Never are the ideas of "having it all" and buying into trends more in flux than during racing season.
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Department store windows bloom with the latest florals and fascinators, and mannequins in stores dress in suits ripe to be sold.
Meanwhile, a literal mountain of shirts, pants and other discarded clothing continues to grow in Chile's Atacama desert - almost as if it is the Earth's giant dirty clothes basket.
'Fast fashion is unsustainable'
A Bendigo seamstress and vintage store owner wants you to think about that when you are purchasing your racewear.
"It's really important to make people more aware that the way we are going with fashion, the way we are purchasing new clothing, is just not sustainable," Lisa Davidson, owner of Charlotte O'Hara Vintage Clothing, said.
Vintage stores, like Ms Davidson's, might offer an alternative.
Its racks are a time warp through fashion history, filled with chiffons, silks and other fabrics cut in styles from eras gone by.
That history, stitched into many of the dresses stocked at Ms Davidson's store, has meant a more bespoke approach to the garment, where the designer would tailor the dress to the customer, straight from the model.
You were buying the history of that designer, and the woman it was designed for, by buying vintage iterations of designer brands, Ms Davidson said.
"Fast fashion just didn't exist then," she said.
Cheap labour for big profits on clothing
There was another woman Ms Davidson wanted shoppers to be aware of when they were buying clothing for one or two wears.
"[Fast fashion] is also detrimental mainly for women as the manufacturers of clothing," she said.
"Clothing workers in India, China are paid a pittance. You can buy a t-shirt for $5. How much is the girl who sat at the sewing machine who made it being paid?"
High-end labels were not exempt, Ms Davidson said, with many adopting the high output, fast fashion model.
"It is produced for as little as possible, as quickly as possible, and the owners of those labels are making huge profits," she said.
"You buy a dress from a clothing label, a well-known clothing label, and it is becoming fast fashion."
Luxury fabrics expected for formal wear were part of the issue, Ms Davidson said.
"Silk kills silkworms, cotton uses so much water. There's something behind every new fabric that's produced that has some detrimental effect," she said.
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Ms Davidson urged racegoers to think about how "it all adds up" when shopping sustainably for an event, but that the significance of a vintage garment went deeper than that.
"Women are bringing in clothes that have belonged to their grandmother," she said.
"They want someone to buy it. They don't wanna give it to a charity shop, they actually want someone to buy it and love it.
"To have a beautiful vintage gown vintage is special because it's so beautifully made. The sewing techniques are so intricate.
"That's what makes it really special."
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