Sustainable Fashion: The Benefits of Repurposing Clothes

Explore the environmental and personal benefits of repurposing your old clothes.

$15 is what it costs overall for this repurpose

I'm not going to lie, in 2020, I did fall victim to the SHIEN craze as a bored 15-year-old. Little did I know that at the age of 19, I would be at Uni researching and writing essays on the dark truths of fast fashion brands and 'sweatshops', as well as the amount of clothing waste that ends up in our landfills annually. Psst... It's appalling the amount, both in weight and monetary value.

Have a look at this articles on the impact Fashion has on our environment and on the people making many of the clothes we wear:

The Impact Fashion on People and Planet - Kaite Curtis-Smith

The Environmental Impact of Fast Fashion: Explained - Rashmila Mati

Fast Fashion - Clean Up Australia

So from this learning, I have been trying to be more aware of my purchase choices and waste contribution. I'm not going to lie, I'm still not perfect.

But 2025, I chose to find my hobbies. That is where, around April/May, I wanted to try sewing. I am no seamstress, but I wanted to give it a go as I dipped my toe in the world of patchworking in 2017. So I found this plain boring tank in my wardrobe that I never wore, and stared at it till I had an idea.

Earlier in the week in June, when I had the idea. I had bought some buttons from the Op-Shop for $5. And for some reason, my brain went to adding some cute random colourful buttons to my plain Target Kids $8 tank. and BAM!! After a couple of hours and many YouTube videos in the background, I had made a 'new' funky, unique tank top. This led to me making a couple more and trying to find more things to add cool buttons to.