Why I haven’t been talking about vegan fashion.
Image by KC Green
Hey guys! You might have noticed that it’s been a while since my last blog post, five weeks in fact. I wanted to explain why this is as I’m not one to ghost people with no explanation, you deserve better than that.
The truth is I’ve been dealing with the dreaded writers block; a huge lack of inspiration of what to write about for this blog. But to be honest, it’s more than that. I’ve been feeling a sense of irrelevance in light of the huge issues we’re currently facing. A global pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and the ongoing urgency of the climate crisis have all been where I’ve felt I should be directing my energy (rightly so), but it’s left me with little to no energy for writing about vegan fashion.
When you look at the bigger picture (i.e. all these massive shit storms we’re dealing with), talking about what vegan boots to buy for winter or how to style a scarf seem, at best, materialistic, and at worse, distracting. I don’t want to be a blogger who writes content for the sake of content, distracting people from the important challenges we face in the world. Of course, I want to be somewhere people can go for entertainment, let’s face it we all need some light relief in today’s chaotic, often hopeless state. But my intentions for this blog have always been above just pushing products and promoting ‘buying shit to make a difference’.
Dominique Browning said in an article for Time magazine in 2012; “we can’t buy our way out of environmental problems”, and if this doesn’t sum up how I’ve been feeling I don’t know what does! I strongly believe that the true meaning of fashion activism is to try and encourage people to buy less, and vegan fashion should be no exception. With this being said, I still believe that encouraging people who are buying new clothes, to switch animal materials for vegan alternatives is still a worthy cause as it reduces the impact on the environment and guides people towards more ethical and sustainable shopping habits.
With this in mind, I wanted to share with you my new direction I’m taking the blog in, and what this will mean for my content. I still want to get the balance right of providing both education and entertainment for you guys, so I still see a place for product/brand recommendations and fun styling tips here and there. But I want to focus a lot more on how to see fashion as something other than ‘stuff’ to buy, and ways you can enjoy your style without feeling that pressure to constantly be on the hunt for the next thing to buy.
There are so many ways to have fun with fashion (ew, gross alliteration) and experiment with your style without having to buy fast fashion or spend loads of money on expensive sustainable brands. From clothing rental websites to clothes swaps with your mates, there has never been a better time to shop outside of the box!
I hope this direction sits well with you guys, I always want my content to be fun, useful and thought-provoking and ultimately to actually make a positive difference to people’s lives. Let’s take matters into our own hands and make the decision to do things differently, while still celebrating the creativity and confidence clothes can give us.
