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Arushi Chaudhary
How swap works
Keep an eye out for a swap event happening in your city/vicinity. You can set up a Google alert for it, if you are committed to the cause.
At any such event, you have to pay a registration fee, which is normally a token amount, to participate.
Make sure the clothes you carry to swaps are in good condition.
Deposit your clothes at the designated counter and get coupons in exchange.
You can use these coupons to ‘shop’ for whatever catches your fancy.
On an app
Sign up on the app of your choice and set up your profile.
Pick something from your wardrobe that is of the same value/price approximately as the item you’d like to have. If you want something that’s of higher value, you can swap it for two or more items.
Alternatively, if there’s nothing of interest available at the time you have uploaded items, you can keep the credits gained and use it for a later purchase.
Once a swap has been finalised, a courier will pick it up from your selected address.
Swaps can take place across cities.
When one thinks of the most pressing concerns facing the world today, salvaging our environment is perhaps the foremost. Conserving fresh water, improving energy efficiency and decreasing waste in landfills are among the top priorities to tackle this concern. Much is left to be desired in the fashion industry’s performance on each one of these counts. That’s why the din around sustainable fashion continues to grow louder.
At a personal level, many of us grapple with the constant dichotomy of ‘no clothes to wear and not enough space to store them’. Yet, one keeps adding to those already overflowing wardrobes, often at the peril of financial health. After all, the marketing world has made us believe strongly in the power of ‘retail therapy’. Today, one doesn’t even need to step out of the cosy confines of home to indulge — just unlock the phone and get the dose of therapy delivered to our doorstep.
Benefit-all exchange
Fashion swaps — an up and coming trend can help this stylish crowd break free from this vicious cycle of buying and hoarding, and at the same time do its bit to add sustainability to the fashion industry. Relatively new to India, fashion swaps are pop-up events where the fashion conscious can get pre-loved pieces of high-end branded clothing and accessories in exchange for items from their own wardrobe. This is an excellent way to keep the collection of clothes fresh without burdening their wallet or the environment. Fortunately, quite a large cross-section of consumers are recognising the sense behind this concept, and it has lead to successful fashion swap events.
Delhi-based French national Moane Rosello, who organised a swap event in the national capital this year, agrees that the average consumer has evolved enough to recognise this concept as the new ‘cool’ thing to do. “We were thrilled about the response received even before the event. Blogs, lifestyle newspapers as well as Fashion Revolution India spread the word and this helped us reach a lot more people, who were excited about this alternative shopping/swapping option. There were people from different cultural and educational backgrounds, age groups and interests. Even some fashionistas were there to check bargains on couture,” she says.
“Fortunately, except for a couple of visitors who insisted loudly that they were shopping ‘only for their maids’, we had an exceptional response. This says a lot about Indian society’s outlook toward a respectable, sustainable lifestyle, if they have the avenues to pursue it.”
Sustainable fashion
Textiles sustainability specialist Dhawal Mane, who has been working in the sustainable fashion space for over seven years now, has successfully organised eight clothes swaps in Bengaluru and one in Mumbai since April 2018, in association with Global Fashion Exchange (GFX) and Fashion Revolution India. He, too, shares the opinion that if right eco-systems exist, inspired action in sustainable fashion is possible.
Speaking of his experience, Dhawal says, “I had, on occasions, swapped clothes with a friend. Being closely associated with sustainable fashion, I thought why not do it on a large scale. That’s how the idea of the first fashion swap took form. It was later held in Bengaluru in April 2018. I also got the opportunity to collaborate with GFX and Fashion Revolution India, which helped improve the visibility of our events.”
“Bengaluru already has a lot of awareness about sustainability. Quite a few initiatives around sustainable fashion were underway when we came up with our first fashion swap. So an audience already existed and we saw enthusiastic participation. In one of these events held at NIFT Bengaluru, we registered 300 swaps in just four hours.
“My aim now is to take this concept to a larger audience and also develop a model to make these swap events financially viable, so that more and more people become invested in organising or attending such events. So far, the minimal entry fee charged for these swaps is just about enough to cover for the cost of the event and whatever little marketing and publicity we invest in. For people who are passionate about sustainability in fashion, the economics are irrelevant. But such people are few and far between and one needs a financially viable model to get enough people interested in this concept to make it a mainstream trend,” he adds.
Suki Dusanj-Lenz, country head for Fashion Revolution India, which has been the driving force behind the swap events happening in different cities, weighs in on the organisation’s journey in the country, “Fashion Revolution has collaborated with multiple organisations in India to encourage thrifting and clothes swapping. We see no merit in bragging about new buys or clothes hauls. We wish to do more swaps around the country and highlight the benefits of this concept to the environment. It also helps in reducing textile waste which is vast, particularly since fast fashion has become more prevalent. In India we have held clothes swaps in Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Goa and Ahmedabad with local collaborators.”
While these events create awareness and generate discourse around this green concept, their one-off nature makes it difficult to solely rely on these for all your needs. What if someone wanted to make a complete lifestyle overhaul and use only swapped clothes? Filling in this space is the Delhi-based fashion swapping app ThisforThat. The concept is the same, except here it happens on a smartphone, at any time or place of your choosing.
Like others, ThisforThat founder Nancy Bhasin, too, conceived the idea of this platform while rummaging through her mother and sister-in-law’s closets to look for clothes to wear to a wedding. “This is something we’ve all done, many times, so I thought why not replicate it on a larger scale for everyday wear and not just fancy, ethnic ensembles. I started out by hosting swap parties in 2016 to get a sense of the market’s readiness. Then I created a skeletal app to test the model, and finally, launched ThisforThat in September 2018.”
“In just over a year, we have been able to create a micro-community of users who are swapping clothes every two to four weeks. Not just clothes, women have been using it to exchange kids’ accessories, cosmetics, perfumes, jewellery and so on. We have had 20,000 people sign up, a sizeable number of these members indulge in 10-15 swaps in a month. Our highest so far is 80 swaps in a month by a single user! These figures speak for an acceptance among the users for pre-loved clothes and the fact that the taboo around second-hand clothes and accessories is now passé,” she adds.
Bhasin, who has spent a large part of her career building brands in the fashion space, now wants to build a parallel economy with her app that gives users an alternative way to consume.
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