I started this newsletter roughly two years after closing down my fashion resale business. The process of closing it had been like breaking up with someone you still deeply love, but know you shouldn’t be with. Drawn out, heavy, filled with grief — but liberating. Afterwards I moved on to a job that, in my mind, was a complete derailing from my career up to that point: comms at a climate NGO (it wasn’t a derailing, but more on that some other time). Two years later, my passion for secondhand clothing hadn’t gone anywhere. It had, in fact, grown even stronger as I continued to battle with the dichotomy that seemed to be my love for fashion and my growing preoccupation with the state of the world (it wasn’t a dichotomy, but more on that some other time).
Then one summer, on a trip to Italy, a friend asked me how I found so many of my clothes on resale sites. And so I started Splendid Stuff with one simple goal in mind: to create a living guide, akin to the fashion magazines and blogs and newsletters we all love, to inspire and help people to shop secondhand first. As with everything I do, I dove in head-first and into the deep end and decided I would write two emails a week: on Sundays, a roundup of some of the best secondhand picks I’d seen online that week; on Wednesdays, a stylised edit with secondhand pieces only, along with a longer commentary on fashion and consumer culture. I also launched paid subscriptions from the start, despite not having a following or platform, because it was recommended on how-to-start-your-Substack guides. Unsurprisingly, it was impossible to grow my paid list and very hard to grow my free list with this strategy (who would have thought, people actually need to get to know your work before committing to paying you?). But I enjoyed it immensely: the creative outlet, the freedom to play around with clothes and styling, the space to develop my writing.
A few months later, I was faced with the same drawn-out, grief-filled process that started it all: but this time, it was an actual breakup. I stopped writing for a while, telling myself I’d come back to it in a couple of weeks. I couldn’t keep up with the writing pace, on top of my full time job, on top of my feelings. Then those weeks turned into months. All this time, I was also finding it increasingly hard to reconcile my ever-evolving ideas around sustainability and the future of fashion with a newsletter that was, in essence, purely promoting consumption (even if it was secondhand consumption).
Circularity isn’t the solution I once saw it as. Resale and rental and recycling are wonderful and filled with potential, but also increasingly being used as distractions: bandaids to slap on top of the problem so that we don’t actually have to fix it. They are merely part of a set of solutions that need to work together — and that only work when the goal is to transform the industry on a systemic level. I also no longer see loving fashion and having a desire to change the world we live in as two opposing forces. In a surprising turn of events, working in climate comms and understanding more of the ways the industry is screwed up has helped me see it with more hope than ever before. Strange, I know — but along with all its complex problems, I now see the solutions with more clarity. All the ways fashion could be beyond sustainable, but good.
I don’t want Splendid Stuff to be reduced to a newsletter promoting consumption. And most of all, I want the space to explore the splendid potential of the fashion industry, and all the ways we could all get involved in transforming it, including secondhand — and then, beyond.
Which brings me to now: a relaunch. From now on, this newsletter will still cater to those who would like to incorporate more secondhand into their lives. It will still include stylised edits of secondhand only clothes. But it will also be much more than that. So, if you…
Love fashion but don’t love how destructive the industry is: for the planet, communities everywhere, our mental health, our wallets.
Want to break out of the hamster wheel that is hyper consumption, incorporate more secondhand into your habits, and less new (fast) fashion.
Want to explore fashion as a tool for new ways of seeing the world and participating in transforming it.
…then this is what you will get from Splendid Stuff from now on:
1x month: an email diving into consumer culture, capitalism, and how the system works in keeping you stuck in an endless consumption cycle, what the future of fashion can look like, and how we can make it happen.
1x month: Don’t Buy: a stylised edit offering secondhand alternatives to fast fashion temptations, along with commentary and analysis on fast fashion marketing tactics.
This is all going to be free, and the paywall on previous posts has been taken down. I really want to develop this space as a platform to dismantle the current fashion system and explore the potential of a new one — and I want it to reach as many people as possible while my writing, and I, evolve. I will reduce the posting schedule from twice a week to twice a month to (hopefully) allow for higher quality, researched and thought-out writing, and a more realistic pace.
So, if you’re here, thank you! I hope you enjoy this new version of Splendid Stuff.
I can’t wait to get started — again.