Greening You
“Make it more fun with a playlist!”
— Celia Ingesson, founder
GREENING YOUR WARDROBE
Is your wardrobe bulging at the seams, filled with spontaneous buys worn on only a few occasions, if at all? A few bad buys later, we realize that our spontaneous shopping sprees have not only seriously dented our bank balance, but have also worn out the environment. “How so?” you might be asking. For a start, one of the major environmental impacts of the clothing industry is the hazardous chemicals used by the industry for colors, print and finishing some of the chemicals used in the textile process are toxic or carcinogenic (cancer-forming), posing a danger to both the environment and the health of workers.
Another area of concern to consumers is the skin irritation or textile allergies associated with synthetic fabrics in particular. Synthetic materials, like polyester, nylon and acrylic, are often the main culprits in textile allergies. The irritation is either related to the fabric itself, the dye used in the manufacturing process, the finish of the garment, or remnants of harsh chemicals after laundering.
However, before you even start shopping for sustainable brands, the first place to look when ‘greening’ your wardrobe is inside. Know what you have in your wardrobe and consider whether you really need to buy an item. Ultimately, the greenest clothes are those that you already own.
“Admit it: If it’s not on your email calendar, you’ll probably never do it. Block off at least two hours to go through your entire wardrobe.
1.
This is the hard part. Take time to pick up each item and decide whether you want to keep it. Ask yourself important questions: – Have I worn this in the past year? Does it reflect my personal style? Am I excited to wear it? If something has significant sentimental value, you get a free pass, but anything you haven't worn in a year goes right to the donations pile!
2.
Organize your items by what you want to keep, what you can donate, and designer pieces you can resell.
3.
Take a leaf from the three R’s of recycling – reduce, re-use and recycle – and apply this to the contents of your wardrobe. Give away/ donate and sell clothes and accessories that you are not wearing (reduce), add something different to update old garments, such as sewing on new buttons (re-use) and mend your garments before tossing it out at the first sign of a fraying hemline (recycle).
4.
Fold whatever you’re donating or selling into tote bags so you don’t get confused or tempted to sneak it back into your wardrobe!
(Vestiaire Collective, The RealReal and other services makes it super simple to resell your designer items. Just snap a photo, describe the item, and set a price. Once it sells, you can ship it to Vestiaire Collective/ The Realreal for free and receive the money).
5.
This is the hard part. Take time to pick up each item and decide whether you want to keep it. Ask yourself important questions: – Have I worn this in the past year? Does it reflect my personal style? Am I excited to wear it? If something has significant sentimental value, you get a free pass, but anything you haven't worn in a year goes right to the donations pile!
Greener laundry, think climate!
After carefully revamping your existing wardrobe, you now need to look at how you care for your clothes. Apparently, the greatest eco-burden from clothes is not in their production or manufacturing or even their distribution, but specifically how we use and launder our clothes. Laundering, if done incorrectly, can damage and cause our clothes to wear out faster and pollute the water with micro plastics. We need to wash clothes according to the specifications on garments, using gentle, enviro-friendly products and preferably turning them inside out as this will help prevent fading of color.
Always use a special wash-bag/ filter for your synthetics = all your polyester, nylons and acrylics. Several studies have recently also shown that one load of laundry of polyester clothes (also nylon and acrylic) can discharge 700 000 micro-plastic-fibres, which release toxins into the environment and can end up in human food chain!
GREENING STYLE
“Power dressing, is not about a neatly cut suit. It’s about presenting your best, your strongest self, to make other people perceive you at your best”
— Celia Ingesson, founder
How do you breathe in Saran-wrap-thin synthetic yoga pants? The rest of us, and the Earth, could use some breathing room. Doesn’t matter how “breathable” they claim to be, if you’re wearing polyester/ nylons, you are wearing plastics! The majority of polyesters are not biodegradable meaning that the polyester/ nylon athletic wear you bought will not decompose for 20 years at best, and 200 years at worst, depending on conditions. You might love the fabulous colors and prints but Polyester materials, and chemical colors are not environmentally friendly... In addition to causing environmental problems, polyester and chemical dyes are toxic to humans. Chemical dye, (color) workers in the United States and Asia report higher incidences of cancers and lung disease than the general population. So, what can we do? Look for garments that are made from natural materials, like organic cotton, tencel, linen and wool, colored using plant based clean color. So step into some slouchy pants with me. We don’t have to look quite so good when we’re just trying to look a little better, but when wearing Greeningline, we promise you will both look and feel good.
Power dressing, is not about a neatly cut suit. It’s about presenting your best, your strongest self, to make other people perceive you at your best, your strongest. However, it’s not only about other people. It’s about how you feel. That’s what clothes do. They change how you see yourself as well as how others see you. And that, in turn, changes the way people see you again. It’s a case of ever-decreasing circles. Or, ideally, ever-increasing ones. Dressing visibly, confidently, which doesn’t have to mean extravagantly, increases your bandwidth, makes you seem bigger in the best possible sense. The comfort of Clothes You Can Actually Wear, answering our calls for timeless wardrobe dressing. These are clothes that suit your mental needs as much as your physical ones—pieces that reflect the person you are, no filter necessary. In many ways, its less about the actual garment and more about the person inside it…
“I like to give women the opportunity to be comfortable and stylish. I work with everyday pieces that make women feel beautiful, and comfortable. Clothes have to help us when we spend time with the kids, have a career, working out, social gatherings and traveling - all a part of women's lives, while always being comfortable and still look ok, preferably stylish. For me, it's all about mixing things up - introducing a playful element to of vintage and not always being too serious. You have to be able to have some fun with style as well as life”.
– Rosemarie Lybeck one of the stylists in our Greening-collective.
