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Buying behaviour

Buying behaviour Fabric info Opinion pieces Sustainability thoughts

What are you paying for when you buy fabric?

written by Kate

Ever thought much about what’s behind the amount of money you pay for your fabric? The questioning around how a could t-shirt could possibly cost £3 at a low priced fashion store is pretty common in the public domain. As a sewist I prefer buying fabric. But I don’t see that buying fabric as being all that different from buying any other retail product such as clothing. At a simplistic level, if we work backwards from the final price, we need to consider retail mark up and profit for wholesale before reaching the cost of production.

How is fabric priced?

There are a lot of articles and podcasts on the internet about how to price manufactured products. Here are my observations so far taken from various sources:

Mimi G’s Business Shet has a podcast episode on How To Price. Her guidelines are that wholesale pricing is 2x cost of production (this includes all costs such as your webshop and accounting fees etc). And retail is 2x wholesale cost.
The Business of Fashion book (pictured above, part of the Fashionary series of books) suggests wholesale should be 2.8x of cost of production, with retail at 2.8x wholesale.
Annie over at Village Haberdashery (a bricks and mortar fabric and craft store in London) revealed on Instagram that she typically uses 2.4x over wholesale price. The 2.4x factors in VAT (sales tax), which in the UK is 20%. So if you spend £20 on fabric, £2 of that immediately goes to the tax man.

FYI – you can see Annie’s pricing post here on Instagram as part of her Friday business chat posts. I know a lot of people (including myself) appreciate her honesty on how her business works and gaining some understanding of what goes on behind the scenes!

Let’s now apply this a metre of inexpensive cotton I bought some time ago and still haven’t cut into, 6yrs later…

How is that interesting? Is the production cost too high or low?

There is no right answer here and honestly, I don’t know – but my gut tells ms that £1.25/m seems pretty damn low when I consider what I could make from 1m. There must be some kind of math to work out costing but alas I’m not in the industry and I’m not an academic.

Because what’s in the cost of production? There are so many different parties in the supply chain that get need to get paid. Production cost includes materials, labour, general admin, research and development as well as processing. For natural fibre processing, basic steps include needing to:

Grow and harvest a plant or shear the sheep for example
Turn the raw fibre into a usable one (cleaning processes etc.)
Spin the fibre into a yarn
Weave the yarn
Colour the fabric
Print on the fabric

Like the rest of fashion (and farming! or anything manufacturing), I suspect that fabric as a retail product is a volume game.

What about expensive designer fabric?

At the other end of the spectrum, you will have something like a Liberty tana lawn which retails for £22.50/m. This is probably the most expensive cotton lawn I’ve seen, but undoubtedly the quality is amazing. By amazing I mean that I have washed my Liberty lawn trousers every 1-2 weeks every week for 3 years. Whilst it’s a bit thin in places, it hasn’t ever ripped and there’s no noticeable pilling or colour fade. But for Liberty I suspect you are paying a lot for design and marketing in addition to the cost of premium cotton fibres.

Liberty tana lawn trousers – the fabric was cheaper than RRP as it was overstock

What to make of this kind of math?

I guess this is just a reminder that for fabric there are costs to consider and a lot of people involved in the supply chain, even when there is no garment worker involved. We all know that fashion production (including fabric) is largely outsourced to India, China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia etc. because of the cost. And what we often see in the media is a garment worker in the headlines (and sometimes a cotton farmer).

But at what indirect/hidden cost? There are plenty of unpleasant stories about what happens in factories in places that don’t have the same health and safety standards that we do. Not to mention the environmental issues in places where standards are not enforced (textile factory effluent into rivers is an obvious one, as profiled in documentaries such as River Blue or The True Cost).

Would you pay more if you knew what you were paying for?

The idea of value is so relative and individual. Are you buying just a bit of cloth or a sewing pattern because it looks nice? Or are you buying a story of a brand? Or because you are supporting someone’s small business? For me, it’s more about supporting somebody’s small business. Fabric shops and indie pattern brands are often individuals like you and me trying to make a living. I want them to be there and thrive!

