Bollywood actresses Alia Bhatt and Sushmita Sen.
Alia Bhatt, Deepika Padukone and Sushmita Sen are repeating outfits. You should too
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At Shilpa Shetty’s Diwali party, Sushmita Sen wore a gorgeous glittery beige saree she had worn on the couch of Koffee With Karan Season One in 2005. The internet was flooded with reports about Sen championing sustainability in fashion. Alia Bhatt was another celebrity who was recently praised for re-wearing her wedding saree to receive the National Film Award for Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022). In an internet age, where Instagram is continuously throwing discounted clothes at us and Nykaa and Myntra have all-season “seasonal” sales, it is difficult to stay committed to sustainable fashion. So even if occasionally, it is necessary to be reminded that careless consumption of clothes and footwear is dangerous for the environment.
Fashion has never been synonymous with consumption — the word itself comes from the Latin word “facere”, which means “to make”. So the art of fashion must lie in the fashioning of outfits from existing material.
But fast fashion and intrusive advertising have ensured that more and more people buy into trends with brands like Zara, H&M, Forever 21 and others being able to introduce entire new collections in stores in as little as 15 days. TikTok and Instagram influencers then pick up on these fortnightly changing styles and advertise their massive shopping hauls — encouraging other people to do the same.
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The increasing amount of consumption is evident from a 2016 McKinsey & Company report that found that clothing production had doubled from the year 2000 to 2014. But while people bought 60 per cent more items, they kept them for only half as long. Affordable clothing prices have led to a use-and-throw mindset where people can carelessly consume — and discard. A study by Fashion for Good found that every year, up to 78,00,000 tonnes of textile waste is produced just by India (to break it down, one tonne is equal to 1,000 kg).
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All this to say that even though consumer culture demands that you give in to the advertising and the new day-new event-new clothes allure, it is necessary that we become more conscious and mindful of how we shop — and maybe move to window shopping as therapy instead. Bollywood celebrities are not exactly pioneers of the reuse and recycle narrative, but they command influence and an incredible number of followers. So when we see a Janhvi Kapoor repurpose an old lehenga or a Deepika Padukone re-style the same white shirt, it brings back into focus the conversation on the importance of sustainability.
Alia Bhatt’s initiative ‘Mi Wardrobe Su Wardrobe’ is another example of this. It invites celebrities to sell items from their wardrobes to the public both ensuring greater participation and promoting sustainability.
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And so, while we may all have these considerations of eco-friendly shopping in the back of our minds, we choose to ignore them when we walk into a store and find a top that seems like it was made for us. So it is valuable to see our favourite stars and fashion icons — with far greater purchasing power and influence — opt for outfits that are a combination of the old and the new, a mix-and-match approach that is far more creative and kinder to the environment. It is most fashionable to repeat and re-style.
adya.goyal@expressindia.com
