09.06.08
Fronting this year’s visa swap shop in Lindsay Lohan a female celebrity promoting textile recycling and fashion swap shops around London for this year’s event.
Miss. Lohan will encourage Uk shoppers to swap old clothes at the Covent Garden store in London for this year’s charity event.
This is the second year the charity have encouraged people to go into stores and swap old clothes for points which is put onto a visa card or them.
Summer 2007 saw the first one of these mainstream celebrity backed events sponsored by Visa.
Miss Lohan told reporters “ I am so excited to be part of this year’s event. The concept of swapping clothes, getting something for nothing and refreshing your wardrobe appeals to everyone. Ethical stories continue to dominate the news agenda and its great when fashion projects benefit charities.”
Leigh McAlea from TRAID charity says “ Women are key to most of TRAIDs' activities. Both as shoppers, textile recyclers and workers. We have a female dominated workforce. We consider the target audience for the visa swap shop as everyone in the UK our aim is to boost awareness of textile recycling.”
Swapping clothes for money or other clothes however is not a new concept. It is something women’s fashion magazines such as Marie Claire have been writing about and promoting for the last couple of years fuelling claims that swapping is the new shopping.
Virginia Rowe, 31 editor of hip fashion website stylewillsaveus.com says : “ It’s much more fun then shopping. My favourite swapping events are the intimate little parties with Dj’s and a bar. The charm of these events is their intimacy and interaction. It’s so nice to see clothes you’ve loved in the past going to a good home.”
Clothes swapping events have long been popular in the U.S and are on the rise here in the U.K.
It appears women are now more concerned then ever with the ethical and environmental connotations of their fashion buying habits.
Issues surrounding the throwaway fashion culture has seen a boom in these swap parties all over the country both commercially and privately with a very dominant female audience.
Lucy Shea from Futterra a communications agency commited to ‘eco – fabolousness’ and staffed completely by women says: “ The motivation behind swapping –is to be beautiful on the outside but green on the inside- and this has struck a chord in many women.”
