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Life(style)

#FashRev: Social Experiment

An interesting video. What would you have done? Might it change your clothes buying habits (and mine!)?

Categories
Life(style)

Second Hand Clothes Only (#FIPI)

A really interesting story about someone who gave up her £100 a month clothes shopping habit and wore only clothes from charity shops, setting herself some rules:

First, I set myself some rules. All the clothes I bought had to be thoughtful purchases (no more impulse buys) and from shops where the proceeds go to charity — vintage, or any other variety of second-hand, did not count. I made an exception for underwear. Weirdly enough, I’m not crazy about wearing  other people’s knickers.

The first challenge of my new shopping life was to find some “new” work clothes. I’m employed in a high-end hotel, so looking professional in the office is a necessity and attending a meeting looking like a rag-bag was not an option.

In a panic I started scouring the charity shops in my local area, Notting Hill. To my surprise I found most were stocked with a vast supply of smart cast-offs from locals a lot more affluent than me. I was quickly knee-deep in an array of great skirts, jackets and dresses — and even managed to acquire  a Gucci blazer for just £21.

Picking up more casual items for the weekend and nights out — including everything from suede and leather skirts to chiffon, floral print tops — was also not a problem. I soon found that other recent high-street styles, including a leather 1920s-style aviator jacket (just £15!), were easily found on the second-hand rails.

Read the full story.

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Life(style)

Gok Wan supports Body Confidence in the Classroom

Because of practices like the above, many women (and men!) are left striving for unachievable body shapes, and spend their lives miserable with their bodies. Beyond Chocolate drew my attention to the below, which is open for signing until 23rd December 2009 (Sign Here.):

Body Confidence

“A proposal for a new compulsory hour per year in the PSHE curriculum that will deal with the problems teenagers face when it comes to their appearance. The lesson will attempt to tackle confidence issues early so they don’t have a chance to develop, so young people in the UK will not be held back by their lack of self esteem and self belief. The lesson content will be created by a team of experts and psychologists and will include preliminarily:

  • talks from outside experts
  • making teens aware of the techniques magazines and fashion houses employ to make models/celebs look unrealistically perfect
  • challenges to help the teens not to obsess so much about appearance and not to use as much make-up/fake tan;
  • tips for body confidence collated by psychologists

This is an incredibly important campaign, as nothing is being done in our schools to counter-act the incredible swelling in the UK of media exposure and its consequent negative influence on teenage self esteem. Your backing would be greatly appreciated.”

Sign Here.

Categories
Academic

DespairWear and Subversion!

DespairWear

I love the subverted messages that come through from Despairwear (in fact any recognisable brand that can be subverted is of interest, has been so since I have seen people subverting the Second World War posters that I spent many years studying for my PhD!)

I thought this t-shirt was particularly apt, as I don’t think I’ve quite found my focus with this blog yet, so it’s likely to be highly relevant, ah, the New Year, all will change… right?!