Looking at pure product alone I think it’s hard to justify higher costs when there is a lack of transparency on what you pay for. This isn’t just fabric – this also applies to everyday goods like food, household goods, furniture etc. I read somewhere once that the point of having a £50 barbeque and a £1000 one next to each for sale is to sell the £300 one. So consumers feel like they are buying better than the cheapest and nastiest, but not spending silly amounts of money on an unnecessary luxury barbeque. Then again you could say it is all just relative because there is no other information besides comparable products!

What do you think of pricing math? What do you do to determine how much you’ll pay for fabric? If you have any insight into pricing and costing I’d love to hear it!

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September 11, 2019 3 comments

Buying behaviour Opinion pieces Sustainability thoughts

The big issues in fashion: #FashionQuestionTime

written by Kate

As Fashion Revolution gets bigger each year, so do the high profile events. This year’s Fashion Question Time event on 24 April had a panel discussion about the future of fashion. I was lucky enough to score a ticket to go to the event at the Victoria and Albert Museum (what a fantastic location for such an event!) to hear it. The panel discussed questions submitted in advance by attendees and it was chaired by Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey, known for her work on modern slavery. These were the speakers:

Mary Creagh, MP and Chair of the Environment Audit Committee
Laura Balmond, Project Manager for Make Fashion Circular, Ellen MacArthur Foundation
Mark Sumner, Lecturer in Sustainability, Fashion & Retail, University of Leeds
Hendrik Alpen, Sustainability Engagement Manager, H&M Group

Before I dig into the discussion, a brief mention of diversity. Having been to a few sustainable fashion events in London in the past year, I do notice the crowd is a bit of a bubble with a lot of familiar faces to say hi to. Whilst this is no bad thing given a lot of people work extremely hard within the fashion industry to effect change, I do wonder when (or if) these events will start to see more diverse attendance? The demographic is 95% women, all quite well dressed, mostly white. Age wise there are many in my age group. The next biggest group seemed to be those in their 20’s (students maybe?) and there was a scattering of people from my mother’s generation. Whilst it didn’t feel like an exclusive event, the narrow demographic was noticeable (my views on sustainability and inclusion can be found on the Sewcialists blog here)

Fashion Revolution at V&A

Back to the talk, here are 3 key messages I got out of the session:

1. We know and acknowledge our overconsumption problem … and that it will continue

Fashion is here to stay as long as there is demand. What H&M want to do is to figure out how to still serve the desire that consumers have to buy stuff, but do it better than now. For example, could waste be seen as an unexplored business opportunity that just needs a business model around it? Hendrik Alpen from H&M also highlighted some of the different programs that H&M have implemented in their bid to do things better. For example the textile recycling scheme in stores (which ironically encourages you to buy more by giving you a discount voucher). And H&M’s newly launched product transparency tool where you should be able to see which factory made your garment.

For me, the elephant in the room remains that we measure economic growth via consumption. I wrote about buying culture awhile back and I don’t feel we’ve moved on much. At the session, I kind of felt that the panel was accepting that we had to keep working within the current economic system. And instead of reinventing (which is a ginormous mammoth task), the workaround is to look at circular economy type initiatives. In fashion, this might be putting back clothing waste into the system and turning it into new clothes. There was a mention of people buying better quality and less, but the overarching vibe was that people would still want to buy so we need to find ways of dealing with that.

(Just by the way, overconsumption doesn’t just apply to fashion, it is everywhere. Flying, for example, is one such area which is bad for the environment and can be addressed on a personal level. But for those of us privileged enough to take advantage of cheap air travel, realistically how much are you going to limit your air travel? Climate change activist schoolgirl Greta Thunberg made a point of coming to London from Sweden via train and it took 2 days, but I’m not sure the rest of us are that dedicated).

