Tansy is a fabulous, award-winning journalist and author investigating the global fashion industry. If you do anything today, subscribe to her newsletter to get the next Patched column in your inbox, plus anti-capitalist takes on fashion + politics, book updates, action invites and more!

Dear Patched & Solidari-tea,

I’ve spent most of my life - I’m in my 60s - buying clothes from charity shops. Good on me ! But mostly … to be honest, due to the fact I couldn’t afford new clothes. First time in my life I can afford something new. Unworn - crisp - clean. Im also aware we live in different times now. The consumerist hell hole.

I’ve never been bothered before about buying second hand clothes but find myself drawn to new unworn clothes like a line of some substance that not good for you ! Help please.

Love from Paris

Hey Paris, I’ve been there! Growing up in charity shops, I always craved a bit of newness. But when I finally cheated on Cancer Research with fast fashion, I realised the grass is deffo not greener.

My uni student loan gave me my first taste of disposable income. Online shopping + a sizeable overdraft = a dangerously seductive mix. Cue the steady stream of pink Missguided parcels arriving at my door.

I fell for fashion’s fake democracy promise. And I fell hard! I felt so free… until I clocked that my purchases came at the cost of someone else’s freedom. Cheap, trendy clothes just weren’t worth the exploitation. So I did an 180, becoming a 365 secondhand girl again.

Around the same time, charity shopping started to rebrand. “Secondhand” was now “pre-loved”. Kilo sales were popping up everywhere. And eBay later became the official Love Island sponsor. But as the stigma declined, so did the quality. Charity shop fatigue is SO real when

1. The rails are flooded with cheap polyester. Thanks, fast fashion!!

2. They’ve basically become museums to microtrends - gone and forgotten.

3. They’re treated as dumping grounds for stained, holey donations.

4. They’re turning into outlets as brands offload their overstock for a cheeky lil tax break.

So I get it! I don’t always have the energy for charity shops either. Here are some ways I’m putting the joy back into secondhand shopping and resisting buying new.

Remembering secondhand ≠ second best: There’s so many reasons to choose pre-loved! It’s an affordable way to refresh your style. It’s perfect for finding unique, statement fits. It’s a great entry point to sustainable fashion. It keeps clothes in circulation for longer. And it’s substituting new purchases. When you weigh up the pros with the cons of Big Fashion, H&M just doesn’t hit the same.

Getting in the mood: I’m not a casual browser. I need to be in the right headspace to flick through 10 overflowing rails. So when a charity shop trip is on the cards, I make sure 1) I’m rested 2) I’ve eaten and 3) I’m wearing something I can actually bother to take off in the changing rooms.

Knowing what to look for: Gotta love a wishlist! Whenever I’m on the hunt for something specific, I swear I manifest it into being. My bestie calls it my super power. I call it luck. It helps when you’re after a particular item or colour palette. A quick scan of the shop floors tells me where I need to rummage and what areas I can skip. The more you visually filter = the more chances you have to strike gold.

Opting for curated: Shelter and the British Heart Foundation’s store layout is my definition of dreamy. It gives you that boutique shopping experience, minus the hefty price tag. Traid also has trendy curated rails - except on sale days. Then it’s absolute chaos! Era-specific vintage shops seem to be popping up everywhere. You can find everything from 1920s chic to y2k mini skirts. I’d be lying if I said they were cheap but they’ve put in the work to make their shops super browsable.

Deciding where my money goes: Funding a billionaires’ next superyacht or donating to a charity doing life-saving work? It’s a no brainer. Oxfam is my go-to for buying gifts. They sell so many gorge handmade items and the tag tells you which artisans made it. Sidenote: I’m here for them exposing billionaires’ outsized role in the climate crisis.

Switching to online resale: With apps like Vinted and Depop, you can always find what you’re looking for secondhand. Filters are your best friend - you can narrow your search down to the size, brand or fabric. Still craving something unworn? These apps have hundreds of thousands of brand new with tags (BNWT) listings to choose from. You get the same dopamine hit, plus the satisfaction of hunting it down yourself. It really is the best of both worlds! For investment or designer pieces, Vestiare Collective has you sorted, brand verification and all.

Inviting my besties: Going on a charity shop crawl with my bffs gives me all the nostalgia of teen shopping trips. I’ve met some of my closest friends at the thriftalong events I’ve hosted. The best part is they usually spot something “very me” that I’ve missed. Don’t worry if you have the same style - it’s a great excuse to go halves and share joint custody on that cute jacket.

