The Common Market: A Radical New Marketplace

By: Sara Arnold

Activist group Fashion Act Now (FAN) wants to dismantle the globalised growth-based fashion system and nurture non-capitalist clothing systems. In the summer of 2022, FAN launched The Common Market, an online marketplace to celebrate alternative systems and the extraordinary hidden world of clothing cultures that are uncorrupted by profit. This is no ordinary marketplace - nothing is for sale. Here you can find community fashion projects to get stuck into - for participation not purchase. Inspired by David Bollier, expert on the commons, FAN chose to feature projects led by communities, addressing their needs, nurturing their cultural identity, and sharing their collective wealth.

This may seem abstract, but when you think about, these projects exist all around us: sewing, knitting, and upcycling circles; communities growing fibers and dyes; Indigenous people upholding their clothing systems and traditions; clothing swaps; open innovation and other forms of sharing with much more yet to discover. These projects aren’t growth based, and so largely don’t advertise in traditional ways. Consequently they lack visibility. The Common Market seeks to make these projects accessible to fashion consumers around the world, showing them that clothing culture is so much more than consumerism.

In the following interview, Sara Arnold spoke to one of the project owners, Sharron Davis, founder of the Free Your Wardrobe community, which finds good new homes for clothes, where they are appreciated and saved from waste, preventing the urge to shop for new. She started the initiative by accident when she photographed a bunch of her clothes and put them on Facebook with the title “I’m setting my wardrobe free.” In this interview, Sara found a “system” where “considered gifting” and care for well-being are brought together through the revival of old clothes. This independent, simple, localised, and very personal model can be seen as part of a wider movement of free shops, swap shops, clothing libraries, and online networks such as Freecycle, all challenging the capitalist fashion system through gifting.

Sara

We are really interested in converting typical fashion consumers to new ways of interacting with clothing. You’ve been on quite a journey of change. It’s really interesting that you were a fast fashion addict before you were doing this.

Sharron

I'm 52 and I've been a real victim of the change in pricing for fashion. In the nineties, I used to make all my own clothes and shop second-hand because it wasn't affordable for me to buy new ones. And I'm not sure how that dropped away, but it did. The other thing about it is, I also had an eating disorder. I don't think we talk enough about the addiction side of buying fashion and the reasoning behind it. I was bulimic for about seven years. I've been well for 25 years now, since 1997. I think what happened was that clothes prices dropped and that became my new drug. I've always been a sales shopper, so it's always been that thrill of a chase. I wouldn't really buy things at full price, even the fast fashion. And actually, I mean, fast fashion is a term that's used in multiple ways and I think it's about buying clothes that you don't need and you don't wear, or don't wear enough. That's the big thing.

How does it feel to be addicted to buying clothing?

I basically put my hand up at the end of the Greenpeace talk and said, “I'm a fast fashion addict.” It was the strangest thing. It was the first time I'd actually really thought of it as an addiction. They had a project called After the Binge, The Hangover. It just spoke to me. I’m not proud of it. I already knew about what it was doing to the planet, I already knew about the terrible things that it was doing to the people, the poor women who make it. And it did bother me, but somehow I put it where most people put it. I think there is a lot of ignorance but there's also a lot of people who choose to push it to one side, and that was definitely me, although I was watching those things and engaging with it and I did care. And then this penny dropped. I was like, “Oh my God, I'm damaging all these people and I'm damaging myself.” Then I stopped buying anything. Now I only buy second-hand. It will be five years in November. No new clothes at all. Which makes it interesting.

Do you have a message for others who are trying to stop?

My big message is be honest with yourself. It's about accepting where you are. You don't have to feel guilty about it, but really understand what you're doing. It’s important to be honest about what you have in your wardrobe and what you actually wear and start to explore what that looks like. The more you wear clothes that you feel comfortable in, the more you feel comfortable in yourself, the less likely you are to binge-shop.

I'm curious about the community aspect to Free Your Wardrobe. When people receive items, what kind of relationships are created in that process?

Before lockdown, people used to come to my house and they'd try stuff on and I'd take the pictures when they were there, and then I'd link in the people that donated the clothes. And it's beautiful. People love to see their clothes having a new life. It does really create a relationship. I've got 1900 members. People are a bit shy about sharing photos, but it absolutely does create a connection. It's not transactional. It's not a swap.

It's a gift really, isn't it?

It's a gift. I went to a lot of swaps and they can be really grabby. It took me a while to do a proper pop up because I thought people would come in and grab all the best stuff but people are very respectful. There is an energy with it. We sometimes have passers by and they're like, “what? can I just have this?” I think giving things away can give them more value, not less.

