Aja Barber

This is something I do on my platform.

I would challenge you to not buy a single dress new this year.

That forces people to be a little bit creative, but it doesn't entirely limit them.

I've challenged my readership to buy 50% of their clothing secondhand, which is a challenge I did for myself.

Get a grip on your social media.

And that looks like unsubscribing from email lists.

And it also looks like looking at who you're following on social media, because when you get onto Instagram and other platforms, those ads that are being served to you are being tailored based off of who you follow and who you interact with.

We have all of these.

interesting tools on the internet that really encourage us to buy things we don't need.

You look at a dress once and that dress follows you around the internet haunting you until you buy it so it'll leave you alone, you know?

I always get people asking me, you know, oh, fast fashion's more affordable.

It's not affordable for the planet.

And it's probably not that affordable for you either.

This system of constantly buying isn't actually that affordable.

We've come to be a society that has utterly devalued clothing because of its abundance and because also,

The supply chain is so murky that it's very easy for those of us who are on the consumer end to completely ignore what this system is doing to our fellow humans and our planet.

I was living in my parents' basement.

I was, you know, in between jobs.

And for some reason, I had saved all of my receipts for one particular store, which was H&M.

And I remember sitting down one day and going, let me add up all these receipts for just this year.