Thank you Polyesco.
A very informative interview by the Crown Princess.
She has given it as patron for the Copenhagen fashion Summit which will be held in two weeks.
- The green dress is Crown Princess Mary's 16 years old engagement dress.
- The black suit she wears is a Christmas gift from Frederik. He gave it to her last Christmas Eve.
Here is a very little resume of the 17 pages long informative and facts full interview:
(Translated with Google Translate, sorry)
HRH The Crown Princess has numbers and speech papers ready in a white paper cover, but not once does she open the folder during the interview to check the facts. They 'sit on her backbone', and if engagement was a martial arts Crown Princess Mary would have the black belt in infecting her surroundings with lively gestures, genuine smiles, energy in the voice and life in the eyes.
HRH Crown Princess Mary is wearing a 16-year-old green dress, which most people may remember from the engagement with the Crown Prince in 2003.
Part of Crown Princess Mary's wardrobe, for example her wedding dress and the green engagement dress she wears on the pictures in the interview, has such great historical significance for Denmark that they must be included in the royal collection for posterity.
- I save clothes that I think my daughters will inherit. Other clothing goes on to others who can benefit from it, and to organizations that mediate recycling. The same thing I do with my children's clothes.
I admit that my consumption of clothes is big, which is related to the life, role and work I have. But I can do better - and I work on that. Of course I recycle my clothes privately, but just as much for official events. I buy vintage clothes. I get my clothes stitched and there are many variations. Some dresses have gone from long to short and from having long sleeves to being without sleeves. Long dresses have become a skirt, and I mix and match, so I use my clothes in new ways, she explains.
The Crown Princess is often seen in dresses that are more than a decade old, and she believes that more women proudly will say that the clothes they wear are 10 years old, rather than expecting ourselves, and perhaps each other, that we meet up in a new dress for each festive occasion.
- It will happen automatically, I think. Because when you have a dress that you are happy for, you are just as happy to have it on next time and next time again.
Finding out what is right and wrong when it comes to leaving so few harmful impressions on the climate as possible is a jungle that we all and also Crown Princess Mary can get lost in. Not least when the children come home school with new information. In many ways, it is her teachers. For example, it was Prince Christian who told her about the thousands of liters of water used to make a t-shirt. When the Crown Princess goes for a walk on the beach, Prince Vincent comes with the whole embrace full of garbage that he has collected, she says.
- They're doing it without me saying anything. So I became so touched and thinks "for heck, it's well done", and how lovely it is that he is aware of it. I am very happy to notice our children how interested they are in the global environment and how they can help. And in the family we are good at helping each other remember to turn off the light, close the refrigerator, turn off the water. One of my 'kæpheste'
(Kæphest = a danish term denotes something you love to deal with, or is very concerned about) is to remove jeans from the wash baskets and ask the children if they really need to be washed so quickly again, and then they get an explanation why I ask. To save on water, reduce the emission of microplastic, and so the clothes last longer, says Crown Princess Mary
Recently, H.K.H. Crown Princess Mary have been in the process of phasing out plastic bottles from the Crown Prince Couple's household, which in a large as well as small household requires a new consciousness and new habits. One day, the Crown Princess read that one should not use milk cartons with small screw caps because they are more harmful to the environment than others. So she announced that there should be alternatives now, but she didn't get far.
- My son Christian came home and said "mom, the new one you bought ..." - which I thought was a good alternative - "also has a plastic surface". What! Then I went online and tried to find out which cardboard was the right one to use. It was not easy to get an overview or find an answer. It is also a problem that clothing consumers face. There are so many conflicting information that make it difficult for consumers and clothing manufacturers to take a stand and make choices about where to make the most sense.
It may be part of the reason why, the Crown Princess guesses, that 50% of medium and small clothing companies have not started with sustainable measures or will not tell what they are doing because there is a risk that they will be criticized - whatever they do.
- Maybe it's not good enough, maybe it does not go far enough - what we as consumers and companies are doing. But it is part of the learning process behind any new development. There must be room to make mistakes, we learn, become wiser and get on. And it will always be "a work in progress" because there is no final goal line that individuals or companies can run over and say to ourselves that we have done enough.