1 Outfit, 100 Days: Teacher Shines Light On Waste, Vanity

MOORESTOWN, NJ — It didn’t take long for William Allen Middle School students to catch on.“Is that the same thing you wore yesterday?,” they asked eighth-grade art teacher Julia Mooney on the second day of school.

It was. And it was the same thing she would be wearing for at least the first 100 days of the school year.
Mooney and three other teachers in the Moorestown Public School District are wearing the same thing to school every day for the first 100 days of the 2018-19 school year.

“It’s a challenge I’ve taken on to make a statement about the social expectation to wear a different, cheaply made outfit every day. This results in huge amounts of wasted resources, exploitation of foreign labor, and a tendency to judge each other based on how we look rather than what we do,” Mooney said. “The latter is a large part of my message to my new middle school students.”

Her husband is a social studies teacher at the high school and has also taken up the challenge, as have an art teacher and a math teacher at the high school. The challenge began when Mooney went back to school shopping and joked that she just wanted to wear the same thing every day.

“But then I started to think about it,” Mooney said. “Why are we obligated to spend all this money to look good every day? I decided I could use this as an example for my students.”

So Mooney began wearing a dress made by Thought Clothing, a London-based Fair Trade company that only uses Fair Trade certified manufacturers. This dress is made using hemp and it looks like a denim material.

She also did some of her own research, and what she learned was surprising. She came across a quote from clothing industry magnate Eileen Fisher, who said, “The clothing industry is the second largest polluter in the world ... second only to oil.”

She posted some other facts she learned on an Instagram account she established for the project. Among some facts she learned:

It takes 2,700 liters of water to make one cotton shirt, which is the equivalent of enough water for one person to drink for 2 ½ years, according to National Geographic. The average consumer is now purchasing 60 percent more items of clothing compared to 2000, but each garment is kept half as long, according to McKinsey and Company and if consumption of clothes and goods continues at its current rate, we’ll need three times as many natural resources by 2050 compared to what we used in 2000, according to the United States Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

She also posted memes asking questions, such as “how many t-shirts do you need?,” and an inspirational quote that reads, “The future belongs to the curious. The ones who are not afraid to try it, explore it, poke at it, question it and turn it inside out.”

“A lot of t-shirts are made for one-day events,” Mooney said. “We buy them and we wear them once. It’s very wasteful.”

Her husband jumped on board with her from Day One. He wears a short sleeve, light button down shirt and khaki pants to school every day, Mooney said. The project fits in with their lifestyle, as they already have a large garden at home with chickens who lay eggs and produce compost for the family.

They have stopped using paper towels and shop at thrift stores. She also began knitting and sewing, which made her more conscious of how things are made.

“I love to shop, but it’s important to be more mindful of our own vanity,” Mooney said. “Students in middle school can really benefit from this message. There’s a lot of pressure to express their individuality through their clothes. It’s also something to think about as an adult.”

Mooney posted online that they were going to engage in this challenge, and two of her colleagues joined her crusade almost immediately. One teacher isn’t wearing the same thing every day, but she has triplets and is wearing one of their polos every day. The idea fits in with Mooney’s project because she is reusing her children’s clothing.

The project is for the first 100 days, but will continue beyond that if possible, Mooney said. To learn more about her project, visit oneoutfit100days on Instagram.

The attached image of Julia Mooney was provided