![]() As Lily pointed out, charity shops have long been known as a place where you could have access to well made, good quality pieces at prices you couldn’t afford if buying new, but now that quality is being displaced in favour of flimsy microtrends. And there are plenty of people excitedly sharing their fast fashion charity shop finds on social media too.īut is a willing consumer base enough of a reason to give these ‘donations’ a green light? Not only do they further erode the perception of how much new clothes should cost (they’re somewhere between 30 and 50% cheaper than RRP in the charity shops), but they are completely altering the perception of how clothes should look, feel, and perform. My local BHF branch in Manchester Piccadilly, which is around 50-60% PLT, is a huge draw for younger shoppers who swerve the (brilliantly curated) vintage and go straight for the lime green pleather. Not everyone is mad about rails chock full of Boohoo, PLT, Zara, and Primark though. There’s Boohoo everywhere you look in basically every charity shop,” says fellow charity shopper Lily. Of course, it’s still possible to find a gem but I just find it a bit depressing now. “As well as the staples like jeans, trousers and tops, charity shops have given me things like my vintage wool Aquascutum coat – bought when I was a teenager and still going strong now I’m 27. Particularly with the speed of ultra-fast fashion brands, the quality has gone down,” says Selorm Mensah, who’s been charity shopping for 12 years, accumulating a vintage collection she could “talk about forever”. “The rate at which feature on charity shop rails and the quantity has definitely changed my shopping experience. Once a hotbed for affordable quality clothing, rare finds and cheap fun vintage, charity shops are now stuffed to the rafters with the same generic, trend-led products you’re faced with online and in every other high street shop. UK charity Go Dharmic confirms brands are entitled to tax relief for donating these items but, unsurprisingly, this is never mentioned during brands’ lengthy spiels about doing their bit. īoohoo donates over 100,000 samples per year to local charities, while PLT says it has “saved over 100 tonnes of clothing, shoes and accessories from going to landfill” by donating to its charity partner the British Heart Foundation (BHF). Logically most of us now probably understand charity shops are doing us more of a favour than we’re doing them – giving us much-needed space to fill back up with yet more clothes which we’ll donate in future – but in ramming the rails with day-glo polyester, fast fashion brands have decided they are ‘Giving Back’. But not for long because, just like us, fast fashion brands like Boohoo and Pretty Little Thing (PLT) have discovered the joy of unloading upon local charity shops. With new products added daily, the tests which fail to sell soon pile up. ![]() Brands now rely on small, regular orders to test the waters for new trends and styles. Not too long ago, seasonal sales (and the odd bout of incineration thrown in here and there, of course) did the trick to clear space, but the fast fashion model has transformed. How embarrassing that they’d ever sold ditsy polyester dresses when S/S is strictly utilitarian. Throwing visual merchandising to the wind, they stuff rail upon rail with unsold stock that they’re simply dying to get rid of so there’s enough space for the seasons ahead. Sophie Benson on the complicated relationship between fast fashion brands and charity shops.įor anyone who has stuffed their unwanted belongings into charity bags in pursuit of that streamlined, idealised January self, it might come as a surprise that many brands do much the same.
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