Eight days in and I’m finding myself getting dressed slightly begrudgingly now.  I wish I’d chosen a dress that wasn’t quite so short … Still, I’ve yet to repeat an outfit, and I’ve now set myself the vague aim of wearing a different look every day.

One major flaw with any notion that wearing one dress repeatedly can be considered an exercise in sustainable fashion is that it requires dozens and dozens of extra items of clothing to build outfits with.  Even those who are seriously dedicated to this idea -  such as Sheena Matheiken over at the Uniform Project, who’s wearing an identical dress every day not for a month, but a year – have to depend upon a vast array of accessories, jumpers, jackets, tunics and so on in, in order to vary the look enough to make the concept remotely plausible or appealing to the people who they’re hoping to win over.

Matheiken’s blog calls for people to donate accessories to her, or make something and send it in, or collaborate with her to put together an ensemble, and most of the extras she mixes and matches with her dress are second hand, from small producers on sites such as Etsy, or made for her by her conveniently crafty friends.  While it means that she can uphold her sustainable style principles even while wearing, over the course of one year, more clothes and accessories than most of us get through in five, it’s hardly a model that is practicable for the majority of people.  We don’t all have access to NYC flea markets, or have friends who happen to be fashion designers.  Even in Glasgow, where we’re blessed with wonderful and reasonably priced vintage stores, if everyone adopted Matheiken’s stance, there’d soon be nothing decent left in them. The stock of reasonable-quality second-hand clothing is by definition limited.

Still, that’s not to deny the fact that setting limits is one of the best ways to encourage yourself to be creative, and if I can get 31 different outfits out of one dress without purchasing any new accessories this month in order to make that happen, I’ll at least have shown myself that when I feel like I’ve got nothing new to wear, shopping isn’t the only solution.

Today’s extras:

Grey tunic (worn under dress), Acne

Black ruffle cardigan, Reiss (as before)

Leather jacket, M&S [I've owned this for a decade, which is both terrifying, and, I suppose, a good thing]

Black lace tights, New Look [I can't wear tights more than three times without ripping them, so there's no point wasting money on pricy ones]

Opaque pink ballet tights (worn under lace ones], from dance supply stores

Boots, Gap

Know someone taking on the One Dress, One Month challenge? Support their cause by donating online to Macmillan Cancer Support here!

Four days into March and so far, I’m finding that I’m really enjoying waking up every morning and knowing, pretty much, what I’m going to wear.  It’s like being back at school , except this time my uniform is rather less hideous than the itchy bottle green and white striped monstrosities that made up my school uniform.

Today’s extras:

Houndstooth jacket, vintage Christian Dior

Grey jersey scarf, American Apparel

Cardigan and belt, H&H

Ankle boots, Kurt Geiger

Know someone taking on the One Dress, One Month challenge? Support their cause by donating online to Macmillan Cancer Support here!

Glasgow’s new Tesco Metro store on Byres Road is giving 10 Glasgow University Guardian readers the chance to win a Dissertation Survival Kit each!

The final year of university is rarely easy for anyone, and writing a dissertation is no easy accomplishment. Combined with additional assignments and lectures plus your friends, family and social life, the final year of any university course can be a real challenge.

So, to try and take the edge off the stress and pressure of being a final year student, The Tesco Metro store on Byres Road has teamed up with Guardian to offer 10 students the chance to win a fabulous Dissertation Survival Kit each, consisting of all the essentials any student needs – Red Bull and coffee, tinned beans and pizza as well as the obligatory pens, paper and other bits of stationery.

The store is now open from 6am – 12 midnight Monday to Saturday, and 8am – 12 midnight on Sundays.

For your chance to win one of these great Dissertation Survival Kits, just answer the following question along with your name and contact details, including a postal and email address, to editors@glasgowguardian.co.uk:

Q: What is Tesco’s famous motto?

Terms and Conditions:

All entries for the competition must be received by no later than 12 noon, Friday 12th March 2010.
This competition is open to all University of Glasgow students.
Winners may be required to take part in publicity.
Usual Newspaper terms and conditions apply, copies available on request.
Dissertation survival kits only available from the Byres Road, Glasgow Tesco Metro.
Winners will be sent a letter or email from Freedman Brown Communications to take in store to claim the kit.
Each kit will amount to approximately £10 each.
This competition is not open to employees of Tesco Ltd or The Guardian.

