Companies are competing for your dollar this weekend during Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, but one business has a different idea about the consumer craze.
Clothing brand Lifestyle Over Luxury was created by former Western student Jeff Duke about a year ago, and will not be taking part in any sales.
The reasoning? He’d rather fail than lose sight of what his brand stands for.
“That mentality society has to buy as much as we possibly can for as cheap as we possibly can have such an environmental and social impact people don’t even realize. The cheaper things are produced usually means the less ethically and environmentally consciously they are produced.”
What needs to change is something Duke calls “fast fashion.”
“People want $15 clothes that are basically disposable. They wear them for 6 months and then they have to go shopping again. 85 million pounds of clothing are thrown out in the US annually.”
Duke hopes his brand will inspire people to look at the world a little differently, and selling t-shirts is just the medium to do that. For every item sold, Lifestyle Over Luxury pulls out one garbage bag full of trash from the ocean. The idea is to give back what you take.
He knows first hand that happiness doesn’t come from the accumulation of things.
“I had great grades, promising future, fancy car, fancy clothes, and I was miserable. So I ended up for the last six years, travelling around the world with nothing but a backpack and I’ve been way happier. I guess that realization I came to is something I wanted to share with other people.”
While Duke understands it’s easy to get caught up in it all the deals, he encourages consumers to look into the brands they’re buying from in order to vote with their dollar and see a change in the world.
Check out their Facebook video:
