Friday 13 January 2017

sustainable vintage style

This week I was delighted to don my favourite pink party dress and be interviewed by my colleague at the University of Sydney, the smart and charming Tara Moss, for her Victory Lamour blog. Below is a brief excerpt and a link to her website.


‘One of the most important things we can all do is to love our clothes and take good care of them…mending something when it’s been damaged.’ – Lisa Heinze

Happy new year!

For the first blog of 2017 I thought I would visit one of my passions, and resolutions – to be kinder to the environment. I’m no eco angel, but I have been drawn to vintage for aesthetic and historical as well as ethical reasons. Every time I buy, trade, sell and repair or mend vintage, whether it is a 1950s dress or a 1960s caravan, I feel like I am investing not only in something built to last, as most things were in that time, but in something that has a lighter footprint on the planet because new materials have not been needed to produce it.

This matters with clothing, perhaps more than most of us realise.

In the mid century, particularly during WW2 when ‘make do and mend‘ was a national priority and strict rations impacted every day people, recycling, re-using and mending was down to an art form. There were multiple handbooks on the subject, and members of each household took time to mend and fix the family’s things, whether it was the radio or a pair of trousers. Today there are many millions – billions even – of kilos of discarded clothing on the planet. In fact, journalist Lucy Seigle points out that 80 billion new garments are produced globally every year. (You can check out my interview with Lucy here.)

Continue reading on the Victory Lamour website

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