The Cost of Cool: What Fashion Is Really Selling Us

A call for consciousness and sustainability this Black Friday Weekend.

I recently went to sell some clothes at a resale shop with a packed IKEA bag filled to the brim with pieces that once fought for air in my closet. I’ve been trying to shop more intentionally, which means that before the shift, I made more impulsive purchases than I care to admit.

When my name was called to collect my things, the buyer looked at me and said they weren’t interested because Zara items don’t have resale value.

Mind you, the bag was not full of Zara. Maybe two or three pieces slipped in. While I’ll leave my ego to the side, the comment stuck with me.

This weekend is one of the biggest shopping moments of the year. The beloved Black Friday weekend. I can practically see the TV from my childhood playing a live news segment outside a Best Buy, a reporter interviewing a man who had just been arrested after throwing a punch over the last discounted flat screen. A cultural classic.

In the 1980s, retailers reframed Black Friday as the day stores finally went into the black, when profits outweighed losses for the year. By the 2000s, big-box retailers had transformed it into a national ritual. Overnight lines. Limited-time deals. Doors opening at dawn. Black Friday became the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season and eventually expanded into Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, and Giving Tuesday.

What do we have left that isn’t commercialized…

Fast fashion is one of the loudest megaphones in that machine. Zara has made shifts toward sustainability with fabric commitments, resale initiatives, and waste reduction. But the business model remains the same. Fast fashion encourages you to pick up five new tops. One you might wear once. Four others that look exactly like something you already own but forgot about.

Last week, I wrote about Nordic brands that center sustainability and wardrobe investment. Many pieces I would consider expensive. Some may have been taken aback. Others understand the math of buying one high-quality piece that lasts instead of spreading the same spend over ten quick shopping trips.

A few weeks ago, I spoke with a founder who built her entire business on vintage. Items crafted in the 1920s still carry value because they were made to last. Holding them feels almost spiritual. It reminds you that clothing was once built with intention and designed for decades, not discarded after a season.

Today, it often feels like you either spend two thousand dollars on a coat from The Row or settle for H&M because everything in the middle has been erased. After all, what other choice do you have.

But that is exactly what smart, and sometimes manipulative, marketing wants you to believe. Layer in a content creator linking ten versions of the same sweater on LikeToKnowIt and suddenly you feel behind. Unstylish. In need of more.

And yet, the deeper cost sits outside of our closets.

Fashion is one of the most resource-intensive industries on the planet. Over ninety-two million tons of textile waste are produced every year. Most garments are worn fewer than ten times. Polyester, which makes up more than half of all clothing today, is plastic. It sheds microfibers into our oceans with every wash. And the dyes used to make our outfits vibrant often end up polluting water systems in the same countries where our clothes are sewn.

When we talk about fast fashion, we are not just talking about cheap tops and quick trends. We are talking about landfills in Ghana overflowing with discarded clothing from the West. We are talking about rivers in Bangladesh running blue, green, and red from dye pollution. We are talking about garment workers who stitch our outfits for wages that do not reflect the value of their labor.

It feels heavy because it is heavy.

And yet, it does not have to drain the joy out of getting dressed. It simply asks us to be conscious. To remember that the most sustainable piece is the one you already own. To get creative with styling. To value quality over quantity. To slow the pace of our own desire when the world wants us to speed it up.

So maybe this weekend is less about what we add to our cart, and more about what we choose to invest in. The small brands creating responsibly. The founders putting their souls into their work. The vintage sellers reimagining a garment’s life instead of ending it. The makers who remind us that clothing can still be art.

You can still shop. You can still gift. You can still enjoy fashion and the tenderness of choosing something beautiful for someone you love.

Just try to buy from a place of meaning. Support the hands behind the work. Choose pieces with a future rather than just a moment.

Because style does not come from how much you buy. It comes from how deeply you care about the world, your community, and the people whose creativity makes fashion worth celebrating in the first place.

Happy Holidays <3
Kelly