Sustainable Fashion: The 100-Day Dress Challenge

“Buy less, choose well, make it last.”

Vivienne Westwood, as quoted in this BBC article (link provided).

After four years, I’m going to embark on a new adventure or, rather, continue an adventure I paused a few years ago. I’ll be rejoining the banking industry. After working as a college professor and writer for several years, my business casual wardrobe needed a refresh. In a desire to reduce my contributions to the fast fashion problem and to simplify my life, I’ll be creating a capsule wardrobe built around this merino wool dress for the next 100 days (notably, this is not a sponsored activity – it’s all on my dime). 

Before I share more about this, here’s some background information about what led me to pursue sustainable fashion.

Why Sustainable Fashion Matters to Me

In the summer of 2018, my family and I decided to move back to our hometown in Arizona. We spent the previous eight years following my banking career to Colorado, Utah, and Washington. While we loved exploring new places and building friendships with new people, it was time to set down permanent roots for our children closer to much of our extended family. I started working remotely as a finance writer for an online publication, which gave us the flexibility we needed to move home.

We now live in a rural area of Northern Arizona, where we raise our children, chickens, goats, dogs, hamsters, and various other creatures. Living on a dirt road in a no-stop-light-town on the edge of civilization has been a fantastic way to raise our kids. We can gaze at fields of high mountain grasses and low mountain ranges for miles from our yard. The sky is so dark that we can see the Milky Way in all its glory on most nights. 

However, we’ve also had to learn to be more thoughtful about lots of things, such as (I may write more about some of these things in the future):

• Remembering to pick up mail at the post office: Our area is so rural that there is no USPS mail delivery at our home. We could put up a mailbox in a cluster of boxes a little over a mile from our home, but getting packages would still require a post office trip. So, we save the extra step and simply have our mail delivered to a post office box.
• Ensuring our pantry is well-stocked: There are no restaurants in our small town. Until recently, the main places to buy food were a Family Dollar and a convenience store (mainly processed options). As of late 2021, we have a small grocery store. Plus, I belong to a local CSA. Even so, having a well-stocked pantry saves me time and money.
• Combining trips to save fuel: Although we now have a few basic amenities in our town, taking a trip to the closest of these is more than 10 miles round trip. A trip into our area’s “big” town is a round trip adventure of more than 60 miles. So, we plan out our trips to reduce our fuel costs.
• Conserving water: Not every home in the U.S. has access to a well or city water supply. Instead, some homeowners must haul water to their properties and place it in large plastic storage containers. This is common in many areas of Arizona, including in Yavapai County, North Central Arizona, and some regions of Maricopa County. It is our situation, making water conservation always top-of-mind.

Sustainable living is important to me and is a big part of our lifestyle, including my fashion choices. About a year after moving here, I accepted a full-time role as a professor at a local university. Not only was I given a lot of flexibility over my schedule, but I could also (for the most part) wear what I wanted to work. I purposefully built a small wardrobe of quality clothing items. While I love my wardrobe, it’s mostly too casual for my banking role. So, it’s time to build a new one. Enter my new merino wool dress and the 100-day dress challenge.

The 100-Day Dress Challenge

As I was preparing to re-enter the banking industry, I came across the clothing company wool& and its 100-day dress challenge. The premise of this challenge is to encourage people to wear the same dress every day for 100 days. I’m always up for a challenge. Plus, I figured this would be an excellent way to build a capsule wardrobe around a quality piece of clothing that works with all aspects of my life. Moreso, I like that wool& is making progress towards sustainability. It’s a win-win situation.

So, here we are on day one of the 100-day dress challenge. If I can wear the same dress for 100 days in a row, then I’ll win the challenge. Regardless, learning how to dress more sustainably will be a win in my book. I’ll be posting here regularly about this challenge. Feel free to follow along on my adventure. The more, the merrier. Here we go!