Saying “thanks, it’s thrifted!”: Copping a tee for 50p at a carboot? Cosmo is calling it “the ultimate flex”. Then getting compliments on it? Yeah, that feeling’s unmatched!

Consumerism really does a number on us all. But shopping secondhand gifts us an exit route. It’s a chance to slow down, shop more intentionally and free up energy for deeper change. So don’t give up on shopping secondhand just yet! With these tips, I hope you can fall in love with it all over again.

You’ve got this!

Solidari-Tea <3

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Mag #2 is officially happening and we want you to be a part of it!

If you’re new around here, Not Buying It dishes the dirt on the fashion sins (exploitation - not skinny jeans) traditional media loves to ignore. We remix the teen mags of the early 2000s in style and attitude. Get to know us here.

The theme: fashion x politics

Our wardrobes contain more than cute fits - they tell stories of struggle and resistance. Politics = power. Power = money. And fashion is defined by an imbalance of both. Billionaire founders get richer while garment workers starve and the planet burns.

Fashion is SO political. Migrant workers targeted by ICE raids. Farmers and machinists collapsing in deadlier heatwaves. Waste pickers forced to clean up Big Fashion’s mess. Different struggles, same root cause: racial capitalism.

To pretend “it’s not that deep” is to ignore all of the way fashion shapes (and is shaped by) culture, industry, geopolitical relations, elections, our sense of self, our mental health, neocolonialism, conflict and more. Mag #2 will be delving into these intersections because it’s all connected!

How to get your work featured

1) Pitch your idea: We’re looking for original writing, illustrations, collages, teen mag-style games and quizzes, photography, fashion designs and interviews that respond to the theme. To pitch, send us a short bio and 1-2 paras outlining your idea to mag@not-buying-it.co.uk.

BTW you don’t need to have tons of experience - just a good idea that suits the mags vibe! Before pitching, we recommend reading the first mag to get a feel for our style.

2) Join our writing pool: Want to be assigned an article for this issue and be considered for future guest writing opps? Email us your bio, examples of your writing and interests. Here are some examples of the topics we’re looking to commission for mag #2:

1. How the billionaire boys club is ruining everything

2. One hun’s trash ≠ another hun’s treasure

3. What slogan tees get right (and very wrong!)

4. Fashion’s fake democracy promise

5. Cultural appropriation

6. The tradwife aesthetic and rise of fascism

7. Palestinian craft, solidarity and remembrance

8. How we went from subcultures to microtrends

9. The fight for migrant rights on the factory floor

10. Why repairing is political

11. “Not asking for it” - why clothes ≠ consent

12. A short history of political fashion statements

13. Teen mag elements: quiz, horoscopes, this or that etc.

Get in touch by 15th Feb

We will respond to everyone once this deadline has passed. If accepted, contributors will be sent submission guidelines. Upon completion, contributors will each receive a £100 submission fee, a free mag plus a free invite to our London launch event. We can’t wait to co-create this next issue with you! 💋

🔥 Our take on why AI = ugly (and not just for the planet!)

💅 Tips for sitting out the AI hype

🎱 Mystic Meg’s predictions for the future of AI

If you like what you read, subscribe to get next month’s issue sent straight to your inbox!! 💖

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ChatGPT reminds us of Labubus. One day we woke up and it was 1) everywhere 2) constantly name-dropped IRL and 3) being duped 24/7. The speed we went from DIY divas to the new AI slop era is enough to give a gal whiplash. But unlike Labubu’s debatable shelf life, you can’t write an email, design something or even browse the web without an AI suggestion being shoved down your throat. Move over bag charms, AI is here to stay.

And Big Fashion is loving it! Generative AI is expected to add up to $275 billion in profits to the global industry by 2030. Cue the AI race where every brand is competing to integrate it into their product recs, virtual fitting rooms, customer service chatbots and more.

AI isn’t neutral; it’s a product of its coders’ and users’ biases. Sure, it’s easier to blame the tool than the people creating it, using it and (not) regulating it. But AI holds a mirror up to the industry’s worst impulses. Big Fashion is using it to cut even more corners, from design to marketing. We’re not buying it - here’s why:

(BTW when we say AI, we specifically mean the generative kind that has taken over our recent lives: the learning language models like ChatGPT, the tools that “create” content and the assistive tools that edit your work.)

It’s trash for the environment: AI uses up huge amounts of fossil fuel-powered energy. Around 16.4 billion Google searches are made every. single. day. Add Google’s hard-but-not-impossible-to-opt-out-of AI summary to the mix, and that’s climate kryptonite.