To celebrate the release of The Crazies, the remake of George A. Romero’s 1973 cult classic horror film, we’ve got some great merchandise to give away, courtesy of Momentum pictures. To win, just email your answer to the following question to editors@glasgowguardian.co.uk with “The Crazies competition” in the subject line.

Q: What does the unknown toxin in The Crazies contaminate?

So, it’s the first day of March, the first day of One Dress, One Month, and the first outing of The Dress.

It took a good two weeks and far too much time in changing rooms to find something I could bear the idea of wearing for 31 days straight. Ironically, considering my hope that this month would be something of an anti-fast-fashion statement, I ended up getting my dress in a shop that must surely count as one of the biggest purveyors of throwaway fashion – New Look.  Oh, and going out and buying something new?  Not really in the spirit of things either, but practical considerations – mostly involving not starting to reek by about day 5 – meant that choosing a dress I already owned just wasn’t going to work.

I realised early on during my dress-hunt that I was going to have to buy two identical dresses.  This may well be considered  cheating – but, honestly, there’s no way I’d be able to launder one single dress every night in time for the following morning.  This meant, then, that I couldn’t pick anything too expensive – I had to be able to afford two of them, and, what’s more, most of the dresses I looked at from the usual higher-end high street suspects, such as Whistles or Reiss, were dry-clean only and therefore totally out of the question. (It may surprise you to hear that the vast GU Guardian budget does not stretch to staff dry-cleaning costs.)

When it came to colour, though, black was always going to be the only option.  (I wonder if there’s anyone participating this month who hasn’t gone for black?)

In the end I picked this black jersey skater dress; hopefully it’ll prove a versatile choice…

Today’s extras:
Cameo brooch, Starry Starry Night, worn as choker with black velvet ribbon from Mandor’s Fabric Store.
White woolly tights, M&S
Black thigh-high boots, vintage
Black ruffle-fronted cardigan, Reiss
Know someone taking on the One Dress, One Month challenge? Support their cause by donating online to Macmillan Cancer Support here!

Sarah Smith

A Glasgow University Student has pled guilty to 32 charges related to the sexual abuse of children .

Andrew Byrne, 20, submitted his guilty pleas at the High Court in Glasgow on February 11.

The court heard that Byrne used the internet to groom children aged between nine and sixteen years and manipulate them into vulnerable situations where some were subjected to indecent behaviour and sexually assaulted.

Byrne also had unlawful sexual intercourse with several of his young victims. 591 indecent images were found in Byrne’s possession, around sixty of which were classed in the worst category.

Byrne enrolled at Glasgow University in 2007 and was studying Microbiology until his arrest. Upon conviction of a serious crime, the University has the right to act immediately according to its disciplinary code and Byrne is therefore no longer a student at Glasgow.

A student who shared a flat with Byrne in 2007, the year in which he began offending, said that the news came as a shock.

“It took a while to sink in […] He was a weird guy but you don’t expect that sort of thing from anyone.

“The funny thing was, considering what was on it, he was okay with me using his computer once when my laptop had broken.”

The student, who asked to remain anonymous, remembered Byrne as seeming “odd” and has not had contact with him since October 2008.

Byrne was caught under Operation Defender, a large scale major inquiry led by Central Scotland Police working in close co-operation with the National Sexual Crimes Unit, based at the Crown Office, and the Area Sexual Crime Unit in Stirling.

The investigation has so far resulted in the removal of a number of highly vulnerable children throughout the United Kingdom from the danger presented by sexual predators like
Byrne who use the internet to gain access to their victims.

It was through Operation Defender that the police were able to trace Byrne’s victims in Scotland, throughout the rest of the UK and also abroad.

Detective Inspector Charlie Mitchell, of Central Scotland Police, said: “Andrew Byrne was a prolific offender against young teens and children who he met on the internet using chat rooms.

“He had multiple victims, both boys and girls, who he groomed systematically over periods of time, committed offences against online and in some cases went on to meet and sexually abuse.

“Offenders such as Byrne exploit young people’s use of the Internet and social networking for their own sexual gratification.

“Our focus is on stopping that exploitation and raising awareness of the need for safety online amongst young people and parents.”

Speaking after the conviction, Michelle Macleod, Area Procurator Fiscal for Central Scotland, said: “Today Andrew Byrne has been convicted of some of the most damaging and disturbing crimes that prosecutors ever encounter.

