Clothing Confession

I need to come clean. I went against my conscience buying this lacy mesh dress from the Zara at the airport last month and it's kind of eating at me. I mean, I never go into Zara. I don't mean that to sound snobby and judgemental, not at all. I hardly shop at any retail stores these days because I pretty much wear second hand and vintage exclusively. When I'm not, I usually wear clothing that supports local and independent designers. H&M is the only fast fashion store I still pop into once every few months, just to look, and that's mainly because they have their Conscious Collection and because their clothes for kids are really cool.

Lately, I've been bringing clothes to donate to H&M's clothes recycling program. Sorting through clothing is an ongoing job in our house. I make piles: hand-me-down clothes for the kids of neighbours and friends, clothes to fix up or alter and make wearable again, clothes to sell or upcycle, and finally clothes that really need to be thrown out (old socks, torn shorts, etc). The pile to be thrown out can actually be taken to H&M to be recycled. Read about their sustainable initiatives here. The best thing is, you get a coupon for 10% off when you do. I have to say, when looking for new things for the kiddos (like school pants), those coupons come in handy. Otherwise, I've been encouraging them to wear second hand as well. They love to hit up thrift shops with me.

I've been making these choices for so long now that they've become part of the core of who I am. My motto. I wrote about it here. So needless to say, I had a good dose of shopper's remorse after I bought this dress.

After doing some thinking about it, I decided that I needed to give myself a break. If I liked the dress so much to "go against" my usual instincts and buy it, then theoretically it should be a dress I can put in the rotation and wear 30+ times in it's lifetime to make it a sustainable piece. 

Okay then, enough said. Challenge accepted. I'll work on restyling this piece once a month to post on my Instagram account with the hashtag #makeitsustainable.  Anyone else have a piece they'd like to challenge themselves to wear each month with me?  Let me know.