The AI obsession isn’t just scorching our planet. It’s impacting communities living near the data centres that run them. Data centres need tons of water to be cooled down which is putting strain on - and potentially contaminating - local water supplies. They’re loud af, with continuous humming and buzzing creating noise pollution. And most of them are disproportionately located in poorer communities of colour who are feeling the impacts the most. It’s another reminder that climate and social justice are two sides of the same coin.

Worker exploitation is being optimised: AI is giving fashion’s race to the bottom a speed boost. At Amazon, it’s reportedly being used to surveil warehouse workers, fire drivers who don’t meet their delivery targets and justify mass layoffs.

Shein loves to brag it produces minimal waste because it only makes what people want. Reality check: it drops over 1 million new products a week! Its AI-powered on-demand model shifts the burden onto factories who scramble to ramp up production with zero predictability. Guess who suffers when Shein demands a sudden surge on a best-seller? Garment workers forced to do overtime.

For its 2024 sample sale, ASOS installed an AI-powered bartering chatbot. Shoppers were encouraged to haggle for discounts on already cheap clothes in the same way a fashion brand haggles its already underpaid suppliers. It was super icky, devaluing garment workers’ labour. Again.

It’s not a stretch to imagine the ways AI could be turned into a repression tool on the factory floor. Algorithms could be installed to measure “productivity” or pre-emptively fire likely union organisers. And as the climate crisis rages on - in part, fuelled by the AI hype - more frequent extreme weather = more factory closures and job losses.

Conglomerates like LVMH are investing so much cash into AI while the people making Dior products earn poverty wages. If we take any sign that Big Fashion is gonna use AI for profits over people, this is it.

Creativity where? AI takes all the fun out of the creative process: the unexpected sources of inspo, the dopamine hit of overcoming a block, the trial and error part that makes us human. This is being replaced by “AI artists” who feed prompts into machines that reproduce real artists’ work in digital knock-offs. The result? Everything looks the same. It’s another symptom of our convenience culture where we live our lives on auto-pilot. Fast food, fast fashion, fast AI searches. Everything’s now a click away. BORING!!

AI is also stealing creatives’ jobs. Try not to cringe watching this Channel 4 doc where a fashion designer picks a clearly AI-generated image over a photographer’s work. The worst part is some fashion brands think replacing physical shoots with AI models is the “greener” option because it skips the travel part (which, let’s be real, is such a tiny % of their total footprint). AKA it saves them money if they no longer need to hire models, stylists, makeup artists, set creators and photographers. Gross.

Does anyone else feel like they’re living in a gameshow asking you to spot the real climate images from the fakes? Virtual textile waste is just one example. See the viral Shein billboard vomiting out gross levels of clothes or Vestiaire Collective projecting fashion landfills onto iconic landmarks. It feels hypocritical to the cause but it also tells us a lot about ourselves. Like how we need shocking visuals of fashion’s sins to care. We personally prefer the clothing zombie. It’s confronting, illustrates the issue using secondhand clothes sourced in Sengal and supports the work of the Or Foundation. There’s no competition.

Empathy, but make it performative: We’ve even seen AI-generated images of garment workers being shared by the media, NGOs and LinkedIn’s “sustainability thought leaders”. This not only taps into the tired trauma porn trope, it completely sidelines issues of consent. It’s a cheap way to exploit workers’ pain without having to engage or pay them. These images reek of white saviourism, often playing into colonial stereotypes. Garment workers are treated as props for western superiority. Their lived experience is no longer theirs to share but a prompt to illustrate their decontextualised suffering.

By trying to represent workers with an artificial version of themselves, the human workers are instead rendered invisible. They’re robbed of their agency as the token victim. Aid NGOs are being called out for this. Imagine typing the prompt “child with a black eye” instead of giving impacted communities a platform to tell their own stories and share their demands? AI is only exacerbating this decades-long issue in the charity sector.

Brands might not be behind this trend, but they definitely benefit. It mimics their fave tactic: keeping workers hidden and silent. Enough with these desensitising, fake images. What we need is more ethical and dignified storytelling, support for worker-led orgs like Clean Clothes Campaign and year-round solidarity with real human workers.

