Slow down with us this Slowvember

This month at Vino Supraja, we wanted to share with you our take on ‘Slowvember’. Maybe you’ve come across Slowvember already – it’s a term that has taken on different meanings with different brands, but it originated as an art challenge. The challenge was to slow down and spend the month of November creating something beautiful. As you may know, we love creating beautiful things here at Vino Supraja and we love slow fashion, so we thought we’d challenge you to celebrate our version of Slowvember!

The challenge

Slow fashion is all about slowing down consumption in the fashion industry. By consuming less as individuals, we can help to reduce the enormous carbon footprint that the fashion industry has on our planet.

When we consume less, we reduce demand, and when we reduce demand, manufacturers produce less. For the environment, this is a huge positive, because when production goes down, pollution also goes down, landfill does down, the strain on garment workers goes down and guess what? Natural resources go up! It’s a win:win situation all round!

With this is mind, we want to challenge you to do one thing this Slowvember in support of slow fashion. Here are some ideas:

Get creative and upcycle

 When you upcycle old items of clothing, you breathe new life into them, prevent waste and even save money. You might think you need to be an expert with a sewing machine to transform clothing into something new, but that’s not the case. There are plenty of tutorials on the internet which provide tips, tricks and inspiration for upcycling clothes and fashion accessories with minimal skill required. We particularly love these creative, ‘no-sew’ ideas from BluePrint DIY:

 Organise or attend a clothes swap party

 We’re well into autumn now and heading at full speed into winter. For many of, us a change in the seasons means a change in our style staples – as well as an urge to splurge on new pieces. In reality, the clothes we wore last year are probably perfectly wearable again. Repeating your looks is a key to keeping your wardrobe sustainable, but if you’re really sick of the sight of last year’s knitwear, then why not arrange or attend a clothes swap party?

Clothes swaps can be organised with a few friends or on a larger scale. Check out social media for events near you. It’s a fun way to socialise, change up your look and extend the life of your clothes. It’s also free!

Take a look at how this YouTuber got on at her first clothes swap party:

 Create a capsule wardrobe

A capsule wardrobe consists of a limited number of clothes which can be mixed and matched to create a wide range of looks. The key to creating a wearable capsule wardrobe is giving careful consideration to each piece of clothing that you choose to include. It’s important to think about how you can incorporate each item into different outfits.

We spoke with Silke, the founder of Silke Styles, who gave us some great tips and tricks for starting a capsule wardrobe. She recommends beginning with a base of a few items, tops and bottoms (skirts, trousers) and from those, you’ll be able to create a combination of looks. 

 The main benefit of living with a capsule wardrobe is that you learn to be more thoughtful and selective about the clothing you buy and wear. It helps to avoid those ‘closet orphans’ as Silke puts it. These are the clothes that we buy on impulse and then hardly wear- I think we can all admit to having a few of those!

To learn more from Silke about creating a capsule wardrobe, watch our full interview with her here:

 Or, you can read our blog post which covers everything you need to know!

Get in touch!

Will you be trying out any of our Slowvember challenges? We’d love to hear from you about what you’re doing to support sustainable fashion. You can get in touch with us any time on social media or by email.

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