During Christmas and Lunar New Year, there are lots of gatherings with family and friends. In order to meet them with a beautiful look, people are likely to pay more attention to the boutiques’ clothing display. At the same time, boutiques and online shops are likely to offer seasonal discounts to attract customers. People who cannot resist the temptation of beautiful clothing will then shop excessively and buy abundant clothes which are seldom used or even never used. Those clothes can only be stored in the wardrobe and wait for the next chance. Few years have passed, the clothes have already been forgotten and will be found in the wardrobe one day. Those clothes are probably no longer suitable due to out fashioned design, clothes turning yellow, unfit size, etc. The major reason is the clothes are no longer attracted to the owner. In order to minimize the guilt of waste, people would like to recycle the clothes instead of throwing them in the rubbish bins.
Actually, the amount of used clothes collection keeps increasing these years. 458,060 kg of used clothes had been collected in 2018. The peak collection seasons are December & January, and April & May as people used to organize the wardrobe before major festivals or the end of season. Some donors even donated more than 10 bags of used clothes which is a surprising amount. Most of them told us that those used clothes were stored in the wardrobe for many years and had worn for few times only. It’s a pity if they throw away because the clothes are still in a good condition. This shows that the amount of clothes stored in wardrobe is much more than the clothes they actually wear.
To prevent handling abundant stored used clothes every year, it’s time to think about our shopping behaviors.
Necessity?
Do we really need new clothes? How many clothes, trousers and dress do we really need in a week? Can we mix and match clothes to form great outfits?
Discount?
Can we really take advantage of seasonal discounts? If we buy a number of unsuitable clothes that we do not wear, does it mean we waste money on something unnecessary? Would it be better to spend the same amount of money to buy a higher quality and suitable one which will be worn for a long time?
Trend?
In the culture of fast fashion, new clothing collection has been released every week. Can we really chase the pace of fast fashion? Is there any big difference between each clothing collection?
Pressure reduction?
We work hard to earn money and we spend all on buying clothes to release pressure. Then we need to work harder to earn more money to fulfill our eagerness to shop and pressure has been gained again. This is a vicious cycle.
Let’s stop being a slave of fashion in a new year. Know ourselves better and choose the clothes which are suitable for you. Then we can use the skills of mix and match to form great outfits which can help dressing with confidence.
