Fashion Manifesto: The Guide for the Style-Savvy

By Sofia Hedström, Anna Schori and Vivienne Westwood

Fashion Manifesto will forever change your relationship to clothes and fashion. Refuse to be a fashion slave and start thinking creatively about your own outfit! Renew your wardrobe and your style, but without having to shop! Master the seven essential fashion rules for streamlining your closet and explore over fifty different ways to reinvent garments.

Equal parts memoir, manifesto, and how-to, this book chronicles the experiences of Sofia Hedström, as she subjected her overweight wardrobe to a detox and stopped clothes-shopping for one year. Her mission was to become fashion fit, and together with well-known photographer Anna Schori, she found a thriving frugal fashion movement and discovered the secrets of both young fashionistas and expert masters of style from around the world. Hedström proves that we can all be “style smart”!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Release date: Apr 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781626362512

Book preview

FASHION MANIFESTO

The Guide for the Style-Savvy

Written by Sofia Hedström

Photos by Anna Schori

Foreword by Vivienne Westwood

Translated by Sarah Snavely

Skyhorse Publishing

With thanks to...

Mirjam Blidö—our project assistant.

We would also like to thank Sass Brown for her fashion expertise, Christina Bild for proofreading, Henriette Hedström for her patience with the recipes, Eyglo Larusdottir for her assistance in locating the style-savvy in Iceland, Gigi Odéhn for her ingenious tips, Maria Ramström for lending us her studio in Stockholm, Erica Ogawa for re-creating hairdos from the past, Bonnie Slotnick for finding us books we couldn’t have done without, and Ishraq Zraikat for providing Sofia with a place to stay in Milan.

From Sofia: I would like to thank her family and friends who helped her endure 365 shopping-free days. It’s not easy to break old habits, yet thanks to your support I managed to become one of the style-savvy.

From Anna: I would like to thank her husband, Mark Kahaian, for all his support and love while working on this project, and Casper, who spent the majority of his first year alive assisting on style-savvy photo shoots. I also wish to thank my grandmother, Gerty Edgren, a truly style-savvy woman from whom I inherited the sewing school book (Märtaskolans handbok), which we referred to many times while working on this book.

Copyright ©2013 by Sofia Hedstrom

First published by Norstedts, Sweden in 2011, as Modernmanifestet by Sofia Hedstrom and Anna Schori. Published by agreement with Norstedts Agency. Photography copyright ©2013 Anna Schori

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [e-mail].

Skyhorse® and Skyhorse Publishing® are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

www.skyhorsepublishing.com

10987654321

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file. ISBN: 978-1-62087-060-0

Printed in China

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

BUY LESS, THINK MORE

Foreword by Vivienne Westwood

FROM THRIFTY STYLE TO THROWAWAY FASHION

THE STYLE-SAVVY SHOPPING DETOX: ONE SHOPPING-FREE YEAR

THE STYLE-SAVVY FASHION MANIFESTO

THE STYLE-SAVVY RECIPE COLLECTION

Weather-Worthy Survivors

Jackets, coats, and hoodies

Sustainable Work Garments

Glam up style-restrictive rags and make use of old work clothes

Strong and Stylish

Tricks for the classic cloth that is denim

Long-Lasting Fancy Frills

Vitamin boosts for trend-weary frocks

Glam Up an Old Favorite

Tips for dull T-shirts

Hidden Beneath

For the layer closest to our skin

Stress the Small Stuff

Jewelry, shoes, and other effective accessories

Natural Boosts

Hair handicraft

Clothing Crisis Management

Tackle stains, holes, and other mishaps

Eternal Wardrobe

Find new uses for your clothing

Introduction

The entire 21st century has so far been characterized by trend hysteria, and throwaway chain store fashion has us consuming clothing just as we gorge ourselves on fast food. Week after week, we are driven on by an insatiable hunger to stuff our already bulging closets with the latest fashions, and with each and every trendy addition— which consequently hangs there sullenly with the price tag still intact—a glimpse of clothing common sense vanishes. The dime-a-dozen I want it yesterday! fashion industry has caused us stress and depleted our souls, with the outcome that many of us have simply lost our individual sense of style.

In order to reclaim my individual style and regain my clothing sensibility, I decided to subject myself and my bloated wardrobe to a cleansing detox. The rules were strict, yet simple: no trendy, seasonal, must-have garments, no tempting sale items and absolutely no impulse-purchased weekend glad rags to glam up a night on the town. Not a single pair of tummy-tightening tights would slither their way into a single shopping bag—this fashion experiment demanded that I buy absolutely nothing that could be considered clothing for an entire year.

