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This was not your usual fashion show. First, I’ve rarely seen a more exuberant bunch of models – all unpaid volunteers living their best lives. Second, everything was secondhand, from a charity shop called Second Life in East Sussex. And third, half of it was sold that day, even the damaged pieces. Second Life’s annual fashion show, held over the summer, is just one of the creative ways the shop keeps its harder-to-sell clothing out of incinerators, landfill and developing countries’ illegal dumps.
This “buy direct from the catwalk” concept is something charities are increasingly adopting. At London fashion week this month, Oxfam’s show, styled by thrift queen Bay Garnett, saw pop star Sam Ryder, activist Katie Piper and costume designer Sandy Powell take to the catwalk in preloved boiler suits, capes and wedding dresses, which went on sale at its Vinted shop soon after. Charity Super.Mkt, a multi-charity department store for preloved fashion, hosts what it calls People’s Catwalks at festivals – the outfits are created from damaged garments, surplus stock and offcuts – and for Sustainable fashion week, the Salvation Army is holding a fashion show in its Swansea donation centre on 2 October. All the looks will be available to buy immediately afterwards.
Second Life doesn’t stop at catwalk shows, either – it also overdyes clothes to spruce them up, collaborates with local designers to upcycle clothing, and runs workshops where volunteers make bags out of tired T-shirts, purses out of knackered jeans and dungarees out of duvet covers.
It’s a great blueprint for charity shops, which are overwhelmed with unsaleable, low-quality donations: “Anecdotally, only about a third of [donations] are sold across the counter,” reports Robin Osterley, CEO of the Charity Retail Association.
That low quality is partly because consumers are “cherry-picking” the best clothes to sell on Vinted, says Dawn Dungate, an independent consultant who advises charities on textile recycling. “Whatever doesn’t sell is dropped on the charities to deal with.” I found as much when I rummaged through Second Life’s unsold-clothing heap – each week, its 1,100-litre wheelie bin is “filled to bursting”, says manager Naomi Phitidis.
Thankfully, our ever-resourceful charity shops are doing their bit to innovate their way through fashion’s overproduction problem. “There’s been a distinct rise in creativity,” notes Dungate, which she says stems from a younger workforce. “The old generation was very much, ‘This is what we do, and we don’t deviate from it.’ But now you can’t afford not to think outside the box.”
When Havens Hospices, a chain of more than 25 charity shops across Essex, experienced a sales downturn due to increased costs and competition from Vinted and Depop, it launched designer upcycling collabs with a local designer and introduced £12 mystery bags, which contain four items of the same dress size, themed to specific aesthetics such as cottagecore, Y2K or, simply, black. They sent some to influencers, whose haul videos then powered sales. Mystery bags are also available at Isabel Hospice’s eBay store, Fara’s shop in Greenford, London, Age UK from November, and, for Christmas, the Salvation Army.
“Nobody in this business wants to send stuff to waste,” says Osterley. “They want to reuse clothing rather than chuck it away.” Plus, he says, these different ways of dealing with old clothes deliver “a much better income than rag” – clothes and textiles not suitable for resale – and spare charities from “paying to throw stuff away”.
Of course, solving fashion’s waste problem shouldn’t be down to the creative thinking of charities. Campaigning groups such as the Or Foundation and Fashion Revolution continue to urge the industry to take more responsibility. In the meantime, we’re lucky to have our charity shops. “So many have upped their game beautifully,” says Mary Portas, who disrupted the sector 15 years ago with Mary’s Living & Giving shops. “They’re no longer seen as a blight on the high street, but a beacon. I don’t take anything other than hope from this.”
Here are some of the other, clever ways that charity shops are keeping our old clothes in circulation.
1. Mending and mend-me rails
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Leading the way is Barnardo’s with its new Re-Fashion hubs in Bradford and Sutton Coldfield – in-store repair workshops with trained volunteers and rails of discounted damaged clothing, which, for a small donation, can be repaired or upcycled for you. In May, Sue Ryder launched Perfectly Imperfect – look for the purple stickers detailing clothes’ minor flaws and cheap prices. Similarly, this month Shelter has launched its Rescue and Repair range of discounted clothing with small imperfections, featuring QR codes that customers can scan to find repair guides. Meanwhile, Fara has introduced Mend-Me rails – easy-to-fix, high-end high-street bargains (for example, Jigsaw, Reiss, Whistles) at its store in Streatham, south London, and damaged designer pieces (McQueen, Gucci, Chanel) at its Angel one.
2. Kilo sales and fill-a-bag days
It’s a win-win – charities get to sell what they’d otherwise scrap, while we get a bargain. St Oswald’s Hospice in Newcastle upon Tyne hosts monthly kilo sales (£2 per kilo); Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice Care’s monthly kilo sales, in Farnborough, Surrey, run all week (£7.50 per kilo); and St Wilfrid’s Hospice in West Sussex hosts regular fill-a-bag sales for £10. Take a tape measure, though, as these flash sales often have no changing rooms.
3. Star power
When you see cardboard cutouts of Ed Sheeran in the windows of his local Suffolk charity shop, you know that celebrity donations are no longer a closely guarded secret. East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices have raised more than £50,000 from Sheeran’s donations, which even include his pants. This month, donations from Martin Freeman, Sharon Horgan and Patrick Grant, among others, are dropping across Traid’s 12 London stores. And in December, look out for celebrity donations at Crisis’s Christmas pop-up shop in London; last year it featured donations from Kate Moss, Daniel Craig and Liam Gallagher.
4. Secondhand socials
Lock-ins and late-night openings all get more pennies in the till. Traid’s Secondhand Socials at its London stores include DJs, wine tasting and workshops – check listings for their next event. Hospice in the Weald is hosting a “Love your Label” lock-in at its Sevenoaks shop on 25 September, and Charity Super.Mkt’s biannual Super Jumble returns to Elephant and Castle in London on 25 October.
5. Designer upcycling
Who better to tackle the glut of unloved preloved than the UK’s new generation of upcycling designers? Charity Super.Mkt’s Made Better collection comprises one-off clothes upcycled from unsold stock (at its Spitalfields and Brent Cross stores). Oxfam has partnered with Leeds Beckett University to launch an upcycling lab, where fashion design students have created outfits from unwearable donations. They’re on sale from 1 October at Oxfam online. Crisis’s latest upcycling collaboration is with size-inclusive designer Planet Soph, landing at its Brick Lane store in London later this month.
