Thank you all for your wonderful ideas on how to approach this challenge. All of your comments point to the question, What do I really want to get out of this? And the simple answer is: I want to become a more thoughtful consumer. Though I admire those who have completely sworn off clothing consumption, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t want to stop buying altogether. I like possibility, the playfulness that a wardrobe entails. I enjoy seeing how things come together, both in constructing garments and constructing outfits. Most of the time I’ll play a part in this construction, and sometimes I’ll buy it. Problem is, I live in a culture that treats any level of purchasing restraint as (to be flip about it) “one giant step for man.”
Which is why I think I’ve a lot to learn from purchasing behavior of the 1940s. From the 1950s forward, the landscape of consumption changed, creating a culture that frequently feels inextricable from my own idea of “normal.” I often resist getting mired in the political, what a joykill when it’s so much fun to dream of pretty little dresses!
But when you sew, you can’t ignore how cheap ready-to-wear is. Really, even just the price of the pattern, fabric and notions will often and easily outrank its ready-to-wear counterpart, not even taking into account all the labor. (And sewing is hard!) It was sewing that introduced me to quality, skilled labor, a burgeoning sense of the true value of things.
Before I lose you entirely, here are some examples:
First, a dip into the 1940s. Here are women in the UK getting their stockings painted on their legs during the war years. It doesn’t use any coupons, and by the end of the war, there were hardly any to use at all. The price of a man's coat, as one person put it, could use a whole year's coupons.
- We consume twice as much as we did 50 years ago
- Americans devote 3-4 times the time to shopping then our European counterparts
- Shopping is a primary leisure activity
- Consumers in the US spend more on clothes than any other country
- Since the 1950s, material goods have been increasingly designed for the dump or to fall out of favor within a matter of months
So how do I reconcile this contemporary behavior with the 1940s? I can see that a skirt, say, in the 1940s, may have cost $70 in today’s dollars, but is there a “real” price that takes into account this cultural shift?
As I said in the comments, when I first saw the price thresholds for second-hand during the ration, I thought I’d use them. But the more I thought of my buying behavior and options where I live, I though I’d better have a system in place. Whenever I face a new transition (the seasons, for example), I am full of the desire for new-to-me things.
So I’ll continue to mull it over, but my as-of-now thresholds will be 1/3 of the 1940s threshold. I’ve just ordered the book, per hearthandmade’s suggestion, Sucking Eggs: What Your Wartime Granny Could Teach You About Diet, Thrift and Going Green by Patricia Nicol. And for anyone interested with consumption, check out the convos Zoe’s beginning on So, Zo….
Finally, if you haven’t seen the documentary, The Story of Stuff, I’d highly recommend it. It's the source of many of my points above and is a bit sobering. It's all available online, and here’s the “Consumption” chapter.
I could go on and on (remember my obsessive behavior?), but I’d like to show you some finished objects, so I’m off to sew. :)
But I’d love your thoughts. Do you think we consume more than generations before us? And has this been a boon or a sacrifice or both? And should we care?
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We definitely consume more! Sometimes, it's the act of consuming that we enjoy and seek, rather than the item itself. You know what I mean? We get our thrills from buying a new pair of shoes, or we reward ourselves with a day of shopping. And if we don't, we feel like we're making a huge sacrifice. It's like the media tells us, 'you deserve this! go get it!' I swear, I was in the mall yesterday, and all I felt was that my outfit was wrong, my clothes were old, and that I needed to buy something new to feel better. Isn't that terrible? But it's ingrained in us somehow. I know how to sew, I make a ton of exciting, unique things, of way better quality than I could afford at retail... and yet an hour in the mall makes me feel like I *need* to buy something? Weird. For me, the hard part isn't getting by with buying less, but reminding myself and the little needy voice in my head that I have enough to wear, I can make it better if I sewed it myself, and I am stronger than the weird feeling that takes over when surrounded by shiny pretty mannequin outfits.
ReplyDeleteThat was a long one, sorry for rambling! Really, you're absolutely right, we need to be more mindful, and think about what we want and need versus enjoying the 'rush' of consuming.
You make a lot of good points here, and I like your goal of being a "thoughtful consumer". As someone with a tendency to collect, it is something for me to think about too. As Tasia says, we often shop emotionally. I don't think this is always a bad thing, but we should understand what we're doing. I can be overly sentimental about stuff I already own, but I love to buy new stuff too ... and new "old stuff", which comes with sentimentality already built in. :) I'm not ready to make rules for myself, but it is something I want to be more aware of!