It’s what greenwashing dreams are made of: As if we weren’t told to buy enough, AI is now part of the online shopping experience! And it’s regurgitating the same environmental lies the industry tries to sell us. When Vogue Business’ Sustainability Editor Bella Webb asked ChatGPT to recommend a responsibly made white tee, the results were pretty suss. Its sources included affiliate link-filled shopping listicles earning the publication a cheeky commission.

FINESSE, an AI-driven “fashion house”, boldly claims to be sustainable because it “never overproduces”. Instead, it monitors socials to repackage the latest trends and markets them using fake photos. We know nothing about the people making FINESSE’s stolen designs. Across the web, more and more shoppers are being fooled by products that look or fit nothing like the AI-generated image.

We now also have deepfake greenwashing to worry about. In 2023, a fossil fuel-funded think tank came under fire for sharing an AI-generated image of a dead whale by a wind farm to argue against off-shore wind projects. A few months later, a deepfake video of Greta Thunberg promoting “vegan grenades” did the rounds online. Now imagine brands doctoring a video of climate activists to promote their not-so-eco-friendly products. The greenwashing possibilities are endless!

Diversity is taking a back seat: Last summer, Vogue ran an AI-generated Guess ad featuring a predictably white, slim and blonde synthetic model. When brands are ditching their DEI commitments, skinny-tok is replacing the body positivity movement and trad wives are the poster girls of facism, this move signals something deeper. We feel like we’re back in the early 2000s. AI-generated models are promoting the same Eurocentric beauty standards that cater to the male gaze. Except we’re no longer comparing ourselves to an airbrushed model. We’re now being pitted against digital avatars, a collection of pixels promoting an unattainable aesthetic.

Some brands are trying to flip the script - not by hiring Black and brown models but by recreating their likeness. In 2023, Levi’s was called out for digital blackface. Its excuse? It was using Black AI models to “increase the number and diversity of our models for our products in a sustainable way.”

It’s not the only one cashing in on the diversity illusion. In 2024, fashion and lifestyle magazine SheerLuxe hired Reem, a human bot of seemingly Middle Eastern heritage. It set up a new Instagram account to show Reem “at work” instead of employing an actual woman of colour as its next editor. Sometimes the Black Mirror episodes write themselves.

Big Fashion’s logic? They’re “supplementing” their campaigns (the quiet part: at speed for less money), not replacing models or substituting IRL inclusion. Customers, they insist, can now see their products on more models that look like themselves. Cool, but why not just hire real people for the same effect?! It has huge parallels with brands sidelining Black and brown people throughout their supply chain: the women who make their clothes, the creatives trying to climb the rigged career ladder, the communities on the frontlines of the textile waste crisis. When AI is only as good as a brand’s intention, it’s currently serving fashion’s racial capitalism project of exploitation and extraction.

TLDR: thanks, A-I hate it!

AI isn’t fixing fashion. It’s maximising profits, optimising exploitation and streamlining harmful business models. We can’t expect it to solve the industry’s problems when it’s being adopted by the same corps responsible for this mess. And this is just fashion we’re talking about! When we look at the global picture, there’s so many reasons to sideye AI. Like deepfake porn, chatbot therapists and recruitment bias.

AI’s rise to fame also isn’t inevitable; it’s manufactured. When H&M paid models to use their “digital twins” in upcoming campaigns, it claimed it was embracing the future of tech in a “human-centric” way. This feels more like an excuse to compete with Shein. H&M is forgetting that it’s a rich corporation that sets trends. It’s not responding to pressure, it’s creating it.

We’d be lying if we said AI doesn’t have its uses, like monitoring human rights abuses or improving healthcare (although it’s not risk-free). But generative AI? That has no place anywhere, not when it comes at the cost of our creativity, jobs and shared home. For garment workers fighting for their rights, for communities who deserve clean air and drinking water, for artists trying to pay their bills - there’s so many reasons to opt out.

10 ways to live an AI-low life

We get it, it’s tricky to avoid completely. AI’s in our email spam filters, maps and banking apps. But there’s still lots of ways you can limit your usage and push for deeper change!

✋ Disable AI searches: It’s deffo getting harder to find AI-free options - even Ecosia has a “green” AI bot - but it’s not impossible. Browsers like Vivaldi are “keeping browsing human”. You can also type -AI in Google searches but that’s long and it’s a shitty company on the BDS list.

🔎 Become an AI detector: Hidden disclaimers, metallic vocals, extra fingers, objects blending into each other, tell-tale phrasing, a dreamy filter. Once you know what to look for, it’s obvious when something’s AI-generated. Bookmark guides to spotting AI-generated content (like this one) and call it out when you see it!

