Today’s booming clothing industry is leaving an equally fast-growing impact on our environment. The massive amounts of pesticides used for growing cotton, chemicals used in manufacturing polyester and petroleum used to transport the final products are beginning to have a serious negative influence on the world around us. The good news is this is an area where collegiettesTM – the main consumers of clothing and fashion – have an opportunity to make a big difference!
If you’re like me, when you think of dressing eco-friendly, you think of organic cotton yoga pants, earthy printed shirts and maybe some wooden beads with nature-inspired detailing. Though I love rocking the touch-of-hippie look, however, I understand that this isn’t exactly everybody’s style. So rather than suggesting that you rush out and purchase some new vegan leopard-print TOMS, I have another way for you to add a little green to your wardrobe … borrowing! The best way to turn clothes that have already been manufactured into something green is to recycle them, and you can do this by borrowing or buying secondhand.
On the website Rent the Runway, you can rent a formal dress for 4-8 days. They ship it to you, you wear it and when the event is over you mail it right back. This is a great way to get a designer dress on a college budget and perfect for dresses that you know you’ll only wear once anyway.
The next step in really taking it to the eco-friendly level is to keep things local. Eliminating shipping not only erases the carbon output from the shipping vehicles, but it also makes the products cheaper by cutting down on costs. Luckily for us, it’s super easy to buy or rent locally here at Wake Forest thanks to our very own Caroline Hales!
Caroline calls her website, Borrow Me Pretty, “a borrower’s boutique.” Her business lets you post pictures of your high-end clothing, and you can decide if you would only like your items to be rented or put up for sale. Your clothes stay in your closet the entire time! If someone chooses to rent your item, Caroline picks it up from you, delivers it to the buyer, and brings it back to you at the end of the rental time. The best part is its no work for you at all, and you get half of the price it rents for!
As anyone who has spent some time searching through Goodwill for the perfect date function attire can tell you, thrift stores often have a lot of junk with a few gems hidden in the racks. Besides removing the time spent shifting through stacks of mom-jeans from the 1970’s, Borrow Me Pretty’s exclusivity to Wake Forest also ensures that all the clothes are awesome! Lets be real, this campus looks like a set for a J.Crew catalog shoot.