In the days before my fashion habits took on a greenish hue, I rarely bought clothes from catalogues or online.
Why?
Because everyone knows that while you may well call a spade a spade you can’t always call a 12 a 12 or a 14 a 14. And if the coveted garment didn’t fit, I’d have to package it all up again, find a time to get down to the post office and start over. Sometimes I’d even end up out of pocket for returns.
It’s not just the sizing either; I want to touch the fabrics I’m about to buy, feel them against my skin – what does 80% cotton / 20% lycra actually feel like?
But my green conversion about 5 years or so ago plucked me from the high street – charity shops a notable exception and where I spend most of my clothes allowance – and planted me in front of my computer.
The eco fabrics and fair trade fashions I was hearing so much about were nowhere to be found in downtown sunny Worthing. Only online had the answers.
Sadly, while payment was quick and easy with a careless click here and there, I soon discovered the concerns of my catalogue-shy days had not disappeared.
Eagerly opening packages with a 5-year-old’s greedy glee, my face would fall. Oh. I didn’t think it would look like that, feel like that. I thought it was going to be longer, shorter, tighter, looser.
Just this month, the bamboo maternity jeans which I had imagined soft and silky smooth caressing my (average-sized?) thighs and ballooning belly and which I had ordered a size larger than usual as recommended by the website (although why a company would want to label their clothes a size smaller than the average in these body conscious days is beyond me) turned out to be smaller and tighter than my smallest, tightest pair of pre-pregnancy size 12s.
I could barely squeeze into them and heaven help the poor expanding bump – that elasticated waistband was not forgiving.
My other purchase – the slinky black bamboo / spandex mix trousers – did fit, but did trail a good 30cm of slinky bamboo / spandex fabric on the floor.
So now I have to sort out returning the jeans and start turning up the trousers (trying not to damage that lovely stretchy material with my inept sewing skills).
Eco stationery angst
Eco stationery is another regular gripe of mine (as my husband will attest). I look online but I want to know what it feels like, how tough it is, how big it is really (for my dimensionally-challenged brain).
And you know what? I need it now. To finish this report, file this document – can’t I just pop down to the shops?
Please green my high street
What I’m building up to here (yes, this rant does have a point) is that we need more of a green presence on the high street – and where there is one, we need to know about it.
Something along the lines of the Delocator website for independent cafes but for shops – whether small independents or household names such as WHSmiths – to know before you head down there what recycled stationery your local branch holds, for example.
Eco clothing retailers who only have an online presence could build relationships with shops on the high street (a chain of charity shops perhaps). Your order would go to the shop, you could try it on there (having ordered 2 or 3 sizes to be sure) and if it doesn’t fit, the shop can sell it on or return it – with suitable commissions agreed between the online retailer and host shop.
A bonus of this would be to push the green shopper back on to our beleaguered high street which – as the recent Mary Portas ‘Save our Shops’ programme showed – is desperately in need of our support.
Our high street needs you!
If you know of any schemes or websites that are doing this already or are in the start-up stages, do let us know, we’d love to hear about them.
Let’s get green on the high street!
Katie