🤫 Tell Meta to mind its business: Check your permissions and opt apps like Instagram out of using your content to train their AI models. Look out for platforms like Tiktok and CapCut who make it a mandatory part of their t&cs.

❌ Switch AI features off: Need an editor? Ask your friend or colleague to proof-read your work. Need some inspo? Pick up a book. (From experience: when you disable Alexa, Siri or Gemini, you quickly realise how much you depended on them for everyday tasks we’ve been doing forever. We can set our own alarms thanks!)

🩷 Show up for creatives: Browse #NoToAI to find creatives you love. Support their work with a purchase, follow or repost.

🌱 Touch grass: We hate to admit it but sometimes the best antidote really is turning off your screen and getting outside! Click me for more anti-consumerist self-care tips.

🎨 Rewrite AI trends: Ditch the filters and recreate the next viral AI trend in your signature style.

📚 Fall down a research rabbit hole: Because when you deep the extent of online harm, there’s no turning back! Start by reading Logging Off, Race After Technology and The AI Con. We also learnt a lot from this podcast ep.

🎤 Call on policymakers to step up: We’re already seeing some regulation in places like Italy but gimme more! Lend your support to campaigns like Stop AI Stealing the Show and Make It Fair.

👄 Tell a friend to tell a friend: When social media traps us in our echo chambers, put your friends onto posts like these. The more we speak out = the less normalised AI is.

We shook a magic 8 ball & this is what it said (promise) 🎱

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🛍️ The 2000s blueprint for raising a generation of shopaholics

✋ Tips for hitting the pause button (we love a slow fashion resolution!)

🎱 The quiz to take before your next purchase

⭐️ Opps to contribute to print mag #2

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Zara first opened its doors in 1975. By the early 2000s, it had expanded to hundreds of stores around the globe. Its parent company Inditex - created by Zara’s billionaire founder, who else - now also owned Pull&Bear, Bershka and Stradivarius. It was a sign of things to come.

If fast fashion dates back to the 1970s, by the noughties it was the norm. The 2000s accelerated everything it inherited from the late twentieth century: globalisation, trend cycles, ads, monopolies, high street chains and Clueless-style chick flicks.

As 2009’s longest-running number one, Lily Allen’s The Fear captured the obsessions of the last decade: sex, celebs and shopping. Her lyrics “I am a weapon of massive consumption. It’s not my fault, it’s how I’m programmed to function” feel a bit too relevant. Because they are! The 00s wrote the blueprint for influencer marketing, Buy Now, Pay Later schemes and “retail therapy”. Its manipulative marketing playbook is still an industry bestseller today.

By the turn of the millennium, choice feminism was everywhere AKA a neoliberal dream. Collective liberation? What’s that? This brand of feminism tells women that their individual choices are empowering, even if that choice hurts other women halfway across the world.

It didn’t take marketers long to makeover overconsumption into a symbol of progress. If cigarettes were 1920s women’s “torches of freedom”, arms full of shopping bags, Cher Horowitz-style, were the ultimate noughties right. American Apparel’s pornographic billboards. Flashy music videos. Glossy mags’ infinite product recommendations. Entire day trips planned around shopping malls. The message was everywhere: shop til’ you drop, baby.

The mass consumption of the 00s seems restrained by today’s standards. Everything is SO much faster. Online shopping is in, bricks and mortar is out. Even the short-lived death of Topshop didn’t come as a shock. Boohoo and PLT had dominated the market (and the headlines with their labour rights scandals), only to be eclipsed by Shein and Temu. Fast fashion had officially gone ultra.

The 2000s also gave us the OG influencers. We tried to recreate the looks of our fave popstars, buy whatever new fad reality TV stars were flogging and cop the latest brand x supermodel collab. Commercial partnerships were everywhere. But arguably so was the fear of selling out. Today, it’s hard to say no to a cheque. Influencers are walking, talking ads for everything from diet teas to itchy polyester. And it’s all a click away from being ours. (Psst if you’re interested, there’s a whole mag spread on influencers here)

In Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw racked up $40,000 in debt on designer shoes alone. She liked her money right where she could see it: hanging in her closet. If miss Bradshaw helped glamourise mindless credit card use, Klarna is weaponising girl math logic to sell us debt. That cute and “totally essential” clubbing fit? It’s pennies if you spread the cost across three months. Might as well fill your basket! Cue the debt cycle as that one lil payment snowballs. A typo in Klar-nah’s recent Tube ad finally said the quiet part out loud. Its new credit card is more like a cute, pink “debt” card.

