About

From January 3rd, 2011 to January 3rd, 2012—my 26th year of life—I will be wearing just one dress. In this way, I will be “fasting from fashion” in order to protest some of the things I think are ethically questionable in the fashion industry today, such as the unsustainable patterns of how we consume and dress ourselves in America, the insidious effects of fashion advertising, and the ways all of this stuff really makes us feel about ourselves.

My name is Kristy Powell; I have a husband, a cat, and a couple jobs. I teach Pilates; it is my work-passion. I also work as a therapist at an inpatient psychiatric hospital. My husband, Russ, is my traveling companion on this journey. He is a full-time student at Yale Divinity School and works for the Yale Office of Sustainability. Our cat’s name is Caden; she is intellectually superior to most domesticated animals.

I am not a paid blogger and this is not my job – I am simply a girl trying to figure myself out in the complex and oftentimes disconcerting world of clothes and outward appearance.

I have chosen the format of a protest to get my message across. During my one year in one dress I will not just explore my disapproval of the state of my own self-worth and the way it seems intimately interconnected to an industry that is always telling me I am never quite stylish enough (and can never quite own enough clothes). But I will also be exploring some ways that other people are encountering the ethical issues of dressing ourselves as 21st century Americans, and the ways we might counter the dilemmas that fashion raises in our lives.

To receive regular email updates you can subscribe to the One Dress Protest blog. And if you have questions or want to get in touch, you can email me: kristy@onedressprotest.com or find me on twitter.