Welcome back to the Mane Street Chronicles! Today we’re going to look at Slow Fashion in context of style, fashion, and trends. As a quick reminder, Slow Fashion is a way to approach clothing choices that is more sustainable for the environment, local economies, and communities. If you’re just tuning in, check out our first article “What is Slow Fashion?” and the follow up “Slow Fashion and Unicorn Clothing” to learn more. 

Slow Fashion is a way to build on your own independent personality and style. It has longevity and is filled with intentional choices. This is compared to fast fashion and the chasing of every latest trend, whether you even like it or not. Trends are shapes and cuts of clothing and accessories that become popular very quickly and fade into outdated obscurity just as quickly. Think cut out shoulders, wide belts, espadrilles, gaucho pants and skinny jeans. Fashion is an unbroken train of trends stacked one on the next backwards in time. It is also very culturally specific. Western fashion is very different from Southeast Asian fashion, for example, and though there is some overlap now with modern global connectivity, their histories and futures are still very different. 

So trends make up fashion. But what about style? What do we mean when we say style and fashion? Aren’t those the same thing? Not even close!

Style is personal and timeless. It is your way of presenting your personality and individuality through the art of dressing yourself.  Style is forever. It prioritizes the things that are important to you. It can be comfortable or well tailored, modesty or edgy, reflect a culture or era you find significant, or even just be about a particular color palette. Some style examples might be “classy” or “witchy” or “hippie” or “street.” You pick and choose the trends that work for you, your personal mission statement, and your body type; and you stick with them for as long as they make you happy. 

Fashion, on the other hand, is all about the present time. It looks at the most popular way of dressing in a certain era, and it is constantly on the move.  Fashion used to move more slowly.  The same trends stuck around for years with minor variations from one season to the next. Think, “Edwardian Era”, “Victorian Era”, “Mod” from the 60’s, or “Flapper” from the ‘20s. As the industrial age and mass production picked up speed, so did the world of fashion. Now, modern fashion is ravenously fast. Trends come and go in a matter of weeks.  If you’d like to explore the speed of fashion through history, tune in soon when we look at Slow Fashion Through the Ages in a future article. 

The speed of modern fast fashion is designed to be overwhelming.  The fashion industry wants the consumer to chase after every new trend, and feel a sense of inadequacy if they can’t keep up. Yuck!

That’s not to say as a slow fashion advocate you can’t ever enjoy a new trend or keep up with current fashions. The trick is to establish a versatile Capsule Collection as a base, and incorporate thoughtfully chosen current fashion pieces in from there. Capsule Collection is not a concept we created. It is a pretty popular term in the world of Slow Fashion used to mean a small, dense collection of your favorite pieces, chosen for their versatility and longevity. It is a few pieces that can be mixed-and-matched interchangeably to create completely different looks, maybe with the addition of a key accessory or two. 

At Unicorn Clothing it is easy to build a Capsule Collection. Many of our pieces are designed to be versatile. Our bodices and belts, for example, are all reversible so you have two fabric options in one garment.  They’re also so adjustable they can remain a useful part of your wardrobe even if your weight or body shape fluctuates frequently.  A couple of blouses, a bodice or two, a coat, and a handful of skirts and you can have an endless variety of outfits.  Check out our Youtube Channel where we have tons of useful videos, including one where we make a Capsule Collection and use the same seven pieces to create nine different outfits, with more possibilities not even explored!

Because all our pieces are separates that work best when layered, our pieces have the added benefit of being a useful part of your modern wardrobe as well, and “Not Just for Faire” as we like to say.  Stay tuned for a future article as we explore just a few of the ways you can incorporate our pieces into your everyday wear. Besides, if you love a thing and have a beautiful story behind why you bought it, there’s no reason it should be packed away and worn only once or twice a year! 

Thanks for reading. See you next time when we explore Slow Fashion in the Renaissance!

Bye-bye now. 

Erica

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