Fashion Revolution collage

2. There must be a multi-pronged approach to tackling fashion

Mary Creagh acknowledged that fashion is too cheap, and the true cost of production (i.e. the value of materials, labour, carbon emission, water etc.) is externalised to developing countries. It was great to hear this being acknowledged and it reminded me of a recent interview with Kathryn Hamnett where she thought that we should only allow imports that were made to the same standards as there would be in the UK. As you’d expect this would push up the price of fashion. I think Kathryn is right that this wouldn’t happen without some kind of legislation, but I’m not convinced there is political will for that anyway. Mary mentioned the proposed penny tax on each garment to be paid by producers but I wonder whether that might even be a bit too much to stomach.

The idea from Laura Balmond from the Ellen Macarthur Foundation that change and innovation in fashion would likely be business led (rather than regulatory led) was an interesting one. Her theory is that organisations needed to unite behind a common purpose and work together to innovate. I’m not sure I agree with this unless there starts to be a trend for business to start declaring climate emergencies. It has been pretty clear that voluntarily looking at sustainability hasn’t been effective enough. Also thinking about the logistics of this – how do you define a common purpose (who is going to lead?) Who is accountable for funding research and development? I know that some of the big brands have charitable foundations attached to them, and there is also academic research and government funding. But will having no (or very little) government incentivisation really lead to significant change that brings all fashion brands on board?

The panel agreed that regulation would help to level the playing field, particularly when there are many high street fast fashion brands who appear to be ignoring climate change altogether. Mark Sumner pointed out that some fast fashion factories demonstrate best practice in their operations, with some places generating only around 1% in waste material. But there are also factories producing for luxury brands who are quite the opposite, showing yet again that pricing is not reflective of cost.

Finally, there was a question about whether synthetic fibres should be banned. According to Mark Sumner, scientific evidence shows that from a life cycle perspective, polyester is much more sustainable than poorly grown cotton. He also emphasised that when it comes to dyes, natural isn’t always best (arsenic in green dye anyone?) just because it might have been around for hundreds of years. I hope to catch up with Mark at some point to talk more about fibres and to share it with you.

L-R: Orsola De Castro (Creative Director, Fashion Revolution), Mary Creagh, Baroness Lola Young, Hendrik Alpen, Laura Balmond, Mark Sumner

3. Consumers need to come for the sustainability ride

All the panel members mentioned social justice and were at pains to emphasise that fashion should be accessible to everyone. Fashion must be fashionable and still be able to do all those good things for the individual. Self-esteem, identity, and self-expression etc. If it can’t, then will fashion even exist … or will we just have clothes?

The concern for H&M, and I’m guessing for all brands, is that if you can’t satisfy that consumer demand for new cool things then consumers go elsewhere. This is a rock and a hard place and goes back to the point about consumption and the desire to buy. Not to mention the juxtaposition that is the marketing of sustainable fashion.

But as long as sustainability remains a thing that consumers have to “look for” in clothing, and still continue to desire new and novel items, sustainability as a normalised mainstream thing will continue to be a challenge.

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There was lots more discussion in the 1.5hours that I’m not covering in this whistle-stop tour but we’ll be here all day if I keep writing! I’m not sure if there was an official recording; if I can find one I will certainly share the link.

It was a good discussion but there wasn’t anything earth-shattering I haven’t heard before. Or maybe I’m just feeling the frustration of things moving at snail speed, and not only in fashion. When I read the news of the climate protests in London last week I know I’m not alone. Whatever you think of the actions of the protestors, public pressure worked to a point. They got the attention of the government and are meeting the Environment Secretary next week as well as the London mayor. Even if Greta Thunberg rightfully points out that the rising emissions curve is the only thing that really matters (it’s not about the beautiful words and promises), my 13+ years in finance tells me that there’s no such thing as wholesale change overnight unless there’s a trigger. If the increase in incidents of wild weather causing devastation to humans isn’t enough of a trigger, I don’t know what will be.

