How can you become conscious with your clothes?
As a child living in Argentina, Myriam’s parents owned a fashion shop where clothes were made to be fitted. Due to this, she grew up listening to the conversations around her and was right there when her parents were interacting with customers. Myriam learnt to be attentive to the problems that people faced when buying clothes as well as to conversations about the quality of the garments and how to look after them.
With this experience in her parents’ shop, Myriam wondered: “Why do people buy what they buy?”. People had different reactions to themselves while trying on clothes and she wanted to know what the psychology behind this was. Alongside her corporate career, Myriam decided to start helping her clients love their bodies, their clothes and be more conscious with their shopping.
So how can I adopt a more conscious approach to my clothes? Myriam gives you some of her top tips :
First tip : Don’t buy
“Are you sure you need to buy? Perhaps you have it.” According to Myriam, people generally buy to look better, they are not buying the clothes, they are buying the vision that comes with it.
As a first step, Myriam recommends doing a wardrobe detox, delving into your clothes and trying every single piece of clothing on, to see what works for you and what doesn’t. Delve into your internal motivations for buying and try to understand what suits your body. While you do this, take pictures of yourself in the clothing and upload everything to Save Your Wardrobe.
At the end of the process your reality and who you are should match the vision you have of yourself with your clothes. And bonus, you’ll have a database of everything you have, making shopping consciously even easier!
Second tip : Choose the clothes that you look good in and keep them
“What do you already have? How does what you already have serve you? How does it support your feeling of who you are?”
To continue the process towards conscious fashion, create piles of clothes with what you’ve tried on. The first pile is clothes that look great on you, keep those for as long as you can. The second pile is clothes that look great but that need to be amended, by repairing, recycling or upcycling. Things you can easily do with Save Your Wardrobe.
The third pile are clothes that you don’t wear or that don’t suit you, resell them, donate or offer them as a gift. Finally, the last pile is the emotion pile, this one revolves around pieces that hold a memory or that look amazing. Keep those items and take them out on occasion!
Third tip : Buy well (if you’re going to buy)
At this point, you should start to see if you have any gaps and create a shopping list. During the process, Myriam creates a picture of who her clients are emotionally, physically, taking into consideration their lifestyle and budget. She combines her personal knowledge and her clients’ interests in order to make them look as good as possible.
Though her open agenda is to make her clients look great, she mentions she also has a secret agenda, making her clients look for sustainable brands and educating them about sustainability, because “Sustainability is all about awareness!”
To learn more about Myriam and her approach to sustainable fashion coaching check out her website where she has started taking bookings for this summer. You can get in touch via email or phone. During the program, Myriam will coach you into loving your body, your clothes and your vision of yourself all with her help and a useful toolkit which includes Save Your Wardrobe.
“I wish SYW existed twenty years ago” she says, “for me SYW is a game changer!”
To learn more about conscious approaches to your clothing, have a look at 5 responsible brands you can buy from if you need to buy some clothes.