“While using the internet to seek out his young victims, he sought to abuse and exploit more than twenty children, without any regard to their age, all for the purpose of fulfilling his own sexual gratification.”

After pleading guilty to the charges, Byrne was remanded in custody and is due to be sentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh on March 22.

Nick Sikora

President of the Students’ Representative Council (SRC), Laura Laws, has criticised the University’s decision to award Archbishop of Glasgow Mario Conti an honorary degree.

The degree was announced by the University in recognition of Archbishop Conti’s “significant contribution to the life of the University”, as well as his work within the ecumenical movement.

The SRC have condemned the decision, stating that it “makes a mockery” of the University’s focus on equality and diversity.

In 2006, Patrick Harvie, Green Party MSP, approached Strathclyde Police with a view to prosecuting the Archbishop following a sermon in which he criticised civil partnership legislation. The Archbishop had stated that the legislation “implicitly places homosexual acts on a plane of moral equivalence to marital love.”

SRC President Laura Laws said that awarding the degree may damage the University’s reputation.

“By celebrating the archbishop’s work without caveat, the University condones everything he has done in office — including his notorious discrimination against a huge section of our society.”

She continued: “By aligning themselves with the archbishop, the University runs the risk of isolating many students and staff.

“Universities often derive benefits by association with those on whom they bestow honorary degrees.

“We don’t believe that this negative aspect of the archbishop’s character is something that the University should associate itself with.”

Honorary degrees have been traditionally awarded to previous Glasgow archbishops, raising the possibility that not doing so would have been seen as a slight to the Archbishop. However, Laws believes that the University should have taken a stand over this issue, rather than simply maintaining the status quo.

She said: “Not awarding the degree in this instance may have been seen as a snub, but we don’t believe that that would have been such an outrageous statement to make.

“We believe that the decision to award a degree should be made on the merits of the individual alone and should not be expected: otherwise the award is rendered meaningless.”

The University has decided to stand by the decision, in spite of the criticisms from the SRC.

A University spokesman said: “The views of the SRC were taken into consideration before the decision was agreed by both the University’s Senate and Court.

“Archbishop Mario Conti will receive an Honorary Degree in recognition of his significant contribution to the life of the University through his preaching, support of the Catholic Chaplaincy and the Faculty of Education and the development of Inter Faith Relations.

“The award also recognises Archbishop Conti’s work with the ecumenical movement as President of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland and as an active member of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.”

Archbishop Conti was appointed to the Archdiocese by Pope John Paul II in 2002 and already holds two honorary degrees from the University of Aberdeen.

A spokesman for the archbishop stated: “The Archbishop is delighted and honoured to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the University.

“He has worked hard to build new links between the Church and the University over the years and is very grateful to the University authorities for their award.”

The honorary degree will be awarded by the University of Glasgow to Archbishop Mario Conti in June 2010.

Glasgow 4-0 Stirling

Glasgow University Women’s Football Club’s first team had to bide their time to maintain their unbeaten run this season. The game at Garscube was delayed for thirty minutes, due to the lack of a referee. When the game eventually did kick off, Glasgow flew out of the traps.

With fewer than five minutes on the clock, they got their first chance of the game. A through ball from midfield split Stirling’s defence wide open. Katy Emslie pounced on the pass and left the defenders for dead as she burst into the box. She hit a low shot which Stirling’s keeper should have dealt with comfortably, but somehow she managed to allow it to squirm under her body as she went down to block it. Emslie wasn’t complaining though as she saw it trundle over the line and Glasgow go up 1-0.

Glasgow took confidence from this early goal. They dominated Stirling in midfield, thanks in part to an inspirational performance from Muriel Kaney. Kaney is a strong combative midfielder, yet composed on the ball and her passing is exquisite. Much of Glasgow’s play started and went through the excellent Kaney, with her picking the ball up in midfield and linking up well with the strikers and with Jackie Baird on the right-wing.

Kaney was instrumental in Glasgow’s second goal. She won the ball in her own half, before surging forward and sending a pin point cross into the back post, where it was met by Baird, who had run into the box. Baird kept a cool head, as the keeper came out to close her down and lifted the ball back across the goal and into the far corner of the net. Glasgow were now 2-0 up in just thirty minutes of play.

