More than a hundred people swapped clothes to fight fast fashion in the Kensington Central library on Saturday 20 March, 2022.
The clothes’ swapping event was organized by Loanhood, a company specializing in clothing rentals and swaps.
In the morning, there was a drop-off one-hour time slot where people were able to bring up to 5 items, for which they received tokens depending on their value. An hour later, they were able to “shop” and pay with their tokens. This structure repeated itself in the afternoon, allowing two time slots for people to come and trade.
These Loanhood events first started in 2019 in Hackney. Lucy Hall, CEO and cofounder of Loanhood, explained the concept: “It’s about circulating everything that you already have. You don’t need to buy new clothes, because there’s so much good stuff that’s already out there.”
Fast fashion is understood as the mass production of clothes at a fast pace to respond to current and evolving trends, as The Good Trend explains. It is “a method focused on rapidly producing high volumes of clothing […] in order to bring inexpensive styles to the end consumer.”
According to Circular Online in 2020, the United Kingdom produces more than 200,000 tonnes of textile waste each year. This amounts to approximately 3kg of yearly waste per person.
The Waste Action Officer at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Aiste Gasparaviciute, who organised the collaboration, has also been working on the borough’s Green Plan.
“There are many projects that tie into the Green Plan, community events like this one that encourage repair and reuse, prior to recycling,” said the Waste Action Officer. “We’re establishing relationships with libraries, such as this one, because we want to utilize the spaces, and libraries are the hub of communities already.”
Loanhood’s CEO, Lucy Hall, added: “We’ve got a peer-to-peer rental app, which is the main business, and then we do things like this clothes swap, and other events. Hopefully, more people will learn about both clothes swaps and rentals, and can make more informed decisions with their buying power.”
The event also included a collaboration with Trade, a clothing repairs and customization service. They enable people to alter the garments that they find at the event. Mary Horesh, founder of the Ealing Repair Café and volunteer for Trade, helped people mend their acquired clothes and taught them skills to take home alongside the items.
Horesh explained: “It’s very rewarding, mending something yourself. And by having these swaps, these events, all together, it also gets people to change their mindset and how they value clothes.”
Companies like Loanhood fit into a circular economy model in which materials and products are reused as much as possible to reduce waste. Contrary to a linear economy, waste does not exist in a circular economy: it is used as material.
The Kensington Borough has been striving to lean towards this alternative economy, as Gasparaviciute stated: “We are really pushing for that circular economy. To see clothes move along in that circular manner is really nice.”
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