.

That’s really how I bring in sustainability to my styling work with my clients too. It’s not just good for the planet and people, but it’s really helping save time, money, and head space in our lives too, to just buy more intentionally and focusing on quality pieces.

E: I appreciate, too, that voting with your dollar implies that you can, actually, make a difference.

J: Yes, I think as consumers, we feel hopeless because everything feels a bit out of our control. But where we do have control every single day is how we spend our money. And that translates to a vote, in my mind. What am I for? What do I want to move toward? Being able to use that as a channel for good can be empowering, but actually make a difference. Even if it feels minuscule, it still does move us in the right direction.

It’s important to recognize that we all deal with money every single day and when we spend it, we have a certain level of control over where that money goes. It can feel really empowering to use it in a social and environmentally responsible way, as best as we can.

It of course can feel drowning, debilitating if we’re thinking about this big issue all the time. But if we’re just taking the minor steps locally and doing what’s possible within our control in our communities, we can make a difference.

E: Bringing it down to a more manageable scale helps things feel less daunting.

J: And fashion is just one medium through which we’re getting exposed to these major issues like labor laws and living wages and work + factory environments, which is really cool. With these massive industries, it seems like there is a lot of room to conceal the goings on of how our goods are made, especially in the developing world. Another industry that’s starting to become more transparent is food. Even seeing labels of where a product was grown helps people start to think about the provenance of things we might not think about. Why is it that this pepper is coming all the way from Mexico? I think it’s encouraging more people to be interested in supporting local farmers and makers.

E: I can’t help but share some of your optimism, Jaclyn. I do hope all these threads start to come together to create something much bigger and more powerful.

J: The thing is, a drop in the ocean is just a drop in the ocean. But when millions of drops come together, we start to see real change. I always remind myself that it’s empowering to try to boycott these negative systems when we can. Ultimately, we don’t need people doing it perfectly. We need everyone doing imperfectly.

-Eve Ejsmont