Fighting Fast Fashion
The fun and utility of clothes swaps
I’ve been so busy with work lately that I haven’t had the space to think about the topic I’d planned to write about this week. So I’m shifting my focus to something that should have happened last week but didn’t — for the third time in as many years.
Clothes swap season
Thursday, February 2, was Groundhog Day. For me, that means clothes swap season. Well over 25 years ago (maybe even 30 years ago?), my dear friend Susan started the Groundhog Day Clothes Swap tradition. Everyone would bring the clothes they no longer wanted and put them in piles on her floor, on couches, on tables. Then you could take whatever you wanted from the piles. Whatever was left over would go to Goodwill.
Clothes swaps are common now. But back then, Susan was the only one I knew who held them. And she was definitely the only one to do annual Groundhog Day Clothes Swaps. I still think of clothes swaps as her inspired creation.
When Susan moved from San Francisco to England, I took up the clothes swap mantle in my studio apartment on Guerrero Street in the Mission. It was crowded, but it was fun!Â
What makes a good clothes swap?
I came to the conclusion that the minimum viable attendance for a good clothes swap was 12 people. Some men attended those early swaps. My friend Ian had fun trying on women’s clothes, including a fancy prom dress and a shirt that was so tight I had to cut it off him. Sadly, that was before the days of smartphones; I’m sure someone took photos, but we’ve since lost the evidence.
As the swap grew, along with the size of my home, it evolved. Only women were allowed — that made it more comfortable, and we could try on clothes in front of one another. It mattered less if people were the same size, because with over 40 women attending, there was something for everyone. And the gatherings took on a different quality — a feeling of camaraderie, sharing, and community among women.
People often came to the clothes swap focused on getting rid of things, but it was hard to resist picking up something new. A friend who wasn’t into the clothes swap idea at all — and attended only to socialize — ended up taking home more than anyone. Others stopped shopping for clothes altogether and relied on the swap for annual wardrobe upgrades. Susan moved back from England and joined us at the swaps she had inspired.
My friend Marien donated a couple clothes racks. I got more organized about arranging the clothes by category. I put some rules in place, based on my vast clothes swapping experience.
We had a good thing going.
Beyond fun
As fun as they are, clothes swaps are more than just fun. Don’t get me wrong — I’m all for fun! I’m with Dr. Seuss on that one. FUN IS GOOD.
But clothes swaps are also a great way to reuse.
This may seem like a small thing, and in some ways it is. Each action we take can seem small — until we combine it with other actions and they add up to something significant. Although small, a clothes swap provides one way to address a very large problem.
As my friend Ashley pointed out recently in her Substack newsletter Clouds Form Over Land, fast fashion is a gigantic issue. Every year, Americans buy 20 billion new clothing items, and they end up dumping 10 million TONS of those:
This translates into huge amounts of wasted water, increased carbon emissions, and perpetuated cycles of poverty and horrific working conditions in the countries producing all these cheap clothes.
What can you do? Buy less, and buy items that will last longer and that you’ll wear often. Buy used clothes. Wash your clothes less often. Make a braided rug with your worn-out clothes, as Ashley suggests. Make a quilt. Go to clothes swaps.
Swapping hiatusÂ
It was a sad day when, in February 2021, I had to cancel the Groundhog Day Clothes Swap for the first time in over 20 years. But we’d have it again the following year, no problem! That turned into the following year … and now, well, I hope that we can have an outdoor swap this summer, and that by next year, it will feel okay to gather 40+ women together in one not-so-large living room.
We still have our clothes swap favorites to remind us of the days when we could gather like that. A staple of my first-year pandemic outfit was some dark blue velour drawstring pants that I’d scored at a long-ago swap. The skirt I wore at this 2014 swap was from an even-longer-ago swap I’d held back in my Guerrero Street apartment:
Of course, the pandemic has had much more serious effects than denying us the pleasure of a clothes swap. But it’s robbed us of many such opportunities to create community, and that’s a big loss.
We all have bags of clothes waiting for the next swap. Let’s hope it can happen soon!
Have you cut down on clothes buying? How else are you fighting fast fashion? Let me know in the comments!
I loved this information and these ideas, and especially the photo of mother and two daughters!
Now, if I could just get my desk and shelves cleared off, so that I could actually find my clothes to share!!