Laura de Barra is a goddess when it comes to clothes. And it is not us saying that. She has written three bestselling books including the Garment Goddess, which explores not only how people can buy better but how they can keep what they have looking good for longer.
“I’m always shocked at the glamorisation of new things and the levels of consumption in Ireland,” she says as she points the finger at millennials in particular.
By contrast, she says, “Gen Z are really good for buying pre-owned and being aware that nothing disappears; even if you buy it and you get rid of it, it goes nowhere, even if it’s recycled, but it doesn’t disappear.”
Gen Xers are no doubt still shuffling along in their 1990s plaid shirts and tattered Nirvana Pixies T-shirts (although that might just be Pricewatch).
RM Block
De Barra points out that some clothes are easier to recycle than others, while blends – of polyester and cotton, for example – can be really difficult to recycle.
“Even if you can recycle it, it doesn’t mean it’s guilt free. And just because you can donate it in good condition, doesn’t make it guilt free. It is the consumption piece that we need to address,” she says.
And to consume less, we should be getting more wear out of what we have.
“What we should be doing is making our clothes last longer. That’s where we start,” she says. “We start by buying well, caring for what we buy and repairing it. That’s what we should be doing with all our clothes.”
But how do we stop buying when we are bombarded with ads at every turn and when the acquisition of stuff makes us feel better – if only fleetingly?
[ Revive, repair, reimagine: How to make the most of the clothes in your wardrobeOpens in new window ]
“I think turning off the things that are telling us we need to consume more would be a start,” she says.
De Barra says social media algorithms “are obsessed with us and the minute we say we are interested in something or watch a few seconds more we lose control – but you can control, in a way, what is coming through your phone in relation to consumption”.
She reckons telling people to stop shopping and stop consuming is largely pointless “because it is something that we are hard wired to do, but what you want to do is look after it, what you buy. You can get the same high out of getting a stain out of something or bringing it to be repaired as you can out of buying something new. It’s the same drug.”
She says the wrong detergent destroys clothes. “Laundry is the biggest killer of clothes. We are conditioned to pick detergent based on the price, but every time you wash with it you’re putting it all over the fibres and it could be just destroying the garment.”
She avoids optical brighteners in her detergents. “They leave a film on the fabric that plays with UV light and makes the fabric seem more blue to the eye.” But it comes at a heavy cost to clothes.
“Eco detergents have no optical brighteners so they would be my first choice. Some T-shirts can only last 20 washes, some can last 40, but not if you use bad detergent or if you don’t turn the clothes inside out when you wash them, or if you use fabric softener, or wash it at a really hot temperature or tumble dry it all the time.”
