They don’t make ‘em like they used to

Clothes, that is.

But Kelsey Dundon, creator and curator of The Anthology, a Vancouver-based life and style blog, has that part figured out; this girl’s got life (or at the very least, style) dialed in. I mean, her aesthetic is addicting, her charm, enviable, and her fans, well, they’re of the most ardently devoted type.

Needless to say, our Eco Fashion Week tribe couldn’t wait to find out just how this endearing fashionista is making an impact, without making an impact.

During our interview (which basically felt like I was catching up, sharing giggles, and swapping stories with a long-time best friend), I was inspired by Kelsey’s voracious appetite to see the beauty in everything; she even saw potential in these Hammer pants, this jacket, and this purple-checkered dress. With a little bit of love and a dose of magic from her tailor, she took them from 0 to 60: here, here, and here. And all of this creative visioning coming from a girl who claims she can’t “sew her way out a paper bag”? We’re seriously impressed!

Turns out, the addition of a belt, the removal of some shoulder pads, and the shortening of a hemline, can do wonders for a Value Village (one of Kelsey’s personal favourite places to shop) find. If this is it, I’m sold. And Eco Fashion Week’s designers couldn’t agree more.

Eco fashion is two sided; one is producer focused: where all aspects of the design, sourcing, production, and merchandising of the garments, are considered; the other is consumer driven: where our purchasing, care, and disposal patterns can have profound social and environmental impacts. The Anthology has a knack for purchasing second-hand monstrosities, re-inventing them, and re-invigorating them yet again, to keep a treasure trove of clothes evolving, but not always growing.

To Kelsey, personal style has become the possibility to ditch our traditional views, and instead, re-consider them as an untapped, endlessly dreamy, non-existent boundary. It’s the opportunity to fuse a communal love of the Arts – music, fashion, art, and travel – with multiple mixed medias – to create something totally unique, out of something totally, well, unwearable. And this makes her impossibly cool.

Our interview helped to me to re-frame what it is to be stylish, conscious, and connected to the greater source that animates us all. Imagine if we all decided to see beauty in everything; not just the new. If the base of our work and efforts were rooted in giving versus taking. Imagine a world if we decided to create versus destruct. This is exactly what Kelsey has done. (Unless you count taking out the shoulder pads, then I suppose, she’s done a little of both).

In with the old, and out with the new!