In our digital era, the pressure to consume feels inescapable. It’s the same y2k rule book on steroids. There’s gamified shopping ads, flash sales, constant “last chance!” emails, £500 hauls, targeted social media ads and microtrends. It’s dizzying but that’s the point. It’s also very seductive.

Of course, I’m not saying we’re all brainwashed into hitting up the checkout without thinking. We just can’t ignore the fact that Big Fashion a) overproduces A LOT b) uses manipulative marketing tactics to sell us stuff we don’t need and c) blames overconsumption entirely on us.

The good news? Once we understand these impulses, they’re much easier to resist. Once we let go of the guilt and shame, we can take back control. Here’s the Not Buying It (literally) guide to slowing down. Your mental health and purse will thank you later!

How to heal your inner shopaholic (written with love by a former one)

💋 Follow deinfluencers: Introducing the new wave of it-girls redefining what it means to influence. Forget dupes and affiliate links, they’re helping us to shop less, buy better and speak up for what’s right. Unfollow influencers who make you feel like your clothes aren’t enough and follow these baddies instead:

⭐️ Jazmine Brown marries personal style inspo with political action (because caring is hot)

⭐️ Lottie Lashley calls out microtrends for what they are: one-way tickets to landfill

⭐️ Andrea Cheong shares brand quality reviews you can actually trust

⭐️ Rachael Grif is a girls’ girl with her Vinted tips and fast fashion truths

⭐️ Naz Leeradboy shares BDS-safe beauty recs for solidarity & self-care

⭐️ Ordinary Emma shows up online to get you offline

⭐️ Sustainable Fashion Friend collects the receipts on brands’ sketchiest moves

⭐️ Amanda Nakano wants to help you build a life - not escape one

🤑 Remember brands are corps: Don’t fall for their community marketing! They’re not your bestie, they’re a rich corporation after your cash. Picturing a billionaire CEO’s greedy face at the checkout is one guaranteed way to put that card down.

✋ Debrand your life: Delete all temptation. Unfollow brands on social media. Unsubscribe from their newsletters. Block your most frequently visited stores on your browser. Ex-influencer Chessie Domrongchai has started a movement by removing the labels (and shine) from her beauty products. When we stop worshipping brands, they just don’t hit the same. Want to go one step further? Patch over the logos on your clothes. Big Fashion doesn’t deserve the free publicity.

👖Go full Lizzie McGuire: Because cute fits are worth repeating! There’s so many ways to refresh your style without buying anything. You could physically divide your summer and winter wardrobes for that “brand new feeling” when you swap your Penny Lane coat for your mini skirts. You could download a digital wardrobe app like Whering which helps you track what you own and remix your wardrobe. Their sharing feature is made for borrowing your bff’s clothes. Don’t sleep on clothes swaps and rental apps like Hurr and By Rotation - it’s basically the sisterhood of the travelling pants IRL.

🧵 Get crafty: A sewing needle and thread is all that stands between you and your repair pile. You know the one. YouTube is your best friend when it comes to clothing DIYs and upcycling tutorials. If you need some help, Sojo is the deliveroo of door-to-door repairs. Fancy going the extra mile? Learn to make your own clothes AKA the ultimate flex. There’s a local workshop or course waiting for you.

🩷 Take care: Loved clothes really do last. So read up on what clothing care symbols actually mean. Follow washing instructions to a tee. Invest in a debobbler. The more you care for your clothes, the less you need to buy.

🫶 Get your besties on board: A detox can be hard but you don’t need to do it alone! Recruit your friends to stay accountable. There’s already loads of challenges out there to guide you, like Remake’s #NoNewClothes Pledge. Once you’ve gone a month without buying, another month? That’s easy mode.

📖 Do, don’t shop: Dance, volunteer, read, craft, bake, journal, socialise. Replace consumption with fun activities - the ones that don’t come with a long shopping list. When we slow down, we free up energy for deeper change. Click here for more ways to take action & show up for garment workers.

➗ Reclaim girl math logic: Calculate the cost per wear to figure out if it’s really worth the financial and emotional investment. Or work out how many hours of your wages the price tag equates to. Ouch. And remember, it’s always 100% off if you don’t buy it!

🥈Think secondhand first: Still got a style itch you need to scratch? 9.5 times out of 10, you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for pre-loved. Use apps like Vinted, Depop and eBay, mooch around vintage and charity shops or hit up good ol’ car boot sales. Online, there’s sooo many BNWT listings to choose from. You get the same dopamine hit as buying new, plus the satisfaction of hunting it down yourself. Thanks, it’s thrifted!

