The time for slow fashion is now

by Jackie May | Mar 23, 2020

Now without a doubt, it’s time to stand with slow fashion. Featuring Ghanaian model Napari, shot by a South African team, at Langebaan along the West Coast, this magical shoot celebrates slow fashion and the potential it has to correct our course as clothing over-producers.

Think about this for a moment: the global production of clothing has doubled since 2000. In only two decades, we’ve increased clothing output by 100%. But, while people buy more clothing today than 20 years ago, they only keep clothing for half as long.

That’s a pretty scary especially when you marry it with the fact that one garbage truck full of clothes is burned or dumped in a landfill – every second.

Let’s not even get into the labour issues, natural resource over-consumption and pollution problems that surround fast fashion and our obsession with something new to wear. What a legacy: we are literally wearing ourselves out of a planet.

It’s against this background that Daisie Jo is charging ahead in producing clothes, with her eponymous brand Daisie Jo. Daisie Jo, former assistant creative director at Marianne Fassler, stands in total opposition to everything that fast fashion has normalised. Championing “mindful consumption”, she creates slow fashion that celebrates ‘slow living’. In fact, the designer herself recently relocated her studio to the calm and quiet of the Karoo.

Her primary focus, far beyond what’s cool or trendy, is on craft, quality and timeless beauty. “At Daisie Jo, we embrace our imperfections and humanness,” she says, explaining that she creates season-less clothes with their lifespan in mind. “A piece you mend over time, instead of chucking it out.”

Each limited-edition piece is hand-crafted and is either once-off or part of small-batch collections, all produced in-house. Using fabrics like linen and silk, her garments feel that much better on the skin, knowing that they stand for something.

Daisie Jo’s playful but sophisticated brand asks each one of us: what will I stand for? Without a doubt, it’s time to stand with slow fashion.

For more about the brand, visit www.daisiejo.com.