As part of HuffPost’s «Reclaim» project, HuffPost Style will focus the month of September on simple ways to educate yourself on becoming a better consumer to address the problem of fashion waste.
This fall, The Huffington Post is taking a hard look at the negative environmental effects that result from our excessive shopping habits.
We’ve reported on the sheer volume of waste we create ― America produced 15.1 million tons of textile waste in 2013, and 85 percent of it ended up in landfills. We’ve cringed over the reality of what happens to our clothing once it’s been donated. We’ve also educated ourselves on ways to shop smarter and take better care of the clothes we already own Handbags & Wallets.
But everything we’ve learned is for naught if we can’t practice what we preach. Can we, ourselves, stop buying excessive amounts of clothes and make do with a smaller wardrobe? We’re putting ourselves to the test with one seemingly simple experiment Work Wear & Uniforms.
Two editors at HuffPost, a man and a woman, were each asked to wear one outfit of their choosing to the office every day for an entire week. The goal was to discover, once and for all, if one can truly get away with repeating the same outfits over and over again. Would it be socially acceptable among their colleagues? Would our male editor have a different experience than our female editor? And would anyone dare make rude comments to them?
And so Maternity, swallowing their pride and stepping into the same outfit every day for an entire week, they set off to find out.
As a reporter who spends his time between the office and the streets, I’ve built a career toeing the ever-thinning line between excellence and hangover Clothing Accessories. It gives me a reason to be a lazy shopper ― my closet is half-full of button-down shirts and pants that are viable on both a midnight drunk and a morning meeting with my boss (sorry Karen).
So when I got the call to do a piece of investigative journalism, one that would finally test my skill of looking fresh despite myself, I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d be able to put off laundry for yet another week ― my entire wardrobe can fit in one load, anyway ― and my smell wouldn’t get me fired because it was a directive.
For any of you who have 250 shirts on standby to avoid wearing the same thing twice in a fiscal quarter, take it from me: Nobody really notices Slips. Sure, I was wearing a variation of the blue shirt and gray slacks that I’ve worn exclusively for most of my five-year tenure at The Huffington Post, but the point remains. I didn’t stink, I spoke with our CEO while wearing «dirty» clothes and didn’t get fired, and I even went dancing one night and didn’t smell like booze the next morning.