Reuse.

The problems that weren’t important in the past are now called environmental problems and lately everywhere is filled with slogans like ”Reduce Reuse, Recycle.” Social media, streets, and schools are full of people who speak about the environment. For instance, how important is reusing in today’s world?

In our daily lives, we actually use a lot that we can reuse it again. After reducing our waste, we should focus on reusing.

There are so many reusable products but today I am going to write specifically about second-hand clothes.

When I went to Boston last summer, I realized that the second-hand clothing culture was much different than Turkey. Almost every square had a vintage or second-hand clothing store in Boston. After my unsuccessful experience of finding any cheap second-hand stores in Istanbul, I started to look around stores like Goodwill, Thrive and Buffalo Exchange in Boston. These stores had books and many types of clothing for every type of people.

From the cashiers of Buffalo Exchange, I learned that they had a wide range of people visiting and buying clothes from the store.

After I visited second-hand clothing stores in Boston, I tried to understand the reason why shops in Istanbul was way more overpriced. To be honest, with my experience from Istanbul shops, I wasn’t expecting to see second-hand stores were interesting places to buy clothes.

The main problem of Turkey in the second-hand culture is that everything is overpriced. Unlike the stores in Boston, almost every shop sells second-hand clothing for thousands of Turkish Lira. So people prefer to buy brand new clothes for the same amount of money. Of course, I can’t judge people because of their choices but the prices of second-hand clothing have a huge impact on the clothing industry and the increasing amount of ”fast fashion.”

The other important factor of the overpriced second-hand clothing in Turkey is that Turkish society is not used to buy second-hand clothes. We are grown with the idea of always buying the latest and newest clothes. This causes people to take down the second-hand clothing culture. So vintage clothing shop owners increase the prices to stay in business.

As 9 Magazine we decided to challenge this problem and shot a fashion editorial full of second-hand clothes, RE-ditorial.

 

Jacket: Belair

We bought second-hand clothes from shops in Istanbul and used some of our relatives’ clothes.

Dress: Rag & Roll Vintage

Clothes are one of the most important products we can reuse again. When you see the terrifying statistics of clothing waste in the world right now, you start to appreciate second-hand stores more.

We might not be fully aware of the fact that the textile and clothing industry is the second largest polluting industry in the world. Also, we can’t ignore the fact that the industry makes 21 billion tons of garbage per year.

Yes, at first sight, all these statistics looked surreal and unrealistic to me too. Unfortunately, without awareness, we contribute to this waste every day.

Obviously, we can’t fix this mess overnight. Still, we can try our best by raising awareness and protect the environment.

With all the facts, it is explicit that second-hand stores save the environment from billions of garbage every year. Don’t be prejudiced against second-hand stores because of ”dusty and out of style clothes”, you never know what you are missing out instead of shopping malls.

 

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