Justin Donelly Works in Fashion's Past for Fashion's Future
Justin Donelly leads a life deeply submerged in the underground dealings of curated designer fashions he flips for profit between other members of the archival fashion community. Since high school, he’s traveled the north, from Massachusetts, to Maine, to New York City, in pursuit of excitement, fashion, and art. Donelly resides at Emmanuel College in Boston, Massachusetts, studying art education with the hopes of becoming a therapist whose techniques are rooted in creativity and self-expression. Always having the uncommon “look” that fashion so rigorously craves and eagerly consumes, he began his adventure as he navigated towards unique pieces on Japanese bidding sites. Since his first purchase of the Visvim sandals, he’s immersed himself in a world of fashion business, curtailing his pursuit of anything normative and conforming. He fell into a vacuum of fashion vernacular, undiscovered designers, and the damning standards the fashion community imposes on beauty, pushing him towards a journey of self-acceptance, after a long road of personal neglect. Donelly found his community with like-minded individuals online. Eventually, he was accepted to be a part of something larger than himself.
Donelly coincides with a team of enthusiasts who are dedicated to the preservation of historical, esoteric fashion. Donelly’s community exists as a proverbial encyclopedia which seeks to archive distinguished designers and their most notable seasons. He seeks to dismantle the ubiquitous intersperse of information, the embedded elitist hierarchy of fashion, and the secrecy entrenched around fashion’s most enigmatic characters — all while “consuming with care,” a slogan for the consumer shift to compostable, vegan, and/or second-hand clothing
Art by Hadley Breault
The archival community has been around for a long time. They deal with vintage clothing, meaning an item must be at least 20 years old, according to Lilah Ramzi, features editor at American Vogue. Since the 90s, the it-girls and cool club kids had their eyes on vintage archival fashion pieces, for this was when brands and labels were producing their best work. According to Donelly, exclusive designers are all the rage.
“I’m thinking of people like Vivienne Westwood, Chanel. We focus on observing fluctuations in prices and demands from different fashion markets around the globe, and pushes for niche fashions. Lots of people are looking to revamp their wardrobe using archival fashion pieces.”
From high school, Donelly continued to search and study various fashion sites, such as Grailed, and sourced items from Japan. He created an established Instagram page to document his growth, which helped to launch him into the public sphere to connect with a larger network of buyers and sellers. This ascent brought Donelly out of his dark state of rejection and into a light of pure elation. “I feel now that I’m a part of it, I try to be better versed in everything I do, and regard myself with the utmost professionalism,” he says. Aside from the satisfaction Donnely finds in this stimulating hobby, he’s also working towards a better world.
When asked about the insurgence of celebrities promoting vintage fashion to the public, and whether he felt that it cheapened the appeal of the archive, he replied, “I like it a lot.” Elaborating, he says, “I feel like it definitely gives a lot of recognition to our community, to a lot of the pages doing big things.” It has increased awareness of an esoteric hub of workers. He admits, “I also don’t appreciate it in the sense where I don’t want it to be perceived as something of materialism. I don’t want people to focus on the price points, I want people to focus on the designers and the work itself. The process and the thought behind it. I don’t think Kim Kardashian is doing that.”
Donelly’s fears of perceiving archival fashion as materialism because of his desire to introduce people to alternatives to fast fashion brands, a sector that is expanding and wreaking havoc on the environment. According to The World Bank, fashion contributes to 10% of the world’s carbon emissions and 87% of the textile used to make cheap garments is disposed of or incinerated without ever being used. “That’s really what I focus on,” Donelly says. “Decreasing textile waste and buying second-hand is the ultimate goal of my community.”
Donelly now rarely buys retail, and if he does, they’re severely marked down from warehouse sales that would otherwise be thrown away and contribute to textile waste. It’s not only fast fashion that’s contributing, however. “When these high fashion brands have an arrogance about them, they sell their pieces for a ridiculous market value. What happens is that not nearly enough people buy them, and they just go to rot in a dump. I’m hoping that with the trajectory the community is on, more and more people start to buy second-hand. Archival fashion is unmatched to fast fashion brands. You’ll have them for a lifetime if you maintain them.”
Donelly’s work out of respect: respect for designers, respect for ourselves, and respect for craft. Donelly, his friends, and other members of his community are shifting the fashion status quo. There has never been a more important time in our history for hobbies and activism to collide. This community is small but mighty, and celebrities are beginning to bring attention to alternative consumption, and it ultimately lies on the public to vote with their wallets. Without consumer support, these megacorporations will have no option but to cease to exist. However, we live in a world where that is what’s most accessible to us, making the pricey alternative much more difficult to embrace.
Donelly maintains that shifting our mindsets from consumers to aesthetes, who choose craftsmanship over quantity, can not only greatly reduce waste from fashion, but also give a whole new meaning to the word “luxury.” He believes in consumers basing their support in actual achievement and novelty, rather than inflated price points. Donelly is one of the few helping to further this inevitable evolution. “My friends and I can only do our part of promoting sustainability,” he says, “and really just hoping for the best for our future.”