Blog Zero: Ruined by Fashion
Hello, hello! We are Marika and Aleks and we have launched this blog series called "Ruined by Fashion." As you can see from the title, this isn't officially the first blog post in our series. Instead, it serves as an introduction to the concept behind our journey.
But first things first: Mesmerized by the fanciness and the magic that surrounds the world of fashion, Marika and I felt like 10-year-old children that were left alone in a toy store. It is still fun to listen to all the crazy stories and legends that gather around this business sector. We collected many of them in our combined 10-year-long experience in the fashion industry. From astonishing fashion shows to wild afterparties, and crazy business moves we heard everything.
However, there is also a dark side of fashion. If one takes a closer look behind the fancy curtain, the beautiful and mesmerizing image of the fashion industry begins to change. This is our starting point. Four years ago, we started to research the negative impacts that the fashion business has on the planet. Our research nearly became an obsession. One of us decided to focus even more on the green part of fashion and studied sustainable entrepreneurship hoping to get some answers on how to change the fashion industry to a place that values and positively contributes to the environment and humanity.
But let us be honest with you: After all the research we did on this topic we felt intimidated, helpless, and weak. We asked ourselves: What can two people do? Not too much, we thought. Especially, because it was challenging to see a single sign of improvement in this industry. For quite some time we fell into a state of mind that we call “fashion depression”. We just could not “unsee” the things that we learned and as a result, we could not enjoy the “magic” of the world of fashion as much as we did before. To get out of this, we started to look out for people who were witnessing the same issues in this industry and felt the same way. As a result of our conversations, they encouraged us to go out there and make our voices count.
As a first step, we started a fashion brand that focuses on re-using materials that are already on this planet. No need for raw extraction of materials. However, we decided to start this blog alongside our fashion brand to give more insights into this industry. The issue we have with most blogs about the fashion industry is that they are often written by people who do not even have a professional background in this area and did not conduct proper research. As a result, the stated information most often is wrong, misleading, or arbitrary. Therefore, we decided that writing blog posts ourselves is the way to go. But only, if we underpin most of what we have to say by scientific resources. Therefore, you will be able to trace back all the facts and numbers that we will give you.
As you might have guessed by now, this blog will be all about the social and environmental issues of the fashion industry. We will share our thoughts and ideas about what is going on right now in this sector and underpin our arguments with scientific resources to increase our credibility. However, we will also speak about some nice things about the fashion industry to convey some of the “magic” that we have spoken of before.
Coming to an end, three things are left to say. Firstly, the name of the blog “ruined by fashion” has a double meaning. The first reason is quite obvious: The world gets ruined by fashion. The second meaning is a slightly sarcastic one: We see ourselves as ruined by fashion after getting dragged into the marvelous part of this industry. Since day one, we enjoy the endless creative possibilities of expressing who you are through your unique style. Moreover, our fascination for fabrics, colours, patterns, and shapes in combination with the overall creative vibe and extravagant attitude will always stay with us.
Secondly, we will post a blog once every month. The posts are going to be quite lengthy but still have a high information density for you to deep dive into the topic. They will contain several industry-relevant sustainability topics from certifications to circular business models to recycling, we will cover everything that fits the general topic of sustainability in the fashion industry. Finally, it does not matter how much you know about the mentioned topic since we will cover everything from an easy starting point on. Unlike scientists that speak in their complex language, we want to keep it simple and straightforward.
With that being said we reached the end of this blog! Thank you for reading and see you next time!
All the best,
Aleks & Marika