The only real chance Stirling had in the first half came from a free kick, but the ball was curled past the top left-hand corner of Megan Llyod’s goal. Glasgow continued to push forward and Kaney could have scored a much-deserved goal, when she played a fabulous one-two with Kirsteen Martin on the edge of the box, but she dragged her shot wide of the goal.

Martin was also involved in Glasgow’s next chance, when she played a fantastic defence splitting pass to Emslie, who found herself once again one on one with the keeper. She should have made it a third goal for Glasgow, but again hit it straight to the keeper, who was much more assured this time and saved it easily.
Glasgow played out the last five minutes of the half with only ten players, as Katherine Jaycock went off injured. Coach Niall Marshall decided to see out the half a player down, hoping Jaycock would recover. During this time Glasgow continued to push forward looking for a third goal. But they were almost caught napping when Stirling hit them on the break, playing a long ball up to their striker. But this was intercepted by a well-timed sliding tackle from Kate Hawkins, when it looked like Stirling would have been straight through on goal. The half ended Glasgow 2-0 Stirling.

The injured Jaycock was replaced by left-wing Maritza Logan for the second half. Glasgow quickly won a stone wall penalty when Emslie was pulled down in the box as she made a run on goal. Kirsteen Martin claimed the ball — after scoring in every game this season, she was looking to keep up her terrific record. She was unlucky and failed to convert the spot kick, placing the ball into the left corner of the goal, but Stirling’s keeper made a great low diving save to turn it round the post.

Glasgow freshened things up by making another substitute, with Robyn Lang coming on for Baird. Baird had a great game, her tenacious play down the right-wing avoiding Stirling’s left-back all game, with her whipping in dangerous crosses and incisive passes.

Not long after the change, Glasgow received their second penalty. This time centre half Meghan Ferriter
stepped up to take the shot. In contrast to Martin’s cushioned, placed penalty, Ferriter bulleted hers straight down the middle of the goal. The power and height left the keeper with no chance of stopping it as it thundered into the back of the net. Glasgow were now 3-0 up and cruising.

With ten minutes to go, Glasgow made their final substitution. Martin, the team’s top goal scorer, who gave a fine performance up front and was unlucky not to get on the score sheet, was replaced by Rachel Kemp. Within minutes of being on the pitch Kemp was involved in Glasgow’s next attack. She flicked a high ball to Emslie, but gain she hit her shot straight at Stirling’s keeper, with a little bit more composure, she could have had a hat-trick in this game.

Glasgow sealed their victory with a move started by player of the game Kaney — she again picked the ball up deep in her own half, with a burst forward leaving the Stirling midfield for dead. Kaney sprayed the ball into the left-hand side of the box where it was met by Logan who did well to square the ball into the middle of the box with the keeper advancing on her.

The ball broke to Kemp, who coolly slotted the ball into the empty net — she won’t score an easier goal all
season. Glasgow will feel they could have scored more in this game, but they will have been happy with this clinical performance. They kept a clean sheet, as they picked up another three points and stretched their winning streak to five games on the trot.

On the evidence of this display it looks like Glasgow are on their way to a very successful season. With four games left they are looking to overtake Robert Gordon University at the top of the league, and the Aberdonian outfit must be nervously looking over their shoulders after this impressive display. Glasgow have also reached the semi-finals of the Scottish Universities Cup which will be played against St Andrews March 10.

So many clothes but nothing to wear? Claire Strickett looks at the paradox of fast fashion

With New Year’s resolutions now for most people little more than distant memories, you’ve probably heard enough about diets to last you at least another year. Sorry, then, to draw one more to your attention.

This diet, however, has nothing to do with food, but rather, with shopping. The Great American Apparel Diet (no relation to the clothing chain of a similar name!), was embarked upon by a group of women last September, when they vowed that there’d be “no shopping for one year”, as their website, thegreatamericanappareldiet.com, proclaims.

The project has gained momentum, and now has upwards of forty participants from around the world. These shopping dieters have promised to make the most of what’s already in their wardrobe, altering clothes, finding new ways to wear them, but never adding to their collection. Their reasons for embarking on the project are many and varied, including the need to curb a credit card addiction, curiosity about the depth of their emotional dependency on shopping, making a point about consumerism, an attempt to reduce their carbon footprint, or simply learning to be content with what they’ve already got.

