A garment’s trip down memory lane: Dutch ReShare initiative for second-hand fashion

“I bought this dress in Curaçao. I wore it on one of the most beautiful birthdays that I have ever celebrated. Nice weather, good food and dancing for hours.” This is written in a small, curved handwriting on a clothing tag attached to a summer dress. The dress can be found on a rack of one of the ten second-hand stores of the Leger des Heils, the Dutch equivalent of the Salvation Army. For the past weeks people that brought in their clothes here had the opportunity to write down a little anecdote on the clothing tag, for the next buyer of the garment. These pieces of clothing were sold over the past week, when the third edition of the Week of Second-Hand Textiles, with the slogan ‘ReShare Your Memories’, took place in The Netherlands.

The Week of Second-Hand Textiles

The Week of Second-Hand Textiles is an initiative by Leger des Heils Reshare. The goal of the project is to highlight the sustainable aspects of second-hand textiles and clothing, says Thamar Keuning, a marketing and communications employee at Leger des Heils ReShare. Plus it is achieved without ‘wagging the moral finger’ as she describes it, “You want to make it into something fun”.