But let me go back to fashion and leave you with the 4Ps that Baroness Young referenced at the start and the end of the session. Quoting lawyer-turned-fashion designer Paul Van Zyl about what we need to do to fix fashion, she said we need to: Protest, Protect, Prohibit, Propose. Mark Sumner added a fifth one which I think is by far the most important: Participate.

Easy, right?

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Fashion Question Time_ changing the fashion panorama

April 29, 2019 8 comments

Buying behaviour Opinion pieces Recycling and waste

So you’ve done a declutter exercise… now what?

written by Kate

New Year, new start. And a new clear home after you’ve donated all the clothes and other stuff you didn’t want to charity. As legions of people become inspired to declutter after watching Marie Kondo’s new hit Netflix show, it is the charity shops that are suffering. In Australia, with only around 15% of donations received being resold locally, charities are drowning under the weight of unwanted stuff. And it costs money for charities to deal with stuff that they can’t sell on!

That charities cannot take anymore donations speaks volumes about how much stuff we have and our buying culture. So my challenge of the day is this:

How do you declutter for good? Stuff often expands to fill the available space – and a year later another decluttering exercise is needed!

Why we are all decluttering – the Marie Kondo Effect

The new US-based TV show starring Japanese tidying guru Marie Kondo (author of the best seller The Art of Tidying Up) feels like a gentle version of Supernanny but for sorting and organising your house. The first episode features a family with 2 kids and the second episode follows an empty nester couple who accumulated stuff over 20+ years of living in their house.

Both sets of people are taught the KonMarie way to declutter. This starts with closing their eyes to thanks to their house for letting them live in it. Then they go through every single one of their possessions, beginning with clothes. Only things that “spark joy” (e.g. the warm and fuzzy feeling when you see a cute puppy picture) are kept. If the possessions don’t spark joy, they are thanked for their service before being made redundant. You don’t need me to tell you that there were many many bin bags sitting on the kerb by the end of each TV episode.

stuff stuff stuff (photo credit: unsplash)

I like the KonMarie method a lot as it forces you to think about each of your possessions. And it really contrasts with the shopping and consumerist mentality that results in our homes being filled with stuff we don’t need.

But, and here’s the but – what watching these people sort their clothes sparked in me (pun intended) was less of a feeling of what sparks joy, but more … what next? How are the people on the show going to make sustainable change? Especially when there’s no Marie to visit them every week to keep them accountable?

Also, after say 2 hours of sorting clothes, I’m not sure how much I would be consciously thinking about whether something REALLY sparks joy … or if I just want to be done with the sorting.

Declutter and feel good

The idea of less stuff really appeals to me, but I think going from a lot of stuff to very little stuff can cause problems if:

it turns into a “just chuck it” type exercise because tidying gets boring
there’s no thought about what happens to unwanted stuff if it is chucked out (it all has to go somewhere!); and
there’s not enough effort into breaking up with buying stuff (or acquiring by some other means) afterwards. It feels a bit like going on a diet. You’ve reached your goal after a few months of hard graft, then slack off again only to feel the need to try another diet later on down the line.

Clothes seem to be one area where so many of us have excess (myself included). There are just. so. many. clothes in the world. Producing clothes in the quantities dictated by the fashion industry takes a huge amount of resource. Fossil fuels for synthetics, land for growing cotton, just to give a few headlines which you will have heard before.

And dealing with unwanted clothes is just as big a problem. Donating to charity is a popular. But contrary to what some may believe, clothes are generally not given away for free to those in need or in less affluent countries (I wrote about what happens here). Landfilling or incineration is even worse, as it turns things that were once useful into waste that isn’t used again.

Sustainable decluttering?

Maintaining your home after a declutter exercise is no easy task. If you were someone with a lot of stuff, it requires you to change your relationship with stuff, look at your buying habits and actually stick with whatever changes you have decided to make.

