Recycled Fashion: The Art of Clothes Swapping

Clothes swap­ping in action at Deutz Swap My Style

Women love to shop. Some­times we get lucky with pieces we’ll wear to death, oth­ers we sadly rel­e­gate to the back of the closet, never to be given another thought.
Well, it’s time to spring-clean your wardrobe, but you don’t just have to give them away, you can swap them instead. Thanks to the grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity of cloth­ing swap par­ties – one’s trash is another’s treasure.

Deutz Swap My Style is one such event fea­tur­ing com­men­tary from Melissa Hoyer, one of Australia’s best-loved fash­ion com­men­ta­tors and writ­ers. At Deutz Swap My Style, women bring along up to five items of cloth­ing that they’d like to swap.

Their items are swapped for tokens, which are then used as tick­ets to take some­one else’s item home. It’s a great con­cept, and one that has seen these events often sell-out all over Australia.

The Cloth­ing Exchange is another pop­u­lar group whose events cater for women and men. Started as a part of her the­sis for a Mas­ters of Fash­ion, Kate Pears began the first clothes exchange in Mel­bourne.
It now has events in most of the country’s cap­i­tal cities, with reg­u­lar requests to help out organ­i­sa­tions; schools and gov­ern­ment bod­ies with their own swap parties.

Like Deutz Swap My Style, The Cloth­ing Exchange sees women bring in unwanted items that are still in good nick to swap for other pieces. It’s a shop­ping expe­ri­ence that doesn’t involve your credit card.
If you were think­ing you could sneak in your old-tracksuit pants, you’d be mis­taken. The organ­is­ers’ screen what items can be swapped, so most women will get as good as they give. It’s a great premise, one where you’re get­ting rid of unwanted clothes, and get­ting some new threads, all in the one deal.

Some happy ladies at Deutz Swap My Style with their goodies!

So what can you swap?
The Cloth­ing Exchange stip­u­lates the fol­low­ing:
• Gar­ments must be clean
• You need to bring items that you think oth­ers might like
• Items must not be dam­aged, or if they are, must be only minor faults
• Be sure you no longer want what you’re swap­ping. You can’t take back your piece when it’s in some­one else’s hands
• Items that can­not be exchanged include: under­gar­ments, swimwear, track­suits or any­thing polar fleece
It’s not only a great new way of shop­ping, but also a great way to meet like-minded fash­ion­istas. For more infor­ma­tion on The Cloth­ing Exchange and their upcom­ing events, head to their web­site at www.clothingexchange.com.au