As someone who ranks the time when a friend said they couldn’t remember me ever wearing the same outfit twice among their proudest moments, I’m not sure that I’m quite ready to renounce shopping for a year. But the SRC’s upcoming One Dress, One Month fundraising campaign, running throughout March as part of the appropriately named RAG (raising and giving) Week, was too much of a challenge to pass up.

It’s a simple enough concept: wear the same dresss every day throughout March, get sponsored, and, if you make it, donate the money raised to Macmillan Cancer Research. How hard can it be? Well, I’ll admit that the thought of wearing an identical dress every day for an entire month — surely every fashionista’s worst nightmare — sends a shiver down my spine, even if it is for a good cause. But, above and beyond the charitable aims of the campaign, I’m hoping that it’ll prove an opportunity to re-evaluate the way the fashion industry has got me, and many others, hooked on its ethos of constant change, whereby only the new can ever be good.

It feels like a timely move. The American apparel dieters aren’t the only ones taking a more critical look at the way the clothing industry functions, its wastefulness, and its unsustainability. Their project is part of a growing backlash against “fast fashion”. In the past, concerns about the textile industry have been directed mainly towards the production side of things, with, for example, the scandals that erupted over the sweatshop conditions that were found to lay behind the garments on the rails of so many respected high street stores. These problems have by no means been resolved, but perhaps they will never be until we turn our attention to our changing shopping habits and the drive for ever-cheaper clothes that, in turn, perpetuates poor working conditions for those who produce them.

Fashion is a deliberately fickle and fast-paced industry, and the increasing move towards low-priced but high-volume shopping, sometimes called “the Primark effect”, has capitalised on that. When clothing seems to cost so little, it’s easy to buy almost without thinking. We’ve surely all picked up something which catches our eye and that’s so cheap that we can barely be bothered to consider whether it goes with anything else we own, where we might wear it, or whether it even really fits us properly, before we head to the till.

This kind of thoughtless shopping must surely be at least partly responsible for the staggering statistic that half of all the clothes, shoes and accessories purchased last year by women in the UK have never been worn, resulting in the waste of an estimated £11.1 billion, according to figures released by the climate change charity Global Cool. Closer to home, the survey showed that the average Glaswegian women (unfortunately, men weren’t questioned) spent £1,074 on clothing and accessories in 2008, a whopping £472 of which went on clothes that remained unworn.

Fast fashion, while selling itself as a bargain, looks like a false economy in the face of such figures. While the price tag may be small, the true cost isn’t marked on the label, but is felt elsewhere — in its impact on the environment, for example. The energy and materials used to produce, transport and sell these unworn garments go to waste, and the clothes themselves will usually end up in landfill. Even the old systems of recycling and circulating unwanted clothing, such as second-hand and charity shops, can’t deal with our new shopping habits. These clothes are often of such poor quality, and sold so cheaply in the first place, that selling them on as second-hand clothing simply isn’t worthwhile: charity shops struggle to price the second-hand garments any lower than the price charged “as new” and still make enough money to cover their overheads, while quality is so poor that after a few wears, much “fast fashion” is fit only for the bin.

That affordable clothing is available for people on tight budgets — i.e., most students — is obviously something to be welcomed. That said, we’d be doing ourselves, and our planet, a huge favour if we learned to focus a little more on quality over quantity. While Vogue might blithely recommend prudently investing in a few “statement pieces” that turn out to include a £1500 mackintosh, even those of us on tighter budgets can, paradoxically, save in the long run by spending more initially. Buy a new pair of £25 shoes each month, for example, and the chances are that, in three years’ time, they’ll all have been consigned to the great wardrobe in the sky — some, if Global Cool’s survey is correct, still unworn. Meanwhile, you’re back where you started and have to hit the shops again. Spend the same total on just one or two carefully chosen pairs each year, and you’re much more likely to take care of them, polish them, waterproof them, get them re-heeled, and treasure them for years to come.

Whether I’ll still treasure a dress that I’ve worn for 31 days straight come the end of March is debatable, but I’ll be blogging the One Dress, One Month experience at glasgowguardian.co.uk, hoping to show (myself, as much as anyone) just how much mileage can be got out of one outfit with a little creativity — and a lot of accessories. We all know that no relationship stands a chance without respect — so for those of us who love fashion, isn’t it time we learned to respect the clothes we buy, rather than treating them as disposable?