Before You Buy From Temu or Shein… Watch This

0:00I think it's interesting because it's been a few hundred years that we've had this idea of very deliberate fashion, but we've got to the point where it changes so rapidly. You know, you've got brands like Shein that are launching 2000 new products every single day. You know, you get to that point. That's not fashion anymore. That's just stuff. That's just this sort of endless tidal wave of low quality shit that just is getting sort of washed at us. and we're all sort of and I think a lot of people are starting to to see that there's no there's no there's no good in that really like the important thing is but there is a place for but there is a place for fashion if it's done in a way that it it creates value all the way along the chain and I think this is the point that that I this is the thinking I'm coming to now that you can have fashion.

0:55Patrick Grant:It's OK to have fashion because I think it's quite natural as a human being to want to change your clothes. You know, as we grow up, as we go through life, we move from place to place. We might want to change the way we look. It's perfectly normal and natural. You know, in the in the in the natural world, other animals are, you know, putting leaves on their heads and adorning their nests and doing all sorts of things in different ways. There's something quite primal about that and there's nothing inherently wrong with it but the problem has gotten that that the way that that works particularly in the clothing industry but it's the same in homewares and furniture and all sorts of stuff now i think it is okay to want to change things but is it but you want to do it in a way where all of the things that are created and sold create value they create value in in the in the run-up to the point at which they're sold so in the way in which they're made.

1:50So, you know, it is perfectly, you know, it's perfectly good to make an object, you know,

1:56Patrick Grant:where the material that it's made from is sourced in a way that does some good. You know, it provides a living for farmers in, you know, places where cotton grows or places where wool is farmed. And, you know, as long as that is done in a way that isn't harming the environment and isn't, isn't causing, you know, poverty conditions to be laid upon these people. And it isn't, you know, the moment we've got this massive problem with Kashmir, for example, because basically they've over farmed Kashmir so badly that they've got twice as many Kashmir goats in the same amount of land. And it's killed.

2:31It's killing the ecosystem completely. You know, it's the sort of stuff that we just. So as long as all of that creation and the way that these, you know,

2:39Patrick Grant:The way that the clothes are made, the people who make them are paid well for the for their labor and for their skill and their knowledge. And that the people who design them, design them with some care, with some view to them being objects of lasting value, not just things that are kind of utterly ephemeral. And that once you've bought it and worn it, it will have a long life, either with you, because it has been made in a way that means you're not you're not going to feel bored of it instantly. And if you wear it for a long time, it isn't just going to fall apart. But also, if you then decide you're bored of it, someone else is going to want it.

3:16You can pop it onto eBay and somebody else will pick it up in a heartbeat and it will continue to have value for a very, very long time. And I think that is the important thing in all of the things that we buy and sell. Have they got lasting value? You know, have they been designed in a way very specifically to give them a chance to have a long life? And have they been designed in a way so that their manufacture and the things that they're made from only do good stuff? Because there is plenty of opportunity. Like we all need stuff.

3:47Patrick Grant:But the problem is most of the things that we're being sold are made in a way that only cause bad shit to happen in the production. And once we've worn them once or twice, no fucker else wants them. You know, it's like no one on the world. I won't name the brand, but I was at a conference in Glasgow last year, Glasgow Uni, about textile recycling, which in effectives, you can't recycle textiles economically, but you can give them to somebody else and somebody else might want them. But we've got to a point where there is so much of this stuff on the planet already that all the places we used to ship the stuff that we don't want to, they no longer want it.

4:26Patrick Grant:So we used to ship a lot like we used to ship about half of all the clothes we we gave away to charity shops and put in clothing bins to sub-Saharan Africa, Indonesia, South America, places like that. They've got enough. They've got in fact, they've got way more than they can possibly deal with. So I just don't want any more. And, you know, insert any one of those ultra fast fashion, low cost products. No one in the world. It is just rubbish. It literally has to then be incinerated or go to landfill because it has no it has no value past the point at which I've worn it once or twice.