Repurpose, Revamp, Recycle, Slow fashion

Repurpose, Revamp, Recycle, Slow Fashion are all 'catch words' that are very 'on trend' at the moment. I do agree with the philosophy behind the push for the fashion  industry and customers to be more environmentally aware but I'm also concerned about green washing. My cynical self wonders if it isn't just a publicity hype, a way for clothing labels to jump on the environmentally friendly band wagon and enable consumers to fell better about over consumption. 

Ok enough of my cynicism, which really is a bit out of character for my. Last week I did revamp a dress, but I have to admit is wasn't for any noble intention. I did it because it is a dress that I really like to wear because it is so comfortable and I wanted to be able to continue to wear it. My white linen dress that I origonally dyed with cutch 3 year ago had faded and also I had managed to get quite a few strains on the front. It was unwearable so I decided to do something about it. I washed my dress in very hot water with washing powder that I won't usually use on botanical dyed clothes.  Sadly this didn't remove all the strains but it did give me a clean article to work with. I then re-dyed it in cutch. When the dress was dried and rinsed I did some slow stitching to cover the remaining faint stains. I used sashiko threads that I had previously dyed using cutch and brown onion skins and created a flowing swirling pattern using back stitch. It is very much a freehand pattern moving from one stain to the next. I was, am very happy with the results and wore  my revamped dress to a wedding on Saturday.

Yay for Repurposing, Revamping, Recycling and Slow Fashion now I have back one of my favourite dresses to wear and wear and wear.