What one woman learned from a year of no shopping

Elsie in a Mwanza Glenn ensemble at the Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in Guyana

For this year’s final column, as we prepare to reflect on 2022 which raced by faster than Usain Bolt, kept and forgotten resolutions, the uncertainty of the new year and the anxiousness to bring this chaotic one to an end, here is an interview with Elsie Harry, who documented a full year of her commitment to no shopping and living more sustainably.

Ashma: What was your motivation behind your commitment to a year of no clothes shopping?

Elsie: The realisation that I had more clothes than I needed, and beyond that, I even had more clothes than I could accommodate in the places allocated to storing my clothes in my home. Rather than add to the problem by allocating more space to clothes, I decided to do the more sustainable thing – reduce the amount of clothes that I owned.