What I find interesting about gift economies is, if you have a market in which everything is 99 cents, you'd probably feel like you need to grab everything while it lasts. But when everything is a gift, you're actually more inclined to just take what you need rather than in excess.

I think that's very true. That's the flipside of it not being a swap. If you bring five things, you think, I need to take five things. My events that I run, I never charge people. I think people are more likely to think, “I need to get my money's worth.”

What do you get from it if you're not charging anyone?

It's not about what I get, weirdly. I work in IT. I just love clothes and I love being around clothes and I feel that I am very privileged. You know, I run my own business. I'm a consultant. I don't work all the time. I’m very aware of my privilege. It's a way for me to pay my privilege back to the community. Also in some ways it's penance. I bought probably enough clothes for ten lifetimes. It is also putting the message out there that second-hand is amazing. People's behaviours do change and they will confess to me, “oh, I bought this new, but I've worn it a lot,” and I'm always like, “you know I have no judgement.” It's nice that I’m able to reach people in that way. I’m doing something that makes a difference.

I've written about 20,000 words of a book called Free Your Wardrobe And The Rest Will Follow. It covers my journey and my experience, but also the people I've met. There's a lot of feminism and body acceptance. It's not a simple topic. I don't think we've scratched the surface really about what it really means. We all have to wear clothes. You might as well wear something that you feel good in and that makes you feel good for all the right reasons.

Is Free Your Wardrobe just operating in Brighton, UK? What do you think of it spreading wider?

We are just in Brighton at the moment. Actually, it could exist elsewhere and it probably does in different forms. However, the main thing is you need to have stock. And a big reason for that is size. But I strongly believe that size is not a number. People get hooked on sizes. If I have a garment that I think isn't sized well, I will cut the sizes out. Or I will cut out the sizes because I think they won't like it because it's a bigger size than they think they are. I just think that whole thing is ridiculous. We're all different shapes and sizes. So, I've got three bags: bottoms, tops, dresses - and I do it by five sizes - extra small, small, medium, large and extra large. But it's not based on what's on the label. When I run an event, I know that I've got clothes across all the sizes. Often people who are larger sizes find nothing. That's really disheartening. And I find that there are a lot of people hanging onto clothes that don't actually fit them or people hanging on to clothes just because they fit. I'm trying to promote starting where you are with your body - letting go of stuff because someone else would enjoy it and hopefully finding something that does fit you and that you feel great in rather than just thinking, “Oh well, maybe one day.” Don’t keep stuff for a person you're not. Be really clear about who you are.

I encourage people to measure themselves. I think it's really important that people measure themselves and know how big they are. It's physics - you can't put your body into something that's smaller than your body. We have a load of shame around that, which I think is put upon us by the patriarchy. I feel this is a way of pushing against it.I had a lady referred to me who wasn't going to have a new outfit for her 50th birthday. I ended up extending the back of this jumpsuit. She'd never worn a jumpsuit and always wanted to wear one so I made it fit. I gave a couple of people whole new wardrobes because they lost stuff in fires. Especially with the larger sizes, I help people just find something that they would never have considered wearing. It’s not charity. With charity, you get what you’re given and you’re meant to be grateful. This is different - it’s a genuine gift.

At Fashion Act Now, we are fans of small projects learning from and emulating each other. I imagine there might be somebody on the other side of the world who will read this interview and think I could do that too, in my local area. I wonder what you think of that. What would you say to somebody who might want to start a similar initiative on the other side of the world?

I would say, “absolutely! go for it!” I would say that you absolutely need to love clothes. I would say make it as simple as possible. We have rules for those wanting to receive an item of clothing. People need to answer this: Do you love me? Do I fit you? Where will you wear me? If you can answer those three questions, then you can have anything. People ask, “Are you going to limit the number of things that people bring or do you want a certain quality?” It's called Free Your Wardrobe - so it's about people getting the things out of their wardrobe, so that their wardrobe only contains things that they will wear. Any limitations don't really fit with that ethos. Absolutely, think about what your goals are when you start setting rules and set as few rules as possible.

• Join the mailing list at TheCommon.Market

• Become a member at FashionActNow.org to help build the The Cowwmmon Market

• Join Free Your Wardrobe - https://www.facebook.com/ groups/398923144160000/

Bio:

Sara Arnold co-founded degrowth activist group Fashion Act Now (FAN) in 2020, which coined the term defashion to describe the urgent downscaling of resource and energy use that is required in the fashion industry. Together with Fashion Act Now members, she is powering The Common Market, an online marketplace for community led fashion projects. She is also an associate lecturer at University of the Arts London. Sara previously founded fashion rental platform, Higher Studio, to incentivise a circular economy and is a former activist in Extinction Rebellion London, where she coordinated protests at London Fashion Week.