At a recent sustainable fashion event, someone raised that they had read that people completing consumer surveys would often say that they support buying higher quality clothes and less fast fashion. But buying behaviour as seen by demand and retail sales didn’t reflect that attitude and people bought stuff anyway! Perhaps it is a case of having all good intentions but online browsing or enticing shopfronts are just too much to resist.

Just another pretty shopfront (photo credit: unsplash)

One of the participants in the Marie Kondo TV show talked about her need for retail therapy, albeit she seemed to feel a bit guilty about it. Mass produced “stuff” like clothes are cheap to buy and readily available so why not clothes when you need your therapy?

I would love to see people thinking about how to declutter their houses for good. Rather than just focussing so much on the state of here and now. For me it comes down to thinking about more than just what sparks joy when you throw something out or buy something. Here are some ideas:

5 things to think about besides sparking joy

Do you have any more to add to the list? Have you decluttered recently or are you thinking about it?

Consider what happens to your clothes when you chuck them. Can someone actually wear them? Can it be used for scraps? What recycling method can I choose (if I have a choice)?
Watch the documentaries about textile production and dealing with waste to get a glimpse of the processing you as a consumer never see. As a starting point I’d go for True Cost, River Blue, and the BBC Secret Life of landfills. If you’ve never looked into fast fashion before, the Stacey Dooley BBC show was popular – the full episodes are not online anymore but there are youtube clips, e.g. here
What other hobbies and activities can you do besides shopping? My millenial sister tells me that mall culture in North America is a thing and I know myself that online shopping is all too easy to do. Fighting against this feels like going against the grain. But …
Experiences are great for money spending without accumulating. Or maybe even just a walk outside (at least that’s free!)
Unsubscribe from store email lists to avoid temptation from new stuff, discounts and fear of missing out. When it comes to fabric, also worth asking yourself, does fabric shopping make you happy?

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January 26, 2019 15 comments

Buying behaviour Quilting

Quilting 101 for dressmakers

written by Kate

If you make clothes and you decide its time to try your hand at quilting, this post is for you. As a pretty experienced dressmaker, I naively assumed that quilting was just straight line sewing, a lot of cutting and a lot of bulk to work with. Uh oh – naive much? Turns out quilting is a different discipline altogether. Speaking from experience, below are some hints and tips to make your new quilting experience less of a baptism of fire than mine!

1. Learn the lingo and the shortcuts

Fat quarters, fat eighths, jelly rolls, cake layer rolls, blocks, FMQ (free motion quilting), HSTs (half square triangles), low volume colour … the list goes on and you need to know them. And for my friends that live in countries that use metric, get used to using imperial.
There are ways and means of being efficient with cutting. Before you set off on making hundreds of HSTs, google the shortcut to make 4 or 8 of them in one hit. It’ll make quilts like this prism one a lot easier to deal with. Luckily this was a team effort though with many of the blocks being made by the quilting bee.

2. Invest in quilting equipment

Rulers – a 24” long is your best friend for cutting long strips across the whole width of fabric (WOF). As quilting cotton is typically 42” wide, the 24” works great once you fold the fabric in half. I also like a 12.5” square ruler as many blocks are written for that size. As soon as you place the ruler on top of your block you can see your wonky edges. Finally, a 6.5” square is really handy for smaller jobs. As accuracy is everything, a variety of rulers really helps.
Rotary cutter and big self healing mat – my Olfa rotary cutter cuts everything like butter. Previously I had Fiskars and even after numerous blade replacements it never cut half as well as the Olfa. But of course, this is personal preference. One of my local haberdashery shops said that customers swore by one brand or the other.
1/4 piecing foot with a guide – accuracy matters. There’s no room to mess with fit or ease. Once upon a time I pulled apart and remade about 20 blocks because they were 12″ square instead of 12.5”. Seam allowances are 1/4in so it wasn’t possible to work with them as they were.
Walking foot – if you plan on doing the actual quilting bit at home you need this. It’ll help with the puckering and wrinkling that can happen. If you really get into quilting, my sewing machine repairman-dealer-guru guy tells me to look for a machine with a 7 feed dog system.
Leather thimble and sashiko needles for hand quilting – the best combo I’ve tried! And thread conditioner for thick threads (e.g. visible hand quilting). Not needed for things like hand sewing the binding.

