Ethics is the new black

How sustainable is your wardrobe?

In our new online column, Caroline Dallas, of Luna Boutiques wonders just how sustainable our wardrobes really are.

How many of us feel deeply concerned about the state of the planet and the amount of wastage that surrounds us. I definitely notice all the excess packaging especially every time a trusted amazon package arrives, and I feel a sense of shame that it will only be used once then off to recycling.

I have a weird push/pull relationship with online shopping. In some ways it is so convenient and brilliant in my busy life, and in other ways it contributes massively to the carbon footprint of the world, the petrol of the vans, the packaging it requires and then the petrol required to return the items to the post office. (Did you know at least 30% of all products ordered online are returned as compared to 8.89% in brick-and-mortar stores)

Most of us are a lot more conscious and try not to take plastic bags from shops and bring our own coffee cups rather than the disposable ones. Hopefully we are all moving in the right direction but sometimes we don’t realise how sustainability can be directed towards our wardrobes too!

I know so many ladies who open their wardrobes and despair and how full they are of clothing they don’t wear but would like to. I have countless items that I bought on a whim because I liked the clothing, but did they really suit my shape and my colouring? Probably not which is why they are never worn. They will all go to charity which is a great outlet of course, but buying better and buying less long term has got to be good for the planet’s sustainability.

Perhaps if we learned a bit more about ourselves, our skeletal frame and our colouring, and understood therefore what styles suited us, then we wouldn’t make rash purchases and fill up our wardrobes with items we wished we wore but never did.

I recently trained as a personal stylist and colour consultant and have been amazed at what a difference a bit of knowledge about my body shape and colouring does in terms of choosing my styles in the right colours from the start, and I feel it is brilliant knowledge to have in terms of bringing sustainability and responsible buying to fashion.

I’m going to be bringing my knowledge to this column so we can all try to improve our fashion footprint and feel even better about those shopping trips than we did before!

For more information on Colour and Style consultations, please email me at caroline@lunaboutiques.co.uk

See you next month,

Caroline