Photography by Amy M. Phillips

I think this will be our official holiday post as we only manage to post about once every 2 months! Things have been very busy at the shop and we are extremely grateful for that. Ben and I are very excited to be a part of a fashion show fundraiser this Saturday night at one of my favorite venues in town, Bragg’s Pie Factory. The fundraiser is being put together by The Museum of Science and Sustainability and the goal is to raise money for a future children’s sustainability museum in Phoenix. You can find more information on MOSS at themoss.org. My sister works for MOSS and is in charge of organizing the fashion show, it has an eco-chic-o theme and she figured vintage clothing was an obvious must! Not to mention Ben also went to grad school for sustainability so we were immediately interested.

As obvious as it is to the ultimate vintage lover, I find people do tend to forget that there are more reasons to wear vintage other than its inherent value and rarity. The majority of vintage we sell was made in the United States and many garments were manufactured by Women’s Garment Workers Unions. Stores like American Apparel would’ve seemed redundant because the majority of clothing was already being made domestically. Another sustainable aspect to vintage would be simply finding a new use for an old garment time and time again. It disturbs me to see how quickly we tear through most of contemporary clothing. It’s made cheaply, sold cheaply, and treated cheaply. Yes, second hand & thrift stores are a huge benefit to society, but we’re turning over clothing so quickly that even those stores can’t keep up with the unbelievable volume we’re discarding every day. Mary Kincaid from Zuburbia has done a great job instilling environmental awareness in vintage fashionistas, if you haven’t stumbled across her website already I suggest clicking the link!

I think the two biggest environmental drains to my business are the fuel used for shipping packages and the packaging materials required to transport these items. In a perfect scenario I guess I’d be selling used clothing to my local community rather than shipping it around the world, but for now I hope I’m making even a small contribution to sustainable business practices.

Phewww! I suppose Thanksgiving week is an appropriate time to shed light to issues like these, right? In any case I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! Ben and I will be working at Green Vegetarian on Thanksgiving day for their 4th annual “ThanksLiving” event. For those who live in the greater Phoenix area and want to spare a turkey this year please join us at Green in Tempe!

-Cory