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Imperfect Sustainability – The Sustainable Baddie Jazmine Rogers
Sustainable fashion is easy and accessible to all, says sustainability and style influencer Jazmine Rogers.
“I grew up loving fashion – I noticed that clothes were an amazing tool to express how I felt and communicate with the world. I wanted to explore it even more as a creative medium so I started studying fashion merchandising but soon switched majors into marketing.
While studying, I started to learn how harmful the fashion industry is to the people and planet. I really loved fashion but I knew that caring for things did not mean I had to give up my values. I wanted to prove that you don’t need to compromise your values in order to enjoy fashion.
I also knew that if I wanted to be part of the fashion industry I wanted to be part of changing it, too.
So I launched my blog called Curly Top. I started documenting my journey towards a more sustainable style and what it meant to me, finding brands and people who cared along the way.
Eventually Curly Top grew into Sustainable Baddie, a platform that provides fun and optimistic sustainable lifestyle advice through diverse voices. I wanted to create a place to talk about sustainable style. I am only one person with one perspective. There was not a place where people could enjoy life and have fun but also care about their values. In the future, we plan on doing more events, expanding to other media platforms, building a strong community, and making these conversations as accessible as possible.
Sustainability means intention to me – being more intentional about your clothes and creating a relationship with them.
You can compare this to fast food – if I don’t know or care where my food is coming from, I won’t be able to sit down and enjoy it. The same thing has happened with fast fashion: we don’t care about people who touched and made our clothes or where they were made. Intention means slowing down and truly creating relationships with our pieces.
In the same way, a sustainable garment is made intentionally. Not only in regards to how it is made but also taking into account what is going to happen to it later in its lifecycle.
We live in a capitalist society where it is hard to be 100% perfectly sustainable.
I think we can’t expect perfectionism in the sustainability movement.
Expecting someone to be perfect just prevents us from getting anywhere. A good example is Copenhagen Fashion Week – it is not a 100% sustainable event but they have a set of standards that every exhibiting designer needs to meet and the same time these designers and brands come out with really colorful funky designs, and the event is being recognized as being very up-and-coming fashion week.
Last September I was happy to see more sustainable fashion (like PH5, Dauphinette, and Collina Strada) at NYFW too but I would love to see a set standard here as well. I think it would just enhance the creativity. The fashion brands that care about sustainability need all the support they can get so that they’ll continue to have greater province and influence in the fashion industry.
How to have a more sustainable style? Many people think that you should start off by buying some sustainable clothes but I think that is the last thing you should do. The first thing that everyone should do is to love the clothes that you already have. Take care of them, re-wear them in different ways, mend them. This is totally accessible for all and does not cost anything.
The Buyerarchy of Needs by Sarah Lazarovic is a fun and helpful way to represent sustainable consumption. It presents consumers with different alternatives to buying new clothes, providing a guide for those who don’t know where to start. To be more sustainable, we should start at the base of the pyramid (use what we have) and work our way upwards (borrowing, swapping, thrifting, making and only buying as our last option).
Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of money and thrifting was the most accessible way for me to get new clothes. It also opened me up to being more creative with fashion because I never knew what I would find while thrifting, and would also have fun (slightly) DIYing things!
Practice makes you perfect and this applies to thrifting, too. With anything you are learning anew, you can’t expect to be an expert right away.
At the end of the day, sustainable fashion is easy and accessible to everyone!
This looks like re-wearing your pieces, mending them when needed, and up-cycling or doing a DIY on them so that you can wear them even more.
One misconception I often see is that people immediately think sustainable style is expensive. But sustainability is not only about buying – it is approaching our wardrobes in a more intentional manner. If anything it helps you to find your personal style as it encourages you to take a step back and figure out what you really like. You can enjoy the pieces you have, it makes fashion more fulfilling and makes you more creative.
Sustainability forces you to think outside of the box. It enhances your personal style and relationship with your clothes.”
striped short sleeve sweater