We met Eszter at the Fashion Revolution roundtable discussion, and I really liked her approach to creating a sustainable and conscious wardrobe, as well as how many different tools and perspectives she approaches this topic.
Eszter Gózon, the Less Waste stylist, wants to help those who contact her find their own path to their dream wardrobe, whether it's a capsule wardrobe, sustainable brands, second-hand clothes, or newly purchased but quality pieces that they can use and love for many, many years.
We asked Eszter to put together a few outfits using Printa pieces and tell us about her mission and the tools she uses to build a sustainable wardrobe. Stay tuned to learn how you can make the most of sustainable fashion and build a conscious, stylish wardrobe!
What is your mission?
Oh, there's more to it. :) One is to help as many women as possible get rid of the burden of worrying about their appearance, to help as many people as possible know and love their own unique beauty, and the other is to help as many people as possible know about the negative environmental and social impacts of the fashion industry, and to try to do something about it with their own means.
You spent a lot of time abroad. What experiences did you gain there that you were able to use in your work at home?
Wherever I lived, the biggest difference for me was always the way people treated others' clothing and appearance. For the first time in my life, living near Paris, I felt a sense of relief that no one commented on my snow-white skin color in the summer (either in public or in private).
Later, I lived in Germany for about 6-7 years, when I first started to notice that when we visited Hungary, people looked at us, stared, observed, and evaluated us, and not just at me, but also at each other on the street (I'm sure everyone is familiar with the sidelong glances we get from people passing by, assessing our appearance from head to toe)... It never occurred to me before how incredibly critical we are of others, as I myself lived this way, but during my life abroad, I had become so used to criticizing the appearance of others (where I lived, it wasn't about what someone looked like, but how much they contributed to the community) that I suddenly didn't know what to do with the looks directed at me. Since then, one of my main goals has been to convey to as many people as possible the perspective in which the love of fashion does not necessarily involve evaluating or criticizing the appearance of others, and in which we do not have to wear something because we want to please others, but because it is the best way to express who we are at the moment.
What do you think a sustainable wardrobe looks like?
For me, a sustainable wardrobe is a wardrobe in which all the pieces are worn and loved for as long as possible. It is not mandatory to build a capsule wardrobe, you do not have to follow a certain style, but it is important that our wardrobe does not become a center of overconsumption, from which a huge amount of clothing waste is generated every year. In addition, there are other criteria for building sustainable wardrobes (such as how we take care of the clothes we have already purchased, what materials we wear, etc.), but if someone wants to start moving towards a more sustainable wardrobe, I would definitely tell them to wear their existing clothes for as long as possible instead of constantly buying new ones and trying to somehow get rid of the clothes they are bored with.
How does color type and body type awareness help us dress sustainably?
I may be speaking against my own profession a bit, but I don't think everyone needs to know their color type. Some people love to wear makeup, play with different shades of color, and also easily sense what makes their complexion too pale or sickly, and their creativity would be severely limited by a color type palette. However, for those who need a tool that can make it easier to buy only clothes that will definitely look great on them even without makeup, and that they will most likely wear later on, color consulting can be a perfect solution.
The situation is similar with body composition analysis, there are those who have no problem with how to dress, for them it is worth going for such an analysis at most for the sake of fun, however, there are also many who were not interested in this topic before and would now open up to it, perhaps they have undergone major physical changes (whether due to weight loss/gain, childbirth or menopause), for them the knowledge can be incredibly useful, after which they will be able to tell how a given piece will look on them, even without trying it on, from the clothes hanging on the hanger; in addition, a body composition analysis can also help us avoid buying something that will then hang unused in the closet. One thing is for sure, the awareness necessary for sustainability cannot be saved in any way.
Fun fact! Tell us something interesting, strange or funny about yourself.
Have you ever been told that this is the most boring question you can ask? :D In a matter of seconds, you (or at least I) realize that you have to be super funny and interesting, and I'm at my funniest when that's not necessarily my goal (well, and when I'm really tired. Then you can't shoot me).
But let me tell you something interesting about myself that I haven't talked about anywhere before: I recently realized that no matter how much I admire the artistically crafted pieces of clothing, the person who wears them is still more important and interesting to me. Why did they wear them? Why now? What is their purpose? Does they want to hide behind the clothes or show them off? These are endlessly exciting questions for me, and I am grateful every day that thanks to my work I can deal with exactly this: people who want to express themselves through clothes.