How to restyle the pieces you no longer love, with fashion specialist Thea Basiliou
In partnership with Collarts
Words by Ella Ferris
“I always think that if you really loved something once, you could love it again.”
You need to clean out your closet. How does that sentence make you feel? Sheepish? Same. I have a seemingly bottomless Ikea bag in the back of the closet full of clothing I no longer reach for, but am still attached to. There they remain gathering dust, out of sight and out of mind. Meanwhile, I continue sourcing new clothes, throwing the older ones to the dreaded Ikea bag.
One day, the bag will end up in the boot of my car, where I’ll drive around with it for a few months before it eventually ends up at the op shop. Or I’ll sell a couple of pieces and have a strained interaction with a stranger from marketplace. These are both worthwhile, better alternatives to simply throwing my unwanted clothing away (even though a huge percentage of our donated clothing eventually ends up in landfill anyway).
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But what about the steps between falling out of love with a garment and giving it up? What about a second shot at love for me and my clothes? Sustainable fashion expert Thea Basiliou has some thoughts on how we can manage the amount of clothing we consume. She suggests we start by looking at what’s already in our wardrobes.
In her longstanding fashion career, Thea has been a champion of Australasian and international labels and an advocate for sustainable fashion. She’s consulted with Australian Fashion Week on the National Selection Panel, the Brisbane Fashion Festival and Queensland Government, and she was Program Manager at Melbourne Fashion Festival. Now, she’s mentoring and lecturing fashion design students at Collarts, as well as other Melbourne instutions, guiding the next-gen designers into a more sustainable industry. Her approach to cleaning out your closet? Start with an audit.
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What does ‘auditing’ the wardrobe mean?
You might hate this, but it really is about being thorough and sorting through the entire wardrobe with a critical eye, “from top to bottom and evaluating what you are loving and wearing,” says Thea. Edits to the wardrobe might mean mending or altering some pieces, selling or donating, or actually just putting things away for a while (shoving winter coats into an empty suitcase anyone?) I asked Thea if I should be Marie Kondo-ing to deal with my, uh, problem. Her take is that no two edits will look the same because “each person is different and has very particular relationships with their clothes,” which is great to know for those of us who are sentimental about old pieces. “I always think that if you really loved something once, you could love it again,” she says.
How to restyle your wardrobe
When we edit, we’re looking at the investments we’ve already made and trying to find their potential for restyling. All that really means is thinking about a garment in a new light. Maybe it could be paired with something completely different to what you would usually wear it with. Does it need some alterations to be more comfortable or sit differently? Could it be transformed into an entirely new garment?
According to Thea, “Anything at all can be thought about in a new way… [what you choose] depends on your relationship with the garment and how much you want to hold on to its original form.” There may also be times when restyling isn’t the practical choice – lifestyle changes happen, our bodies change, our physical needs change – but we should take these factors into consideration while also asking: Could these pieces work in the future?
The benefits of restyling your own wardrobe
Why bother with restyling? Well, aside from the sustainability aspect, Thea says we already devote a huge amount of time, responsibility, money and emotional attachment to our clothes. It simply makes more sense to look at the items already available to us, which we’ve invested so much into, before adding to the pile. Resisting the trend-cycle urge to throw our clothes away when we’re ‘done’ with them also encourages you to get creative – like Project Runway’s Tim Gunn said: “Make it work’. If you need help in this department, Thea suggests getting a friend with a good eye to do a home styling session, or hiring a professional personal stylist to play cupid for you and your unloved clothes.
If you’re in Melbourne next week, Thea’s running an interactive workshop in collaboration with Melbourne Fashion Week and Collarts, which will focus on body positivity and using fashion as a means of self-expression. There, you can learn more about editing your wardrobe and even bring along a garment you no longer wear to find new possibilities for styling it. It’s all about discovering your unique style identity and rekindling the joy for the garments we once loved.
To explore Collarts’ fashion courses, head here.
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