🔎 Do your research: If we can stalk our ex’s cousin’s new partner’s dog on IG, we can stalk a brand before buying. Bookmark Yalda Keshavarzi’s Eco or Oh No checklist to find out if that “green” brand is clean or just an oil spill in disguise. The tea might put you off for good.

💫 Manifest success: Our affirmation cards provide a daily dose of encouragement on your slow fashion journey. Cut out the ones that speak to you or write your own.

Read me before your next purchase 💋

Print mag #2 could have your name on it 💅

It’s official: we’re accepting pitches for our next print mag!!

This issue will be themed around fashion and politics, unravelling the ways it intersects with identity, culture, wealth, waste, health, conflict + more.

Peep this post for all the deets, and send your ideas to mag@not-buying-it.co.uk by Sunday 15th Feb! 💫

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See you next month! Mel xo

👀 The tea on fashion’s fave new buzzword

❓The ultimate BFF quiz

✨ This month’s recs

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Nobody likes that friend who only texts you when they want something. The notification comes through, and your inner Coleen Rooney instantly susses out their true motive. Lately, brands have been handing out metaphorical bff bracelets but honestly? They’re the definition of that friend: they flake on their promises, only show up when it suits them and still demand total loyalty.

If I took a shot every time a big brand yapped on about #community, I’d be on the floor. But to truly understand this new era, we first need to throw it back to a time of rose gold, cut creases and fidget spinners. I’m talking about 2017 - the year when nobody was safe from Wendy’s beefing you on Twitter. Its clapbacks did nuuumbers, providing brands the blueprint to seem relatable, funny and, worst of all, weirdly human.

Wendy’s really walked so the Duolingo owl and lipsyncing RyanAir plane could run. Appealing to Gen Z’s active dislike of ads, brands are appropriating online humour and trends to get past our defences. Now everyone’s competing for the next viral moment by appearing as uncorporate as poss.

This goes well beyond mascots. See, there’s being conversational, and then there’s posting like an unhinged teenager grieving the Tumblr glory days. Babe, you’re a corp with an old white male CEO who knows zero internet lingo!

In the fashion word, Boohoo, ASOS and I Saw It First mastered the girl boss Twitter vibe in three easy steps:

1️⃣ Screenshot a trending meme.

2️⃣ Repost it without credit.

3️⃣ Add a one liner caption like “me”.

Poster girl PrettyLittleThing shared daily (stolen??) content that was only relatable to its customers, and not the women making its clothes. When I tracked a month of PLT’s tweets back in Jan 2021, I found a repetitive feed of aspirational quotes and struggle memes. Yes, PLT was really out here tweeting about having a £10 budget for the rest of the month in the same year they made £75.1 million in profits. £10 btw is three times the illegal hourly rate paid to their Leicester garment workers in 2018.

After Twitter nosedived in 2023 (nice one, Elon), brands like Fashion Nova carried the baton of cringey posts over to Instagram’s Threads. But it never really took off in the same way, leaving the industry to hunt for the next space to hijack. Enter community: something we desperately need but that most of us lack.

Charitable, right? Wrong. This community has a distinctly commercial taste. Sometimes you gotta pay just to join the club! Nike’s training app, Mui Mui’s book club, Tala’s community runs, Tate’s gifted customer trips, Sephora’s forum, lululemon’s “community hub” store, Ralph Lauren’s cafes, Boohoo’s broadcast group and more pop-ups than I can ever name - the list is exhausting because everyone’s at it.

In her fab YT video, Katie Robinson explains that, thanks to US tariffs and a string of luxury scandals, the fashion industry is in free fall. And when Gen Z is choosing memories over products, brands are following them offline. Controversial influencer trips and old school advertising are being swapped out for curated experiences. “Community” is Big Fashion’s ticket to becoming relevant again.

Call me a hater, but it gives me the ick because…

🫰 It’s transactional: If it’s calculated, I don’t want it! These “community” initiatives aren’t a win-win sitch. They’re transactional, deliberately tapping into the emotions that make us more likely to shop. The price of belonging? A purchase or entry free - unless you want eternal FOMO, that is. They say the cost of community is inconvenience but who is really losing out here? Brands get your hard-earned cash and you get a hastily made purchase you might later regret.