ReplyDelete<<•99 percent of what we buy is trashed within 6 months of purchase
ReplyDelete>> Is that a typo, or is food included in that number, because that doesn't make any sense to me.
Tasia -- you make wonderful things! And I'd move into your closet if I could :)
ReplyDeleteAnd Andrea, I hear you on being sentimental -- I particularly cherish things people have given me. And you're right, it's more about being self-aware. Nothing is bad -- just know thyself!
And Tina -- I got that statistic from the "Story of Stuff" clip and, you're right, my snippet doesn't make sense out of context. I took it out of the post, but here's an elaboration I found on their site if you're interested.
The original blip: "Guess what percentage of total material flow through this system is still in product or use 6 months after their sale in North America. Fifty percent? Twenty? NO. One percent. One! In other words, 99 percent of the stuff we harvest, mine, process, transport—99 percent of the stuff we run through this system is trashed within 6 months." She explains, "This statement is not saying that 99 percent of the stuff we buy is trashed. Think beyond your household to the upstream waste created in the extraction, production, packaging, transportation and selling of all the stuff you bought. For example, the No Dirty Gold campaign explains that there is nearly 2 million tons of mining
waste for every one ton of gold produced; that translates into about 20 tons of mine waste created to make one gold wedding ring."
I didn't understand that the first time I heard it, but it sounds like she's really asking us to think about the total waste that goes into making a singular product we buy and how quickly that happens. Whew!
We consume more and expect more. Society expects women to have a huge variety of clothes, we always notice when someone wears the same garment every second day. Have you looked into how many clothes a woman would have had. Was it ten skirts and blouses and five jackets or just two working outfits and one or if the had extra, two good ones for church, etc. Cloth was the best they could get and washing, particularily in Europe was not as regular or rough as we do today due to different climate (less body odours) and the need for hand washing and wringing as opposed to heavy duty cycles and complete spins which lessen the life of the fibres. Cherrie
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to read that a few times because i'm having a ahrd time wraping my hand around that, for some reason.
ReplyDeleteI agree with tasia about the emotional way we view consuming and buying, ie: I deserve a reward so I will go shopping. What did the previous generations do instead? I guess in part they were too busy to think like this, women's domestic duties were so much more time consuming and labour intensive and I donn't think there was such an all-pervading sense of personal entitlement. (This is just straight off the top of my head). Having small kids I can see how the idea of buying stuff as a treat and wrapping up consuming goods with demonstrating love starts almost at birth and I think this has an effect on us as adults and how we shop.
ReplyDeleteHm, interesting.
ReplyDeleteWell, let's consider that women of the Victorian upper classes changed clothing five times a day, but then also consider that they were a much smaller slice of the English-speaking-population pie than we are, and employed modistes and tailors to take the guesswork out of the acquisition. In general, I feel like the story of women's consumption in the English-speaking world in the 20th century has a lot to do with Victorian upper-class values filtering down into a burgeoning middle class. (For instance, the idea that three meals with multiple dishes that change from day to day will be prepared in the home every single day was popularized by people who employed cooks, so far as I can tell.)
I am kind of suspicious of blaming ourselves individually for these trends, especially in clothing: there is so much pressure on women to present themselves in a certain way, and that way never settles into the button-down-shirt-and-pants uniform that men have been wearing since 1910 with various sorts of wool jackets on top. The rules of looking well are changed on us constantly, and our culture is very good at leveraging the message that if you're not keeping up with it there's something wrong with you. The feeling of having acquired a new tool to reach those constantly-shifting goal posts might well be one of relief as well as actual pleasure.
I spent years and years as a frumpy (see, there's one of those goalposts moving!) conscientious objector to the whole thing because I didn't know where to even begin to navigate it, so for me, learning to sew has also been a way of breaking down the entire mess of women's fashion into its components and acknowledging that in fact there are only so many ways of fitting fabric around the female form, and we have in fact been referencing the same ones for decades. I find it funny that I came to all these anti-consumerist crafters to learn how to sew, and long before I've gotten any good at sewing I've become capable of shopping satisfactorily for the first time in my life, because now I know that if something doesn't fit, it's the fabric's fault, and I can go find something that does.
Wow, that was long and navel-gazing, sorry, I'm taking the opportunity to try to feel all this out a little!
Many excellent points here, both in the post and in the comments!
ReplyDeleteMInnado asks a question: What did women do to treat themselves? (And what can we do, apart from shopping?)
I think we need to shift from spending money on things to spend money on services. If you have been good and you deserve a treat- go to the hair dresser, to a concert, or have a massage. We really need to shift focus, I think.