People who defend not washing clothes – 06/17/2023 – Equilibrium
[ad_1]
Bryan Szabo and his team spent hours poring over photos of worn-out jeans.
The images included vintage fades, with bands of off-white fabric, and high contrast fades, honeycomb patterns behind the knees, and burrs in the crotch area.
The community’s top “faders” received praise on the internet. “This groin repair feels really good,” claims one person.
Another says: “subtle, even tones…near perfect balance of…fading patterns with spectacular blue tones.” The latter was the winner.
It was the judging of a competition, called the Indigo Invitational, which gets people all over the world to wear unbleached — unwashed — jeans for a year.
But the competitors aren’t just the world’s top denim faders. They are also champions in another aspect: they wash their pants very little.
Because denim softens when washed with soap, one of the secrets to achieving high-contrast patterns is to avoid washing your jeans. Everyone follows this technique — from members of the so-called no-wash club to the CEO of Levi’s.
For Szabo, the low-washing habit began when he bought his first pair of raw jeans in 2010. He traveled to Europe from his native Canada and brought his jeans along for a six-month trip.
“Having those smelly jeans was one of my quirks,” he says. “It smelled awful.”
He met his future wife in Budapest, Hungary. Jeans became a character in the relationship.
“My jeans were, for example, in a pile on the floor at the foot of the bed,” he recalls. “You walked into the room and you could smell [dele]… I was very lucky that my wife was so interested in me at that time.”
The Indigo Invitational competition is now entering its fifth year. Szabo estimates that more than nine out of ten competitors wash their pants after wearing them 150 or 200 times.
“Some of these pants, when the end of the year starts to come, I wouldn’t want to have around,” he said. “They will probably smell bad.”
Szabo says some of his friends who wear raw denim go even further, adopting what he calls a “never wash philosophy.”
In one such case, “in very tight spaces, like small elevators, for example, if the ‘guy’ is wearing certain pants, you can smell a little bit,” he says. “Some examples of their best fades are also displayed at exhibitions in the denim trade. [As calças têm] an aroma… it’s not a bad smell, actually, but it’s a smell.”
Instead of resorting to the washing machine, the faders of raw jeans learn other ways to take care of their clothes, such as exposing them to ultraviolet rays (“I call it sunbathing”, according to Szabo) or simply leaving them to air for one night.
Szabo himself also uses the washing machine. “As soon as [minha esposa] manages to smell my jeans, she lets me know and they immediately go to the wash.”
Denim wearers aren’t the only ones to cut back on washing. British fashion designer Stella McCartney made headlines in 2019 when she detailed her low-washing habits. She told The Guardian newspaper: “Basically, in life, the general rule is: if you really don’t need to clean anything, don’t clean it. I don’t change my bra every day and I don’t put clothes in the washing machine simply because I used them. I’m incredibly hygienic, but I’m not a fan of dry cleaning, or any washing, really.”
Others are rethinking their washing habits out of concerns for the environment or rising electricity costs. In the case of the jeans group, Szabo says that most are driven by aesthetic concerns that “just happen to be sustainable”.
Mac Bishop, founder of clothing company Wool & Prince, explained to the Fast Company website that he adopted a focus on “convenience and minimalism”, which was well accepted by male consumers (“particularly those who already dislike doing laundry”), when he started promoting his women’s brand called Wool&.
He figured that after centuries of sexist advertising about laundry, women would not react as well to the idea of not doing their laundry. His impression was confirmed by surveys, which show that, with women, environmentalism is a more effective reason to convince them.
Currently, the Wool& brand sells merino wool dresses with the help of a “challenge” that asks customers to wear the same dress every day for 100 days. One of the common consequences for people who take up the challenge is “the reduction in washing from using merino daily,” according to Rebecca Eby of Wool&.
Chelsea Harry, from Connecticut, in the United States, is a Wool& customer. She tells the BBC that she grew up “in a house where you washed everything after using it once. Towels after using it once, pajamas after using it once.”
Until Harry lived for a summer with his grandmother, who taught him to put his pajamas under his pillow in the morning and wear them again at night. And then she met her husband, who, according to her, “hardly does any laundry”.
Lastly, during the pandemic, Harry started camping and hiking. That’s when everything really changed.
“Of course you can’t shower after you’ve walked all day and then go to sleep in a tent or tent,” she says.
Her hiking buddies recommended she wear Ex Officio brand wool lingerie, which can be worn for days on end, or can be washed and dried quickly. With these and other woolen clothes, Harry found he could hike and camp for days and still feel comfortable.
“So I started to think,” she says, “why not do this in my daily life?” And that’s what happened.
odors and sensitivity
Harry isn’t worried about the smell. “I trust my nose,” she says.
When she wears a new outfit, with a different wool composition, she can smell it — something that, she says, never happens with her other clothes, even when she travels to tropical destinations, like the Middle East, in the summer.
Like Szabo, she uses tricks to avoid washing her clothes, like putting them out in the air at night or spraying vinegar or vodka under her armpits.
“I just love, at the end of the day, hanging up my wool dress, my wool pants, my wool socks,” she says. “That’s what I do. I hang it by the window, take a shower, put on my Ex Officio lingerie, and in the morning I just put it all back on.”
“One of the worst things you can do to clothing, in terms of durability, is washing it,” according to Mark Sumner, professor of sustainable fashion at the University of Leeds in the UK. He explains that, during washing, clothes can tear, shrink and lose color.
With his colleague Mark Taylor, Sumner is studying how microfibers from household laundry end up in marine animals. But even though he claims that reducing the frequency of washing clothes is the right decision for the environment, he does not advocate abandoning the washing machine altogether.
“We don’t want people to think they can’t wash things because… they’re destroying the planet,” says Sumner. “It’s a matter of trying to strike the right balance.”
He reminds us that washing clothes is important for medical and hygienic reasons, for example, for people who suffer from eczema and are trying to avoid irritation caused when our skin’s natural bacteria multiply inside our clothes.
And it’s also important for people’s self-esteem that they “don’t feel embarrassed about their clothes because they are dirty or smelly.”
The pursuit of balance
If you’re planning on watching others decide how often to load your washing machine, think twice.
Sumner and Taylor say that when it comes to washing habits, there are no standards. We all use different water temperatures, wash cycles, and color and fabric combinations. And even scientists face the same dilemmas as most people.
“I’ve been working with fabrics for 30 years now,” says Sumner, “and I have to say that I should separate the cotton from the synthetic, the white from the colored…but honestly, I don’t have the time.”
The best solution seems to be flexibility.
“If your clothes don’t smell, don’t worry [em lavá-las]”, guides Sumner. “And, when you go to wash them, be sure about what to do to keep the clothes clean, but in the most effective way.”
He suggests washing clothes on a lower heat setting or running a really short cycle without using laundry detergent.
After all, washing clothes often consumes hours of your life. Who has time for that?
“I’m really interested in sustainability, the environment and the management of natural resources,” says Chelsea Harry. “But I’m also worried about my time.”
Bryan Szabo is also concerned about sustainability, but he has other reasons for abandoning overzealous cleaning habits.
“I have other things to do,” he says. “I have a dog to walk.”
This text was published here
[ad_2]
Source link