🩹 It’s a plaster for a much bigger wound: When you really deep it, capitalism is the reason we all feel so isolated. We’re stuck in a rat race that pits us against each other and keeps us too busy for IRL connection. Individualism + overtime + doomscrolling = we’re all really lonely. Brands clocked that we’re craving experiences and memories, and swooped in with the tonic. It’s giving manipulation.

💔 It’s one-sided: Brands want to act like our besties so we buy their recommendations and forgive them when they cross the line. But they’re not our friends or even human. They’re huge corporations whose sole purpose for existence is growth and profit. The rise of influencer brands has added a new parasocial layer to this. Silly team pranks, BTS footage and founder GRWM’s make it easier to buy into brands as people. Have you noticed how hard customers are batting for brands over on TikTok lately? It’s deffo a symptom of community marketing. (For more tea on influencers, check out pg 28-29 of the mag)

✋ It’s an exclusive members-only club: Democratising fashion? Ugh, as if! Brands don’t actually care about making their communities inclusive and participatory. They’re too busy exploiting garment workers (who don’t get an invite), rolling back their DEI commitments and burdening communities with their textile waste.

I’m not here to stop you from going to any events or pop-ups that feel authentic to you. But we can’t let brands be a substitute for real community. Community isn’t tapping your card at the checkout. It’s showing up when needed, providing a safe space where everyone has a say and coming together for a bigger mission. Community goes both ways.

💥 Quiz time!!

Wanna hang out IRL? 💋

Serious question: Why go to a brand pop-up when you can come along to a Not Buying It event?

So far we’ve 1) celebrated the launch of the print mag with temporary tatts and DIY bag charms and 2) made zines out of early 2000 mags. Both events were SO much fun, bringing together the girlies who want to keep showing up for a fairer fashion industry 🫶

With the end of this year in sight, I’m scheming away for 2026. Here’s the vision: events hosted first in either London or Bristol (my two homes) before making their way across the UK. Think more crafty socials, charity shop crawls and stitch & bitches. All upcoming events will be shared on Instagram. If you’ve got an event idea or wanna collab, slide into my DMs!

Gimme more: November recommendations 🧃

🎤 Tell brands to Speak Volumes: Those same brands jumping on the community bandwagon? They won’t even trust their “community” with their biggest secret: how many clothes they make (aka overproduce) a year. Ahead of Black Friday, nominate the brands you want to fess up.

🛍️ Let’s stop glamourising girl debt: A recent episode of the Polyester podcast exposed how buy now, pay later schemes like Klarna girl-ify debt and fuel shopping addictions. Listen to it here.

❌ How to debrand your life: I usually hate this word but I truly am obsessed with Chessie Domrongchai, an ex-beauty influencer who has started a movement removing all brand labels from her home. This is what de-influencing dreams are made of!

💥 There’s no sustainability without dignified jobs: This is a must-read interview with former child labourer and Bangladeshi labour activist Kalpona Akter. Her work and words are a poignant reminder that brands’ climate pledges mean jack if the people making their clothes go hungry. Read it here.

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See you next month! Mel xo

Oh heeeey!

It feels so surreal to finally share the mag we’ve been working on since the new year… but the wait is finally over! 🥁✨

Not Buying It reimagines the mags of Mel and Yalda’s girlhoods to expose fashion’s shady practices. It’s got everything you’d expect: flaky exes, smoking hot affairs, horror-scopes, agony aunts, quizzes, and more!

We’ve taken a familiar format we know and love - early 2000s mags with all the goss, play and freebies - to talk about the things we might shy away from, but deffo need to be saying! Get ready for some Oh Major Greenwashing (OMG) moments, and get your hands on our green sheen guide designed for babes who give a f*ck.

We’re excited to be selling a small batch of print mags. They come complete with an exclusive cover, the cutest sticker sheet, and prompts to write on and cut out some pages. 10% of all proceeds will be donated to The Sameer Project, a donations based initiative led by Palestinians in the diaspora, working to supply aid to displaced families in Gaza.

✨ Buy a limited edition mag ✨

To keep this fun and accessible, we’ve also published a free digital version you can bookmark, flick through, and share with your besties any time 💞

✨ Browse the digital version ✨

🫶 Thank you SO much for being the first to read Not Buying It. We can’t wait to hear your thoughts, and will start sharing all of our future plans for this space (more mags, hot takes & IRL events) with you shortly.

💅 Enjoy reading the mag Big Fashion wishes you wouldn’t,

Mel, Yalda & Molly xo