The "Slow Fashion" Movement
As fashion trends cycle thru faster and faster, the term “Fast Fashion” has become part of our vocabulary. As soon as a trend has been shown on the runway, it’s a quick dash on the production line to get it into the hands of the customer as fast as possible. No more waiting until the next season and remembering the trend you wanted to try…now you can get it ahead of the next season and wear it right away with a few pre-seasonal tweaks to make it work.
With this quickened pace, fashion trends have also been appearing younger, offering the ideas to a much wider age range. Go to the zoo and you can see skinny jeans tucked into tall boots with a cute top and faux fur vest (very zoo-appropriate!) on a 7 year old, 28 year old, 49 year old, and 65 year old. Each will look fabulous and hip.
While this approach works great for casual wear, it’s caused a void in special occasion clothing and made shopping a bigger challenge for parents. Quality fabric and details have been eliminated in many garments in the rush to produce them, contributing to our “wear it a few times and throw it away” culture. Yet many of us still want more traditional and age-appropriate high-quality options when looking for a dress for Christmas, Easter, First Communion, or a flower girl. My 8 year old might want the same dress a 25 year old would wear, but this Mamma isn’t buying it. We have such a small window of time to put them in a charming and sweet dress and have them look like a little girl. Dressing little girls for a special occasion is now more challenging than ever.
At Strasburg Children, we prefer the Slow Fashion movement, although we might be the only ones using the term. We think girls of all ages should have a beautiful dress that is age appropriate and timeless, complete with a longer, full skirt for the best twirls. Our fabrics are only 100% cotton or silk, and our details are truly heirloom quality. We wait for the silk worms to produce fabulous silk dupioni with just the right sheen and color combination. Artisans continue to produce our smocking designs with their hands rather than sending the fabric through a pleating and embroidery machine. During production, each design is finished with French seams for a clean finish that covers all edges that could rub tender skin. Your favorite dress is created to be shared and loved by younger siblings or cousins as well, becoming a family heirloom.
Fast Fashion just doesn’t fit us. And we hope that means as much to you as it does to us.