On 16th February, I went to a clothes swap in London ran by sustainable fashion proposers Stories Behind Things. After purchasing a ticket of £12 for entry free, I brought along 5 items and traded them in for 5 tokens. Once handed in the clothes were steamed and organised into colour and product type.

I believe a clothes swap feature would be well placed in my magazine, as it is a cheap and fun alternative to buying new clothes. I interviewed one of the founders, Jemma for a insight into the company.

Stories Behind Things – Interview Jemma 16/02/19

G: When was Stories Behind Things found and what made you start it up?

J: So we started two years ago now, me and my best friend Ella started it as a passion project. We went to uni together in Leeds, I studied Fashion, she studied Journalism and we just felt really disconnected to what we were consuming. We loved going thrifting together, loved going into vintage stores and we thought wouldn’t it be nice to have a safe space for both of us to literally share the story behind pieces that we already had. So whether it was a item that we got on holiday or something that we got from a market, we would hang it up, take a nice image of it, and just say ‘I got this from a market in Ibiza etc’. From there we grew our first lot of our community in the first six months or so, just of people connecting with what the stories were, tagging their friends saying ‘remember when we went on holiday’ and triggering them to to talk about their memories, which was really nice for us. If we had something that didn’t have a story and it was vintage, we would hang it up and take an image and then make one up. So this could’ve been worn in the forties by a librarian or something, and it’s just really fun to imagine the life that that piece of clothing had. From there we got approached by small fashion brands asking us to share their story, and that’s when we started to consider the sustainability aspect of everything.

G:What is the best part of working at stories behind things?

J: So I think for me, it’s being a founder I was able to imagine something and then bring it to life. It’s really amazing we had this community of like minded people, for example the clothes switch.. switching clothes is a really common concept that’s not been done anywhere in London so we thought let’s try and do it. It’s worked and now we do one most months, so it’s really magic to believe something, to put it out there in real life and for people to turn up and engage with it.

G: Have you seen a sudden boost in people being more aware of sustainability?

J: Yes, definitely i’d say in the last year or so. It’s just one of those things, because climate change is in the news all the time, fast-fashion, all of these factories being exposed for not treating their workers fairly, there has been this uprise in brands who want to do things in the right way. This is because all consumers are now demanding traceability of where their clothing is made. Even to the extent of what is the name of the factory? When did someone last visit it? All of these brands are having to deliver on these answers and if they don’t they will lose customers, so obviously it’s in the brands interest as well to be able to provide that information.

G: When was your first clothes swap?

J: Our first was two years ago, Ella and I rented a warehouse in Hackney and about fifteen rails and we had no idea if anyone would turn up, but we had over two hundred people come. For us it was a definite light bulb moment to understand that everyone has a wardrobe, and clothes that they don’t wear. There is this fast-fashion, fast consumption world that we live in where people want new stuff, and we wanted to shine light on the fact that you can have new stuff in your life and it doesn’t have to be new from a shop, it can just be new into your life. For us doing these events we see people and their faces, how happy they are when they find something that they love, you get the same dopamine hit as buying something from a shop. That’s why we try to steam all of our clothes and make it look curated and beautiful and have the quality slightly higher so yeah, you can find really good stuff.

G: What happens to the clothes that don’t get picked today?

J: For the clothes that are left at the end of the day, we will keep all the good stuff for the next switch. We have a big archive of second hand and vintage that we store for the next event. If we have a large amount of t-shirts or jeans we will take them to trade, which is a second hand store that takes clothing in bulk, because not all charity shops have the capacity to take a large amount of clothes but trade do. We have a good relationship with them where we can drop off clothes. But because we say five items per person, the number of clothing that we have over is sort of perfect, so we tend to just take all of it and then just use it for the next.

G: Do you work with any other brands? Do you ever select clothes to bring here?

J: No, it’s just all other peoples. To be honest a lot of it is Ella and I clearing out our wardrobes. And also friends, we will contact friends and say if you are getting rid or if you are having a hoard out just give us some stuff, because all of our friends now know that this is what we do, so we often have them give us a bag every now and then which helps.

G: What are the goals for the future of stories behind things?

J: Our goals are to reach more people and scale up our events. We are planning Clothes Switches all across Europe which is super exciting for us!