Random useful household items

A butter knife – the non-serrated edge makes great crease marks for piecing or quilting. There’s also the Clover Hera marker if you want an actual quilting tool. After a bad experience with a washable marker and a disappearing pen which subsequently reappeared, I don’t trust pen technology one bit.
Marigold gloves (or any rubber washing up gloves) for machine quilting – the thickness of the quilt layers means you need to apply pressure to help feed the quilt through a domestic sewing machine. After awhile you risk getting tennis elbow. Gloves give you the grip that your fingers don’t have on the fabric. Suddenly you’ll find you are gently guiding the quilt instead of wrestling with it.

3. Consider your fabrics and threads

Scraps – I initially joined a quilting bee with my sustainability hat on thinking to use up scraps. But I ended up having to buy small packs of mixed colour fabric anyway to mix with my scraps! Here are some blocks I made for charity this year.

I believe the history of quilting involved using what you had. But these days unless you’re really either into traditional looking or scrap quilts or have colour cohesive scrap bins, you may need to buy fabric.

Does it have to all be quilting cotton? Sew Adagio Becky told me that her quilty mom said that different weights and fibre types in a quilt are less durable. For example, the heavier pieces might tear apart from the lighter pieces in the wash. So how much are you washing your quilts?

In terms of handling during sewing, I have another quilt top which is quilting cotton with thicker fibres mixed with pieces from an old bedsheet with densely woven thinner fibres. I did notice they behaved a little differently when sewing. It didn’t me put me off upcycling the bedsheet though.

A final note on this one – another quilty friend told me that backs should be all 1 fibre, i.e. all cotton, or all polycotton. She found that if she used one piece of cotton and sewed it with a piece of polycotton she got twisting and wrinkling.

Threads – cotton thread or regular sew all polyester thread? I asked quilty guru Sew Becky Jo who showed me a picture of one of her quilts that is 20yrs+ old. The cotton pieces had started to rip at the seams as the polyester thread was stronger and harder than the cotton. Sounds like whether you choose one or another might be determined by whether you’re making an heirloom quilt or a picnic blanket to be used outside all summer!

4. Get the professionals involved when you need them.

On my first quilt adventure, I had a failure when I basted together the quilt top, batting and back. I read all the tutorials, basted with thread, supplemented with curvy safety pins and when I started the quilting I still managed to get wrinkles. After hours hopping around the floor to unpick and re-baste I gave up. The £20 (plus postage) for my quilt to be basted by a professional on a long arm machine was the best £20 I ever spent. ‘Nuff said.

PS – before you send your quilt off to the professionals, make sure your batting and back is at least 4 inches bigger all round than the quilt top. They need this to clamp the batting and back to the machine.

5. It can all add up

Quilting can be expensive as a hobby – more so than making clothes. My latest quilt for my sister is a throw size (65x65in). You can see the start of it below. The fabrics were all Kona solids and cost me £65. There’s more than I need but as shops tend to sell in long or fat quarters and my sister was specific about her colours I bought what she wanted.

But let’s imagine for a moment all the fabrics for your quilt top are upcycled. You still have to source the backing fabric – around 4m for a throw size quilt. If you’re looking at designer fabric (Moda, Art Gallery, Andover etc) rather than upcycling something else that will be another £50.

The equipment can expensive, e.g. each ruler can be £15. Obviously, I wouldn’t bother for just cushion covers. But if the aim is making blankets then the right equipment makes life a ton easier and sewing = happy.

Finally, if you get your quilts professionally long arm quilted, the prices in the UK appear to start from around £45 for a baby size through to £70-100ish for bigger ones.

