An American College Chaplain and Episcopal Parish Priest has made a record of wearing one dress for one hundred days. Fifty two-year-old Sarah Robbins Cole took up the 100-day challenge that was started by an American sustainable clothing brand, Wooland.
Sarah's entire Instagram account is dedicated to this challenge and almost all her posts show her in the black Rowena Swing Dress that was created by the Wooland for their 100-day challenge. According to Wooland, the dress was designed keeping in mind their three founding principles: live simply, consume carefully, and do good. The brand sent dresses to the first fifty people who volunteered to wear the dress for the duration of the challenge.
A resident of Boston, USA, Sarah posted her first Instagram post on September 6, 2020 that shows her in the black swing dress as she takes a mirror selfie.
In a total of 114 posts on her Instagram handle, Sarah has documented her 100 days of wearing the same dress and even shared her experience. On December 26, 2020, Sarah posted her 100th day of wearing the same dress and wrote in the caption that she cannot wait to declutter her closet. Sarah wrote that even though she is great at decluttering but wearing just one dress for 100 days is a valuable lesson in how little we need. Describing her childhood and the house that she grew up in, Sarah said that it was a 19th century’s modest farmhouse house in Vermont, where the closets were tiny.
She further said that the original inhabitants would never have imagined how inexpensive clothes would become from as far away as China and the amount of clothes most people in the United States would buy, own, launder and dispose of within a year or two.
Describing the purpose of the 100-day challenge, Wooland said that they wish to encourage people to find contentment in a life of less. The challenge wishes to make people aware of the vices of fast fashion and its ill-effects on labourers in third world countries who are paid meagre wages for their work. The brand also said that the modern age supports a life that favours over-consumption, and they think that this is unsustainable on every level.
Hence, to bring a change in consumer behaviour, the brand decided to start a change in perspective and provide proper tools to its customers. Instead of pushing its customers towards minimalism, they came up with a creative way of letting the customers be their own judge.