Who Do You Dress For?

Most of us dress for an activity - work, play or socialize. And most of our daily dressing decisions revolve around clothing that fits our daily activities, and hopefully makes us feel good, too. But beyond that, do you really think about your clothes? After all, the clothes have met the basic requirements, right?

Marketing groups devote a lot of time to identifying trends and purchase behaviors and they have found that there are some clothing purchases that focus on buying local, buying American, or staying loyal to a brand, and there is an ever-growing population of purchasers who are purchasing based on personal belief. For some, that personal belief has to do with violations of labor laws, others whether you should wear fur/no fur/is faux fur really faux fur, and for a growing group, it has to do with environmentally friendly manufacturing practices.

So while you may be dressing to make yourself happy, and in a way that fits your beliefs and lifestyle, it is maybe not the correct question. Maybe the question is how you shop. Do you look for clothing that fits your purchasing preferences in the nearest local mall? Odds are that shopping at the mall will get you some great looking clothes, maybe even on sale, and are likely made in a country that doesn’t emphasize environmentally friendly clothing manufacturing. The other side of that coin is that driving to multiple local boutiques may use just as much gas and petroleum as it took to make the clothes in some other country.

So now what? Meet the internet. Shopping on the internet is very easy, and with today’s more liberal return policies, even though it’s not the most convenient shopping, it’s still good. Unless instant gratification or the process of shopping is one of your criteria, then maybe not so much. The biggest benefit about shopping on the internet is that if you’re a fairly patient shopper or great with Google, you can find clothing that meets your criteria without going anywhere, and if you want to share with your friends, there's always FaceBook, Twitter and Google+. So if you want to buy a sweater made from seaweed and milk, you can have it delivered to your door.  And if it doesn’t fit you can send it back. We here at Redress Raleigh like the idea of environmentally friendly shopping, obviously, and love people that dress to make themselves happy, in a way that fits their lifestyle.

We’d like to ask that in 2012, you think about how you shop, as well as who you dress for.