Quilting and sustainability

Fabric shopping

My quilting isn’t all from sustainably produced material as I have chosen to go with the design first. That meant that to date, my scrap collection just doesn’t give me what I want although I do use what I have. To save buying small packs all the time to satisfy quilting bee requirements, I even joined a fabric club (shock, horror, yes). I plan to stay in it for about 3 months so I have a decent range of colours. It is such a different mindset from dressmaking – more variety is better, and every scrap bigger than 2×2 is kept for future use. No wonder ever quilter is a hoarder of sorts.

What about all those quilts?

If you get really stuck into quilting, what do you do with all the quilts? There’s only so many you can use for the beds and sofas in your house right? I take comfort that the two full quilts I’ve done in the one year have been for charity (one with an upcycled bedsheet + stash fabric). My sister’s upcoming one is a farewell gift – she’s moving from being 20min away to an 8hr plane ride away.

A quick google search revealed that besides the obvious family and friends options there are numerous charities that take quilts. But reading through blogs and forums it seems there are also people who churn out a new quilt on average every 2-3 weeks and have the space to keep all of them.

I suppose that like dressmaking, quilting has the potential to be wasteful – but that depends on your definition of waste and how much stuff you are comfortable with having and creating. Personally, I am trying to keep my stash down and organise my leftovers better (apparently quilters, like dressmakers, also really like buying fabric). And most quilting I hope to be for charitable causes or a special gift.

More resources

That’s it for my spiel on quilts. I hope that the minutes needed to read this post will save you many minutes! For more information, check out Suzy Quilts. I am a massive fangirl and besides her designs being totally awesome, she has a load of great beginner friendly tutorials. Also Stitched in Color is another one I found with different (non-traditional block) tutorials and modern patterns. Happy quilting!

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Do you quilt? Or do you prefer only garment sewing? If you are a quilter do you have any essential tips to add to the list for newbies?

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December 25, 2018 8 comments

#makeyourstash Buying behaviour Opinion pieces Sustainability thoughts

On the psychology of sewing FOMO

written by Kate

Do you get Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO)? What has this got to do with sewing or sustainability?

Well, whilst our #makeyourstash challenge was running, I wrote a post on fabric shopping culture after listening to a hilarious podcast. Economist Richard Denniss poked fun at human behaviour and the way we see value and status, defining affluenza as “that strange desire we feel to spend money we don’t have to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t know”.

Today I want to talk about sewing FOMO and consider how social media contributes to this. I was inspired to write this after reading one of Dominique Major’s newsletters about the trouble with trying to stay original when your mind is oversaturated with what everyone else is doing.

It is not uncommon to arrive at a sewing event wearing the same thing as someone else.
– Dominique Major, Major Mondays

Sewing FOMO dress stress incident

My last dress stress incident was pretty recent. A long time ago I bought some fabric from a mainstream indie online shop (is that an oxymoron?) from a pretty well known UK brand Lady McElroy that has a range of printed cotton lawn. A couple months later, a pattern brand picked up the fabric from the same store and used it for a sample that subsequently appeared in all the promotional pictures. The popularity of the fabric skyrocketed and it seemed like everyone had it!

By the time I knew the theme of the New Craft House summer sewing party was “tropical” my obvious choice was this dress … I just had this niggling feeling that I would be matching someone else. It was an unwarranted worry but a first world worry nonetheless, knowing that at least two people I knew who were also going also had dresses from that same fabric!

Sew Over It Penny dress made up in Lady McElroy cotton lawn

New patterns and fabric are relentless

I have said before that I don’t believe that sewing can be completely disconnected from fashion. Our fabric has to come from somewhere and there are definite trends in sewing that more often than not follow trends in fashion. From my time on Instagram, I’ve noticed that every time that popular indie pattern brands release new patterns, people get r.e.a.l.l.y super excited. Particularly if it is a simple low effort pattern, within a few weeks, pictures of that garment are peppered all over the internet.

