Free clothing and sustainable awareness: the disruptive model of a Dutch brand

Dubbed This is Free Fashion, this young Dutch brand offers free fashion through pop-up stores organised in various cities in the Netherlands. An approach by a firm that breaks with the conventional.

"We want to show that what for some is textile waste, for others can be a garment in good condition," reads the website of This is Free Fashion. Behind this message, which could be associated with a charitable organization, lies a fashion brand that transforms the retail experience. Its pop-up stores offer a format reminiscent of a traditional second-hand store, with the difference that customers do not pay anything and have a limit of pieces they can take per day.

"We were the modern version of a 'clothing bin'. The only difference is that we presented the items with the same care as a fashion boutique would. Nothing more," the brand wrote about its latest pop-up store on its Instagram account.

"Sharing is the new buying"

This is Free Fashion is funded by grants from various municipalities and operates with the help of volunteers, but also earns income through a crowdfunding platform called Steunactie. Its proposals include the possibility of setting up a clothing cart in company offices or organising a pop-up store during an event, for prices ranging from 600 to 2,000 euros. In addition, the sale of T-shirts with the brand's logo also generates additional income.

Their latest pop-up store took place in the city of Tilburg in the Netherlands and was a resounding success. They exceeded their target of distributing 10,000 items and on November 29 they opened a second pop-up store in another city in the country, Amstelveen, closer to the capital.

"After thousands of positive reactions to our store in Tilburg, we were overwhelmed with requests from all over the country," read the Instagram account at the end of November. "But what we really 'sold' in our free clothing store was awareness," says the brand, which has wanted to demonstrate from the beginning that "sharing is the new buying."

This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.NL, translated and edited to English.

It was translated using an AI tool.

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