Remember back when you knew who was making what you were buying? When hard working people could make a living from producing quality items that lasted a life time? When you really thought about what you needed, bought it once and bought it right?
No??
Yeah me either. It's practically a foreign concept to our generation. We buy on impulse, we buy crap, crap breaks two days later, we throw crap in the rubbish, crap ends up in the crap heap. We shrug, didn't cost much anyway, we head to the next dollar store, buy the same crap in a different colour... the cycle continues!
I've been so guilty of this, so addicted to the 'want' for crap, so used to impulse shopping.
But lately I have really been opening my eyes to this amazing sub-culture that is fighting its way through the chain store pandemic. Young people who are learning old crafts, using local sustainable materials, spending painstaking hours perfecting each individual piece they make. And the result is something beautiful.
Anyway it would be fair to say that it has had a profound effect on the way that I think about... well almost everything really! It's a bit of a learning curve for sure. It's not easy to switch your brain from 'oh my god that's so cheap and I have to have it right now', to 'I really need this and wow okay it has a bigger price tag but that's okay because I'll be using it for the next 20 years'. But I'm trying, we're trying.
The reason I really bring this up is that there are changes coming to Dashfield Vintage, and they heavily reflect this new (to me) way of thinking.. So just a heads up :).
Great images! I totally get ya, we are trying to make a conscious effort this year to only buy things we need.
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