Francine Jay is the blogger behind Miss Minimalist, a great collection of inspiring examples of minimalism. Her definition:

Being mindful about what we own and consume…because our resources (space, energy, money, time) are limited, and we should put them to the best use possible. Minimalism is determining when you have enough, so you can do something extraordinary with the excess.

She’s executed this expertly in her own life: when her daughter was born, she decided she wanted to spend more time with her child and less time on her blog while still curating it as a community for those interested in living into minimalism.  So she stepped back from writing her own posts and instead started featuring weekly stories of her readers’ minimalist journeys.  Virtually zero input from her, yet endless inspiration for readers. Brilliant.

Francine does occasionally pop back in to share an insight or an update.  This week’s post ties into clothing: custom clothes as an option for what to do if you don’t want to support fast fashion but are crap with a sewing machine and haven’t had luck thrifting.

Buying made-to-order clothing—and less of it—is a common paradigm in many developing countries.  I was amazed on a trip to India several years ago to find how affordable it was to have clothing created from scratch and tailored to my exact measurements.  A friend of a friend from Ghana here as an exchange student also commented on how much better she felt about her body in her home culture where clothes are understood to be made to fit your body, as opposed to the negative body image she developed in a culture like ours where your body is supposed to be toned and tucked to fit a manufacturer’s arbitrary standard.

Read Francine’s post here, or just scroll down to tell me what you think of her idea–would you ever buy (or have you ever bought) bespoke clothes?  Do you think it would keep you from buying excess off-the-rack, less-than-ideal pieces?