Fashion is fighting back against the 2023 clean-girls, leaving behind streamlined product and lifestyle focused aesthetics and leaning into punkier DIY focused styles. More textures, more fabrics, more eyeliner, more everything. Maximalism is back, baby!
Camp and crafts are IN: ribbons everywhere, wool and lace, crafty embellishments, animal prints and the 2010s. This outburst against the restricted tastes of yesteryear, where you were a “_girl” or “_wife” and each expression of personal style was being sold through adverts on the for you page, is refreshing and freeing. An appreciation for chaos and personal flair is what makes this maximalist reprise so exciting! It also creates an opportunity to discuss some sustainable fashion practices and look at our current consumption habits as we face the climate crisis.
In 2024, I think many of us are starting to wake up to the damage being done by the fashion industry. Methods of direct action such as switching to Vinted and charity shopping are easy and certainly better alternatives, but they can only take us so far. The slogan after all is reduce, reuse, repair, recycle. But completely eliminating our fashion consumption is not only unrealistic but really, really boring. Who wants to be stuck wearing the exact same clothes for the rest of their lives? Ceasing, or at least reducing, buying clothes doesn’t need to restrict creativity or force us to stick with one look from now until death.
DIY fashion is the next route! Get personally involved in what you wear, so you can really appreciate what goes into making these garments. If you’re struggling to quit fast fashion this year, sit and try and knit yourself a sock. Just one sock. No way after suffering through the process that is learning to knit will you be able to justify to yourself buying cheap Primark and H&M crochet, and acknowledging the actual real human labour that goes into clothing production is crucial to re-evaluating our consumption habits! One of my favourite fashion creators Leena Norms sums it up like this- “when you have to spend 80 hours knitting yourself a jumper, you start to question if you really need it or not.”
An easy way to join in on the DIY movement is to learn some basic crafting skills- it took me about 40 minutes of YouTube to learn the knit stitch. Who knows where a whole hour could take me, perhaps an 8th of a scarf. Knitting your own winter accessories is super accessible, sustainable and crafty! Despite the time you need to invest, the startup cost is next to nothing. If you don’t know someone with spare needles lying around, every charity shop is guaranteed to have a hidden doom-box of all assortments of knitting needles, ready to be procured on request. Yarn is also easily sourced second hand, not just by literally buying balls of wool (although this can also easily be found in charity shops) but by frogging old knitwear you don’t wear, making your own yarns out of waste fabric, or, I’ve even seen people spin fibres from pet hair! Knitting is an incredible, accessible, creative, beneficial, sustainable, gratifying practice to adopt in 2024. This year I’m dedicating to changing my relationship with fashion to focus on realistic ways to be sustainable whilst still participating in fashion for fun.
DIY is increasingly the rage, and now is as good a time as ever to learn some handy stitches. Taking a creative approach to tackling climate change is one way to educate ourselves on the social issues around the climate crisis, whilst also participating in small-scale direct action. At the same time, we can hopefully use the creative outlet to soothe that crushing climate anxiety that can make talking about sustainable practices rather unsustainable; there’s only so much doomful climate news one person can burden…
Being able to hem your own jeans isn’t going to solve the climate crisis; but every sock darned is a sock not in landfill.