Sometimes less really is more, especially when it comes to our wardrobes. In fact, some professional women and bloggers have made a lifestyle choice opting for a permanently clean closet in exchange for a minimalist wardrobe consisting of their most significant separates. And with Shop Drop 2016 underway this January, now is the perfect time to explore the concept of sparse, more sustainable style.    

If the idea of minimalist living intrigues you, but the thought of jumping headfirst into the stereotypical austere existence consisting of less than 5 pairs of shoes – gasp! – frightens you, then you’re actually the perfect candidate for taking the Shop Drop pledge and partake in 30 full days of retail restraint. This means, rather than ditch the majority of clothing you already own, simply agree not to add to your current collection, aside from consigned, thrifted, or swapped fashion, for one month, beginning in January 2016.

The Shop Drop challenge is being hosted by Rachel Sarnoff over at Mommy Greenest, and is sponsored by the largest online consignment and thrift store thredUP, with the intent of this public project aimed at breaking the fast fashion cycle. Sarnoff’s blog has some interesting facts regarding the impact our retail habits and clothing have on the environment that are worth sharing:

• The average American woman spends $60 on clothes and trashes six pounds of textile waste each month.
• If the 160 million women in America took the 30-day shop drop pause, nearly one BILLION pounds of landfill waste could be saved.
• If 1,000 women sign up (the Shop Drop pledgee goal) for the challenge, then 6,000 pounds of textile waste, on average, would be saved.

So, if thrifting for clothes and accessories more often, or simply deciding to shop and own less altogether sound like some techniques you’d like to use in order to whittle down your wardrobe, then it’s important to know what steps you can take to accomplish your goals. Although the Shop Drop challenge is a great place to start, we’ve got some other suggestions on how to get started with minimalism for a more streamlined, sustainable wardrobe that’s still big on style.

Below, we have highlighted several conscious fashion tips from popular minimalist living blog Into Mind, combining her invaluable advice with a few suggestions from us. This little list should undoubtedly provide you with some useful advice on how to begin approaching the lifestyle.

• Into Mind states that a wardrobe is not minimalist because of a smaller size, neutral palette, or lack of patterns or details, but because it follows the key of idea of minimalism, which goes like this: purge everything that doesn’t make you happy or enrich your life, and make room for the things that do.
• Rather than cram your closet full of purchases made on a whim or a bunch of bargain buys (like fast fashion) that you only sorta kinda like, really take the time to think about what works best for your lifestyle, your body type, and your personal style. We say: make sure you’re spending your cash on something worthy – a piece that won’t find its way into the trash after a few weeks of wear.
• Into Mind emphatically states that a minimalist wardrobe shouldn’t be misconstrued based on the idea that it’s supposed to be tiny, and that the number of pieces you actually own are up to you, but should adhere to a quality over quantity notion.
• Start the sorting process by isolating all of your favorite pieces (the ones you wear again and again) and create another pile for the things you haven’t worn in a long time. Then, figure out the differences between these two piles (color, fit, style, etc.) so you can determine why you wear some more than others in order to avoid making the same buying mistakes in the future.
• Check out Into Mind’s excellent guide on how to build the perfect wardrobe utilizing the site’s ten basic principles, like selectivity, definition, authenticity, etc., that are too practical (and awesome) to ignore.

Consider testing the waters of a minimalist wardrobe by challenging yourself to Shop Drop 2016’s goal of 30 consecutive days’ worth of retail restraint. This will definitely help you get a feel for the less-is-more-lifestyle, allowing you to slowly ease into the concept rather than jumping in feet first.

What do you think about the Shop Drop challenge? Could you thrive on a minimalist wardrobe, or just survive? Do you think this lifestyle helps or hinders your creativity? Let us know what you think on the EcoSalon Facebook page!

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Image of Hanging Clothes via Shutterstock

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The reaction to this series by women of all ages via social media has been really amazing. When EcoSalon introduced it two weeks ago, launching with Americana Couture designer and author Natalie Chanin, fashion writer and textile artist Abigail Doan, Owyn Ruck of Brooklyn’s Textile Arts Center as well as occupational therapist and FiftyRX3 writer Jill Danyelle, many people either wrote to us at the site or commented via Twitter and Facebook. Among some of the reactions, the series is being used as reading material for knitting groups; while others have expressed that without the ability to sit quietly and use their hands, they’d need to jump back on anxiety medications.

