Commentary: Why I break with tradition and wear secondhand outfits for Chinese New Year

Commentary

Commentary: Why I break with tradition and wear secondhand outfits for Chinese New year's day

New apparel are supposed to symbolise a fresh start, merely beautiful, more-than-article of clothing secondhand apparel are so hands institute, says Tammy Gan.

20 Jan 2022 06:02AM (Updated: 24 Jan 2022 08:47AM)

SINGAPORE: My family used to hate my insistence on wearing secondhand clothes for the Chinese New year's day.

My mother would ask: "Why don't you wearable new dress?" My grandmother would chime in, in dialect: "Who knows where these came from?" Their voices would be laced with disapproval but by and large disappointment.

The first time I defied the longstanding – and equally I learned, unspoken until you lot break it – tradition of wearing new clothes for Chinese New year's day was in 2019. That year, I had thrifted a apparel from the local thrift shop New2U, described, quite aptly, on Google Maps as an "unpretentious boutique".

The apparel was a soft cotton wool blend, white and strapless, lined with pink satin across the top and bottom. It had a watercolour print of a pink flower, repeated several times all over the dress, with spots of green for the leaves and abstruse, gentle blackness lines. Truth be told, it didn't fit me perfectly, but I liked it very much.

At the fourth dimension, my family hadn't quite warmed up to the thought of me wearing secondhand wearing apparel, and when information technology came to (inauspiciously) wearing it on the Chinese New Year, even less and so.

Wearing new dress, as we all know, symbolises a fresh start, a herald for good fortunes in the new year. That's the reason they gave me, at least, for the disapproval.

But looking back now, I recall there were other reasons for that. 1 of them is the fact that they grew upwardly poor. Choosing non to wear new clothes when we could afford them was an affront of sorts.

Some other reason – probably the bigger 1 – was that they simply stigmatised secondhand clothing.

Merely nosotros live in a world of ridiculous overconsumption and overproduction. It's cool that nosotros make or buy new apparel when at that place's an excess of them.

DROWNING IN CLOTHES

If the fashion industry stopped producing wearing apparel now, it'southward likely nosotros withal would have enough wearing apparel for a few generations at to the lowest degree.

The evidence? Mountains of discarded, unwanted clothing piling upwards across the earth.

In November concluding year, photos of clothes piling up in the driest desert in the world, Chile'due south Atacama, went viral on Instagram. According to Al Jazeera, secondhand and unsold clothing from Europe, Asia and the United States, get in in Republic of chile to exist resold around Latin America. These mounds of habiliment in the desert are leftovers that nobody wants.

When we "donate" to "charity", unfortunately, not all clothes are repurposed "for practiced". When at that place's an backlog of donations (which happens much more often than yous think), the wearable merely unwanted clothes are exported to countries in Southeast Asia, S Asia, Africa and more than.

The secondhand markets that have proliferated in these regions in response to our waste crunch aren't good news.

Women search for used clothes among tons discarded in the Atacama desert, in Alto Hospicio, Iquique, Chile. (Photo: AFP)

The sheer volumes in which these dress arrive have fabricated the clothing virtually valueless, and because of the infant land of the textile recycling industry and technology, in that location's a lot of waste that we don't know what to exercise with.

This waste product ultimately destabilises unabridged economies and puts families and communities who take to deal with information technology in precarious economic situations.

RESPONDING TO A Large Problem IN Minor WAYS

This is an incredibly big problem, of grade, and the solutions required for that are big too. Merely in the meantime, what's within our reach is minor.

We tin ask ourselves questions like: Do we really need new clothes? How can I improve honey and treat the garments I do have? How can nosotros keep more of these garments in circulation within our communities, and non irresponsibly dumped to other countries via the global secondhand trade?

All of this is not to say that nosotros should beginning the conversation on Chinese New Twelvemonth with all this information about the truth behind fashion's waste product crisis. I didn't dump all these facts on my relatives over reunion dinner, nor did I endeavour to argue that the tradition didn't make sense. I don't imagine that either of those would have worked out well.

Instead, our all-time bet this festive season is seeing it as an opportune time to engage our families in some accidental environmentalism.

Over the years, I kept showing up to subsequent family occasions in secondhand wearing apparel that I procured from all over Singapore, and made it a point to say that they were secondhand.

With every outfit – a red wearing apparel with a vintage-looking print, a two-layered apparel with overnice flowers and a pretty neckline, a navy jumpsuit, and many more than – they asked fewer and fewer questions, and eventually came around.

With the exorbitant amounts of clothing that exists, the truth is cute, more than-than-wearable secondhand dress can be found hands.

My greatest finds have come from The Mode Pulpit, an especially suitable location to bring your entire family to be convinced that secondhand doesn't accept to mean second-all-time. There's also Carousell – which takes a fair amount of digging, but remains an affordable option e'er – and diverse, smaller local austerity shops.

People looking for clothes to bandy in this photograph taken before the pandemic. (File photograph: The Mode Pulpit)

What helped me make my instance, too, was my suggestion i year that I should just article of clothing a hand-me-down cheongsam from my mother, who has a habit of ownership new ones every Chinese New Twelvemonth.

Coming from her girl that she had expected to ditch tradition, the idea was more than welcome, and I did eventually vesture one of hers.

I guess all of my efforts eventually paid off because even though they haven't quite understood the overproduction and overconsumption crisis quite yet, at least my secondhand outfits aren't met with disapproval nor thwarting.

I asked my female parent nigh her cheongsam-ownership habit this year and she said that maybe she wouldn't purchase a new one this twelvemonth. "Non like I go any luckier with a new cheongsam anyway," she said. Information technology'due south a first.

Tammy Gan is a freelance author and self-proclaimed activist-in-progress focused on getting people to retrieve deeper nigh environmental and social justice issues, in service of more than but futures.

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Commentary: Why I break with tradition and wear secondhand outfits for Chinese New Year

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