Coming from Panama, I knew nothing about thrifting. We don’t even have this kind of stores there. The only knowledge I had at the time was due to movies showing up girls trying on “costume-like” outfits and making fun of the clothing.

I moved to Toronto and started attending college for my Post-grad in Fashion Management, our courses covered sustainability-related topics which opened my eyes to the repercussions of fast fashion on the environment.

I got traumatized.

I had been a fast fashion consumer my entire life and didn’t know a thing about clothing pollution! W T F

Even though I got to see what fast fashion was doing to the environment (mostly FF consumers, aka me) there was a huge problem I needed to solve before taking Forever 21 out of my life for good: THIS BLOG.

Fast fashion is like a drug for fashion bloggers. You want to show your readers new trends, how to put outfits together and where to buy those pieces. For most of us, fast fashion is the easiest way to afford the blogger business model, especially if you are a newbie, not affiliated to any brand.

I would spend $200 and buy trendy outfits for 2 seasons in the blink of an eye. That was the greatness of Fast Fashion for me and this blog. Also, most of you have the same stores available in your countries and it was the easiest way to let you know where you could get those pieces.

If you don’t know me personally (although if you are a TS reader, you do) if one thing drives me and this blog is my emotions. I do what I feel is right and promote what makes me proud to promote.

I started feeling incredibly guilty!

So I stopped blogging for a few months until I could restructure my blogging model with a less environmental harming strategy.

When doing my research, thrift stores and vintage stores came first on the Google search. By that time I was living on Queen West which is known as a “hippie” neighbourhood filled with vegan restaurants AND vintage shops.

At first glance, some of these vintages shops may seem filled with over-priced, old, used, stained clothes with a funny cigarette aroma.

I started buying little by little and after some months, I got obsessed! I have created a way to buy from these stores that works for me (that’ll be another post) but if you really want to get out of the cycle, from a person on the other side, it is absolutely worth it.

Buying vintage and thrifted pieces allows you to achieve a unique style, finding pieces no one else has. Fashion is a cycle and trends always come back so you get to find pieces that are trendy at the moment for prices LOWER, yes, lower than fast fashion stores. Most of them, of great quality!

I stopped buying fast fashion on September last year and haven’t missed it ever since.

And well, in case you haven’t noticed, you can still get my pieces. Check out some of my findings on my store:

www.tropicalstatement.com/shop/

See you on the other side!

Thanks for reading me,

Andrea

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