Maybe there’s something to all this handiwork?

How it all began: When I came across this blog entry from sustainable designer and writer Natalie Chanin, it not only piqued my perception of the positive effects of “women’s work,” but it brought to light a real aspect of how using our hands to do meaningful tasks can benefit our overall health and well being.

Chanin cites neuroscientist Kelly Lambert, author of Lifting Depression:

“Lambert shows how when you knit a sweater or plant a garden, when you prepare a meal or simply repair a lamp, you are bathing your brain in feel-good chemicals and creating a kind of mental vitamin. Our grandparents and great grandparents, who had to work hard for basic resources, developed more resilience against depression; even those who suffered great hardships had much lower rates of this mood disorder. But with today’s overly-mechanized lifestyle, we have forgotten that our brains crave the well-being that comes from meaningful effort.”

With the sustainable stretching out of the fashion movement, there’s been a serious harking back to the glory of heritage and craft and designers with good ears are listening. And well they should with generations strong of everything from indigenous artisans to Depression Era stitchers coming out of the woodwork to teach, inspire and pass on before the knowledge is lost. Designers are listening and incorporating these aged techniques and making them fresh, new and revolutionary.

A designer with those aforementioned “good ears,” is the last member of our series. Titania Inglis designs a line of minimalist-inspired clothing made of experimental constructions and functional details. Her third collection “References vintage glamor via geometric forms created through bias cuts, origami pleating, and ingenious seaming. A sleeveless dress reverses from a prim suit dress to a low-backed mod frock, while diagonal-seamed dresses approach the ideal of zero waste.”

Titania Inglis in her studio

Inglis lives and designs and rides her vintage bicycle everywhere in Brooklyn, and chronicles her adventures and misadventures in the fashion world on her blog, Fade to Green.

Regarding the importance of using her own hands to design, to communicate and ultimately, to achieve sharp mental clarity, she has much to say.

“A lot of people outside the fashion industry don’t seem to realize that all clothes are made by hand, to varying degrees. Yet from the initial sketches, to selecting fabrics, to draping and cutting and sewing and fitting a garment, every step requires the human touch. Sewing machines don’t run themselves, as anyone who’s ever tried to use one can attest!

It was the hands-on nature of clothing design that drew me to it, for reasons I couldn’t fully articulate as a young woman. I set out to become a graphic designer, but within weeks of starting design school, I realized that I found infinitely more satisfaction in creating a physical object with my hands. Fabric, with its drape and heft and texture, and clothing, so intimately interacting with the human body, were perfectly tactile, and perfect for hands-on work.”

Swatches from dye tests for the Titania Inglis collection

The designer continues: “For me, design begins with the materials. I drape most of my pieces by hand as a way to explore what the fabric wants to do, what directions it wants to go and what shapes it can make. In my designs, every seam needs to justify its existence, every cut in the fabric serves a specific purpose, and I find my way there by hand, by draping and pinning and snipping and marking each pattern piece, one at a time until I have a complete garment.”

Inglis says there is rich satisfaction in every step of the process: “When I’ve successfully draped a piece so it sits just so, when a pattern is beautiful in and of itself, and finally in seeing the finished piece and how it moves on the body. I often go through three or four muslins per piece, pinning and re-fitting and sometimes re-draping an entire garment until I’m satisfied that everything is right with it: the fit, the proportion, the details.”

Titania Inglis’ Studio

One showroom rep commented recently told Inglis her line was “so simple and yet so complex.” Reflecting upon this, Inglis observes, “I think that’s a reflection of the work I put into refining each piece. My work process is almost meditative; I come into my studio, prepare myself a steaming mug of green tea, cut off a length of fresh muslin, and I’m ready to go, completely cut off from the world outside. When I really get going, I can work for hours on a piece, late into the night, snipping through the fabric and feeding lengths of fabric into the eager sewing machine to create a muslin, then fitting and pinning and re-working it until it’s perfect.

I love clothing design for its communicative and aesthetic possibilities, but also very much for the craft of it. Many designers prefer to simply hand off sketches to a pattern maker, but for me, the process is the design. It feels a bit pompous to talk about the integrity of the piece and purity of form, but those are qualities I strive for, and I really can only get there with my own two hands.”

Image: supersonicphotos

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