There’s a new kind of shopping fad catching the fancy of Bengaluru’s fashionable set and it doesn’t have to do with sucking up tummies to fit into that impossibly small crop top or pre-ordering the next season’s collection of their favourite brand. If anything, youngsters in the city are air-kissing their approvals to the concept of clothes swapping – a trend that reportedly started in the US in the 90s and has been gaining popularity ever since recession hit the world economy in the noughties and people woke up to the burden of an overflowing wardrobe and its attendant credit card woes.
Clothes swapping, or ‘swishing’ as the movement is referred to as, involves a get-together where guests exchange their unused clothes and or accessories between themselves and the exchange is almost always done for free or for a major discount.Environment-friendly collaborative consumption that is also… no wonder the concept has the world’s shopaholics in thrall.
Last Saturday, Bengaluru’s shopaholics got a taste of this with Clothary, the brainchild of Isabella Escobedo. “Clothary is an attempt at making fashion sustainable and affordable by breaking away from conventional patterns of the retail industry. With one eye on conscious consumption and the other on the latest trends, Clothary wants to be a walk-in wardrobe, a clothes library where sharing is the new possessing and renting the new purchasing,” reads the initiative’s Facebook page. Talking about the event and how it was received by Bengalureans, Escobedo says, “The event was very successful and while around a 100 had accepted our Facebook invite, about 65 people – mostly youngsters – turned up. And by the response, the participants were happy with the exchange.There were people who’d come to access fashion for free, some came to declutter their wardrobes, and some came because they thought it was a sustainable idea that contributed to a better environment.”
The Exchange Room is another city-based initiative that was started by four friends who “always had wardrobes full of clothes but never had anything ‘new’ to wear.” “It was from this dilemma that we hit upon the idea of exchanging clothes amongst ourselves rather than go on shopping sprees,” says Sai Sangeet, one of the co-founders. “But from a project that started between four close friends, the idea gained traction among our wider circle of friends; we’ve got a Facebook page and even conducted two events that were successful. Though we focus mainly on clothes exchange, we also give away clothes for low prices when some people do not have anything to offer in exchange.”
The Street Store Bangalore sets its model on the South Africa-based ‘open-source’ movement, The Street Store. Explains founder Samridhi Agarwal, “The Street Store is a worldwide movement that first started in South Africa. It’s basically a nonprofit drive where we tie up with various NGOs to set up a store in a public place and provide an amazing shopping experience to the needy.” But that’s not all. “Taking a leaf out of the clothes swap idea, we’ve recently started an exchange forum for women called Revamp My Closet where we buy used clothes from people that we personally pick from their homes.Customers can then either accept cash or shop at our store where we sell clothes at highly discounted rates,” Agarwal informs.
Finally, giving a spin to the concept of barter trading is AdalBdal (pronounced A-Dal-B-Dal). Explains founder Bal Krishn Birla, “We started AdalBdal over a year ago to kickstart the trend of moneyless transactions and renewing the system of barter. We function in two ways – one is through our online portal where people can upload pictures of things they want to give away and choose what they want in return. The second are the numerous donation drives we organize in apartments where we give away whatever is collected to the needy. “To impress upon kids the credo of sharing-is-caring, AdalBdal “has also partnered with the Freethinking School for their event Freeswap Summer Camp Barter Weekend Program, to introduce kids to the system of exchange without letting money come into the equation. We bring up the issue of money all the time in front of kids today. This initiative is a way to teach them that there is joy in giving and receiving something with no monetary consideration involved.”
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Bengaluru / by Mahalakshmi P, TNN / June 14th, 2015