I don’t consider myself immune to this phenomenon. Once I felt the need to make almost every single pattern release from pattern brands I liked … until I really felt burnt out and couldn’t keep up anymore because there of just too much stuff coming out all the time. And what was I doing it for? Sure the pure pleasure of making stuff kept me going, but even that ended up having its limits for me.

Is sewing FOMO a thing?

So what is it that makes us behave like this? I’m all for supporting indie pattern brands but why do we get so hung up on making the latest and greatest? You could argue that if a pattern or a fabric is popular, it must be a good thing and people must have good taste. Or, perhaps, we are addicted to social media and buy in to advertising, even if subconsciously. My reasoning is in part using the #makeyourstash discussions on Instagram, where quite a few people that said they felt that a primary reason their fabric stash had really built up was seeing something beautiful on social media and wanting it as well.

Social media influencer marketing

Influencer
a person who has established credibility from an engaged audience
someone who facilitates purchase decisions of others because of their authority, knowledge, position or relationship
an online content creator, creating content geared to a specific audience/someone who facilitates purchase decisions of others because of their authority, knowledge, position or relationship)
– Be More Hive

In fashion, brands use influencers. Sewing is no different although the market is smaller than fashion – you’ll have seen Pfaff and Burda influencers that are heavy social media users and bloggers. Even the independent shops know this works – how often have you seen fabric shops call out for a blogging team? The blogger gets free fabric and publicity, and so does the fabric shop. Win win right? No wonder you might be sucked into sewing FOMO and feeling like you need to keep up. Even just looking at people sharing their makes tagging the pattern house or fabric shops (I often do this) sometimes feels like unintentional advertising. Regardless of whether it is to give credit to the pattern brand, show people what a made-up version of the pattern looks like, or just share because its social media and its nice to share.

Sewing FOMO vs sustainability

The way we consume media content has changed so much in recent years, especially the ease with content can be created. Because of that, influencer marketing is only going to become more important. I know I prefer to see “real” people promote stuff they like if it is in line with their own personal branding.

What I like less is the actual marketing itself, no matter whether it is a fancy campaign with models we might not have heard of, or bloggers and instagrammers. Ultimately the point is to sell you more stuff. I wrote here about how advertising was created in the 1950s – fashion wanted to accelerate obsolescence and so trends were born. Fast forward decades and advertising hasn’t changed. We are still being told that we should buy more stuff or we’ll miss out! and be less cool!

FYI, I am approached reasonably regularly on whether I’d like a pattern or fabric in exchange for a review on this blog or Instagram. Normally I say no – besides not wanting new fabric, I want to keep this blog and my insta pretty free from sponsored advertising. This is because I want my home on the internet to be all about sharing sustainability messages and commentary with you (with a little sewing mixed in) and highlight what I think is worthwhile. I am not saying influencers shouldn’t exist or that advertising isn’t a bad thing, it just isn’t what I want to do myself.

Managing sewing FOMO

By now you’ll probably be telling me to lighten up a bit – its just sewing, and sewing isn’t quick and easy like handing over cash or your card to buy ready to wear, so get over it. Right? Yeah, I know.

But I really do believe that we should be conscious of the fact that advertising (intended or otherwise) is in our lives every day, and it cultivates FOMO. I get it; when interested in sewing, social media is excellent for checking out what other people are making. You too can have that fabulous top in that fabric if you want!

So what works for you? Maybe you can scroll through tons of inspiration, read all the fabric shop newsletters and not want anything. If that’s you, then please share with me your secret! I had a few people on #makeyourstash on Instagram conversations saying they unsubscribed from everything and avoided social media. For me, I love the community that it generates so I don’t want to go cold turkey all together. But I do try and remember that nice pictures take a lot of work and are often staged. Even by people like me who don’t get paid to do any of it. And finally, there will always be more patterns and more fabrics. They will always be there for you when you are ready to make them, and the FOMO will probably go away when the next new thing comes out.

Do you get sewing FOMO? Are you ok with it or does it bother you? How do you manage it? Please share in the comments!

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psychology of FOMO

July 20, 2018 41 comments

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