Every year as Black Friday rolls around, millions of people across Australia and the United States prepare to spend billions of dollars, largely on clothes. The same thing is happening across much of the world, and it’s costing our planet. So if you’re wanting that new purchase feeling, without adding to the harm, consider turning to Black Fridye…

In 2020, Americans spent US$9 billion on Black Friday, equal to about $6.3 million per minute. Last year, fast fashion brands sold clothes for as much as 99% off, with people buying dozens of garments for just a handful of cents each. Even more shocking, 80% of clothes bought on Black Friday are thrown out after being worn just once, or even never at all.

This year, 6.8 million Australians plan to shop on Black Friday and while this certainly makes the rich of the fashion industry richer, it all comes at a great cost to the planet, and the people who make our clothes.

Only 2% of garment workers (who are most often women of colour) are paid a fair living wage which covers their most basic needs – those meant to be protected as human rights. In fact, it’s estimated that it would take a Bangladeshi garment worker earning the minimum wage more than 4,000 years to earn the same amount that the fast fashion CEO she’s ultimately working for gets paid annually.

As clothes become ever cheaper due to this exploitation, we forget the value of clothes and the incredible skill required to transform fabric into something beautiful and wearable, full of frills, or pleats, or perfect curves to fit the frames of our bodies so well.

And it’s perhaps because of this amnesia, that each year, Australians buy an average of 27 kilograms of new clothing per person, while throwing away 23 kilograms of clothes that are sent to landfill.

Students pick daisies in a field, 1920s. © Vassar College

With the IPCC calculating the fashion industry’s climate impact at 10% of global carbon emissions, there are endless reasons to slow down our consumption of fashion. For our planet, which is struggling under the weight of everything we thoughtlessly discard, and choking from greenhouse gas emissions. For garment workers who deserve better. And even for our own wallets and wardrobes – which could be filled more thoughtfully, with ethically made, sustainable garments carefully chosen, that we truly love and treasure.

If you take a look inside your wardrobe today, you’ll probably find a whole lot of clothes that you haven’t worn for a long time. Maybe some aren’t the colour you like anymore, others are stained, faded, or they just don’t feel very ‘you’ anymore. It’s easy to feel a bit of guilt about these clothes: whether they either continue to collect dust, or instead if they get sent to op-shops full of clothes that aren’t wanted – and often dumped overseas.

What if instead, those clothes were black?

They wouldn’t be stained or faded anymore, they’d be in a timeless shade, and they’d give you that ‘brand new’ feeling. But instead of contributing to a culture of over-consumption, those clothes would have been given an extended life out of landfill. They’d also have saved the need to buy more stuff on a planet where we need to realise that less truly is more.

If this sounds like the dream, then consider Black Fridye, instead of mindless sales this Black Friday. The team at Citizen Wolf are behind this initiative, and they’ll dye black any clothes from any brand using GOTS certified environmentally friendly dye, and then send them right back to you.

Reignite sparks of joy in your wardrobe, by making it darker this Black Fridye – it might sound counterintuitive, but it absolutely works wonders.

Words by Emma Hakansson / See more about Citzen Wold here: citizenwolf.com | @citizen_wolf