Lookbook | The Make Do Collection
Use it up, wear it out, make do or do without.
This was the mindset of so many of the generations before ours, before mine.
To be sure, it was born out of necessity, rather than any real romantic or artful notion. The bulk of the feedsack garments and folk art from this collection came from the decades of the Great Depression, which is not a time in our history to be romanticized.
And yet the garments, homewares, objects and art from this time seem to evoke a real feeling of artful romanticism.
A feeling we tend to project onto the past anyway.
But it also is a story of pride. Of hard work. Of priorities being then, very different than what they are for many of us now.
I have tried really hard, especially in the concentrated past decade of my life, to live a life of “make-do”.
I already come from a line of people who have had more of a thrifty and fix-it-when-it-breaks mindset, but sometimes I take this to a somewhat extremist degree.
Like camping out of my car in places and situations that are objectively uncomfortable at best, and questionable at worst, during picking trips. Or making my own mascara from burnt almonds (that was in 2015 after reading a book on Zero Waste… that project did not result in positive outcomes.)
Or in the early years of my attempts at a more Thoreauvian existence, when I would refuse to turn on my window AC unit in my apartment for months at a time in the height of a Richmond, VA Summer. Which, if you’re not familiar with the climate of RVA, gets to well over 90 degrees with humidity on top of that for the bulk of June, July and August.
My friends didn’t come over much that Summer, needless to say.
But there are other practices, ones that I have adopted for the last decade or more, that have been really positive and that I am really proud of.
I don’t buy fast fashion, or really much of anything from any big box stores.
Amazon is a place I purchase from as last resort, vs. an easy go to.
Secondhand comes first in pretty much every possible way when it comes to the way that I consume and bring goods into my home and into my life.
I try really hard not to buy single-use items either.
I don’t buy paper products like paper towels or paper napkins and use rags and cloth napkins instead. Paper or plastic disposable products of any sort are foreign in our household, when we host, even outside, we bring the dishes with us.
We also don’t own a TV and do without a lot of what most would probably consider essentials or modern conveniences.
Of course we all have different markers for comfort, success, sustainability and morality. It’s hard to be a purist with much of anything in our lives.
This essay is shared from a place of genuine openness and conversation vs. telling you that I am doing it right and you aren’t!
That being said, I think that in this single-use, buy more, buy now economy, it bears challenging ourselves to embody a little more of the make-do mentality of our ancestors.