EVERY MORNING FOR 365 DAYS I BATTLED AGAINST SHOPPING CRAVINGS

Once my style-savvy detox had developed into a book project, it became even more essential that I complete this clothing challenge. I wanted to prove that as a journalist working at the epicenter of the fashion world—a career choice that had me constantly bouncing between viewings, design interviews, and TV shoots with judging eyes continually cast upon me—that I could survive without shopping. Every morning for 365 days I battled against shopping cravings and armored myself against demanding clothing situations. I mingled at Paris Fashion Week, was surveyed from head to toe by notorious fashion critic and editor-in-chief of Vogue Anna Wintour, and posed for one of the planet’s most well-known street fashion photographers, Scott The Sartorialist Schuman. I was interested to see how the fashion industry would react to my attire, which had long since passed its best-by date, and in turn how their judgments would affect me. This was not an easy task, yet my old clothes and I managed to survive both a style-savvy shopping detox and the encounter with Anna Wintour’s critical gaze. For all of you with bulging wardrobes, I hope that this serves as extensive proof that you too can live without habitual shopping and throwaway fashion.

Clothing is often written off as a passing fancy, but this is where fashion skeptics are wrong. Clothing (yours, mine, and everyone else’s) influences our shared future, as new clothing leeches off of nature. If you abstain from allowing even one brand-new pair of socks to crawl its way into a shiny new shopping bag, you are making a difference. For years, Vivienne Westwood, one of the world’s first and foremost style-savvy individuals, has been trying to inform us that our bulging wardrobes damage the environment. Despite the fact that she is one of the most influential fashion designers out there, it has still taken time for people to listen up. Vivienne Westwood explains in the foreword why she believes it is high time to take fashion seriously. Vivienne Westwood, however, is not alone in her fight for sustainable clothing. style-savvy individuals can be located in small towns and in sprawling metropolises across the globe, and their movement is underway. Throughout the course of my shopping-free year, I came across a young generation imbued with a genuine passion for clothing, as well as older style gurus from places as diverse as Providence and Paris, who helped me understand that no one can define my personal style quite like I can—not even the fashion devils clad in Prada. The style-savvy taught me more about clothing than any fashion week in New York, London, Milan, or Paris had ever done. They showed me that clothing is not an endless succession of trendy, short-lived buying fads, but that it can be reformed, revived, and redesigned. Each and every piece of clothing has the potential to become something else, as long as it is viewed through the eyes of someone bit by the style-savvy bug.

AND ARMORED MYSELF AGAINST DEMANDING CLOTHING SITUATIONS.

When I set out on my style-savvy shopping detox, I had already begun losing my passion for clothing. The style-savvy helped me see that the clothing I don is a reflection of me, my feelings, and my preferences. I got the passion back. I started living hand in hand with my clothing, adapting it to suit my life ... I wore my fancy high heels to get my morning coffee, and I tailored my shirts, dresses, and skirts so that they adapted to my new detoxed sense of fashion instead of assigning them to the clothes heap of fashion duds. I became proud of my wardrobe and started focusing on the things I had over those I was lacking, and slowly stopped being tempted by throwaway fashion.

I hope that the Fashion Manifesto will help you as much as it helps me and other style-savvy individuals each and every day across the globe. Join our movement, begin exercising your style strength, and help us in our fight for better fashion!

Buy less, think more!

My motto is: Buy less, choose well, and select items that will last. Being a designer. I certainly own plenty of clothing, but my philosophy is that the more you wear what you own, the more you make it yours. Clothes are fun, and it is brilliant how they can affect our appearance and feelings, but it is essential that we begin to view the possibilities clothing offer us and fill them with life rather than toss them aside once we’ve worn them once or twice. I am always pleased when I see a chap on the street wearing the same thing he was wearing the last time I saw him. His clothes belong to him more than they belong to the store they came from—he has filled them with life.

Our relationship to clothing affects the environment. Everyone would like to see more eco-friendly fashion, but it is more vital that we start buying less. We unfortunately utilize only 5 percent of our clothing’s capacity and treat our attire like rubbish once we’ve tired of it. Try not buying any clothes for a period of time, or do what the author of this book did by not consuming for an entire year. You will begin to think of which clothing you use and how you use it. You need not be a fashion designer in order to alter your clothing—my roots are in the punk movement, which taught me that everyone has his or her own clothing tricks. Wear your boyfriend’s clothes, use