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Sustainability is a word that can often (in my opinion) feel rather overwhelming and sometimes, sort of – impossible (nothing is ever actually impossible). How is it that you can be completely sustainable when there are just so many things to take into consideration: not only do we need to think about how a material is grown, sent, used and disposed of, we also need to consider who is creating it. If a product isn’t made of a sustainable material but in buying it you support a smaller, local business, does this make it more ethical/acceptable to purchase it? I’d say it does!

Fashion is an industry that will always be both wanted and needed. It is an industry so large that no matter who you are, where you come from, how much money you earn or spend, it affects you. As of late, I have taken a particular interest in trying to think about how I source my clothes and the effect that purchasing them has on the planet and the people around me.

A few weeks ago I became aware of Lee Vosburgh’s Instagram account and stumbled across her amazing idea that is the 10×10 challenge. The campaigns take place in both spring and summer and are really simple: you wear 10 items (or 6 depending on the challenge) and wear the items across the same amount of days in different combinations. I was slightly late to the 10x10spring event at the end of March and so decided to start with 6 before joining the 10×10 in the summer. Taking part during the scheduled time also means that by using the hashtag 10x10challange you can be apart of the ever growing community of people that are engaging with the idea of capsule wardrobes!

Prior to the Monday I decided to take the advise stated on the worksheet (provided on Lee’s website) and look at my schedule and the weather. After this I then choose the following outfits to wear each day:

– Monday: Floral jumpsuit, white t-shirt.

– Tuesday: Black polka dot dress, black t-shirt.

– Wednesday: Denim dungarees, white t-shirt.

– Thursday: Floral jumpsuit black t-shirt.

– Friday: Denim dungarees, black t-shirt.

– Saturday: Black polka dot dress, white t-shirt

Here are a couple of the outfits that I wore throughout the week.

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Now you’d think that by planning this all out that it would then make it easy and mean that there would be nothing else to consider, however, this being my first time at this meant that I hadn’t considered that by only choosing two t-shirts, I’d have to wash them every other day! This is definitely a lesson that I will not forget and an aspect that I will not fail to consider when planning the next challenge that I do. I also didn’t try on any of the outfits beforehand and so come the first day I realised that the jumpsuit was a lot more see-through than I’d originally thought (oops)! This ended up being great though and led to the outfit seen in the first image above where I’d decided to wear the t-shirt over the jumpsuit, tied in a knot. This ended up being my favourite look of the week and one I will definitely be wearing again!

Overall, I found that I spent a lot less time thinking about what to wear each morning which was great (I hate those ‘I have nothing to wear’ mornings with a passion) but that the washing machine was on twice as much as usual which is definitely not ideal. To avoid this in the future when I plan my 10×10 challenge, I will make sure to include at least 4 top, 2 full pieces that can be added too (jumpsuit or dress) and a pair of versatile bottoms. I didn’t include jackets or shoes and I don’t think I’ll include them next time as I know that this would be too difficult for me (I have a lot of jackets and shoes).

Thank you for spending your time reading this! Please feel to comment, like or share – I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Love,

Olivia