Top online tailors provide a glimmer of hope within the fashion industry. Sustainable fashion is becoming increasingly important as studies are starting to show just how devastating fast fashion can be. This is where tailors can bridge the gap, or rather, sew the seam. By repairing and altering clothing, customers and tailors alike move towards ethical fashion practices. Tailors both ward off consumerism as well as keep our landfills a little emptier, while still embracing the art of fashion.
Currently, only about 0.02% of people work as tailors in America. This leaves some holes in the map, which may make finding a local tailor difficult for some. Online tailoring services are becoming increasingly important for this very reason. In this modern era, alterations can be done online, at your convenience, and in your home. Finally, an option that is both easy for you, the customer, and movement toward sustainable fashion in the industry.
Here are the 3 most important reasons sustainability warriors love online tailors.
First sustainable reason to love online tailors: Save resources
The first rule of sustainability: use what you have! When we use what we have, we save more resources than you may think. For example, to create a year’s supply of the world’s leading clothing fiber, polyester, an estimated 70 million barrels of crude oil are needed. Nylon, acrylic, and spandex are also derived from the crude oil, petroleum, a quickly dwindling natural resource.
Even natural fibers like cotton and hemp use some resources in order to be grown, harvested, and turned into clothing. Cotton t-shirts require ~2,700 liters of water to be produced. Jeans nearly triple that number, using ~7,500 liters per pair. Taking time to consider land usage, water resources, and fossil fuels expended in the production of different fabrics is a thoughtful sustainable fashion practice to adopt. Online tailors can extend the life of our garments, and therefore our precious resources.
Second sustainable reason to love online tailors: Cut pollution
Online tailoring services can be seen as a fresh breath of air compared to the emissions of fast fashion. While online tailoring does utilize mail carrying services for shipment of clothing, these are shared emissions. Simply, a mailing route emits carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, at constant levels. Adding packages to a route does not necessarily emit any extra CO₂. In fact, the utilization of pre-existing mailing routes cuts CO₂ emissions by saving you multiple car rides to and from the tailor’s workshop!
As previously mentioned, clothing-making is resource intensive. These natural resources, from water to land to oil, are found in varying parts of the world. This means extra transportation, and CO₂, in every step of the process. Here are the different countries cotton travels to on it’s journey to becoming a t-shirt:
- United States: the US is the leading outsourcer of raw cotton
- China: here cotton is spun into yarn at cotton mills
- Bangladesh: this country is the world’s biggest cotton t-shirt exporter
- North America: back to stores, in front of the consumer
Online tailors cut this pollution down by having a more simple transportation process, only shipping the garment twice and often shorter distances. Additionally, online tailors defend against water and land pollutants by encouraging mending over spending. Dyeing garments results in 200,000 tons of chemicals polluting world waterways every year. The degradation of most fabrics, particularly synthetic ones, takes hundreds of years. This means the 85% of clothing that gets discarded yearly is sticking around for a while. In fact, in cases of polyester and nylon, long enough for your great-great-great-great grandchildren to see it...
Online tailors are a great way to pass down heirloom garments instead of full landfills!
Third sustainable reason to love online tailors: Provide service over products
Sustainable fashion is all about caring for both the environment and other living beings. In many ways, sustainable fashion can actually be synonymous with ethical fashion. Fast fashion both creates and meets its demands via two factors: poorly constructed garments and exploited employees. Fast fashion factory workers often face no breaks, long hours, unhealthy conditions, with salaries still below living wage. Consumerism is its fuel, as we buy and dispose of clothing as fast as companies can stock their new collections.
By using an online tailor, we shift our communities into a more balanced ratio of products to services. Putting an emphasis on a skillset over the mass production of a product empowers employees. It gives workers more self-efficacy and freedom. Contact an online tailor to shift the fashion industry towards sustainability for all.
Top online tailors are essential to combat the fast fashion industry. Try one out today and help the world to a more sustainable future!