Global Fashion Exchange

Summary

Global Fashion Exchange is an international platform promoting sustainability in the fashion industry with inspiring forums, educational content and cultural events. Through interactive clothing swaps GFX empowers consumers to take action for a better environment while they stylishly renew their wardrobe and save hundreds of thousands of clothes from going to the landfill.

Cause

The Fashion Industry faces many environmental challenges. It is one of the most polluting industry in the world, creating 150 billion units of clothing each year. Global Fashion Exchange believes that we all have a role to play in helping make more sustainable choices. From checking the labels to asking where your clothes actually came from, these are simple steps to start making a difference. One of the easiest ways is to give garments a longer life is by recycling them.

Mission

The mission of the Global Fashion Exchange is to promote sustainable consumption patterns, such as reusing and recycling, around the globe.

On average, people wear their clothes a total of seven times, with 2.5 billion pounds of clothing going to landfills each year. What Global Fashion Exchange proposes is to give garments greater longevity with a new owner. Working with international cities, brands and nonprofits, GFX is raising awareness and helping provide tangible solutions to close the loop.

Global Impact

GFX has given new life to over one million pounds from going to landfills through over 40 events held on 5 continents. They do so by promoting clothing swap. A Clothes Swap is an easy way to find new homes for quality items people no longer wear .

The way clothing swap works in GFX’s events are as it follows:

1. People are told to bring good quality, pre-loved items of clothing to swap. They bring them on the days of the event.

2. Those clothes will be sorted on the spot by one of the team where attendees will receive a ticket per item. Any clothes that GFX staff isn’t able to take (anything with holes or stains for example) will be donated.

3. Tickets will allow attendees to shop all items in the swap – each item will ‘cost’ 1 ticket.

Any clothes that remain at the end of the swap will be donated to keep them out of the landfill.

They have promoted and hosted events in New York (United Nations HQ), Brooklyn, London, Lisbon,  Dallas, Dubai, Toronto, Bangalore, Miami, Sydney, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, Melbourne, Santa Cruz, Bogota, Kathmandu and Prague.

References

• https://fashionunited.uk/news/fashion/global-fashion-exchange-if-people-are-smiling-the-world-is-going-to-shift/2018081031191
• https://fashionunited.uk/news/business/interview-global-fashion-exchange-sustainability-is-a-trend-that-is-going-to-last/2018081031193
• https://www.fashionrevolution.org/event/clothing-swap-global-fashion-exchange/
• http://www.globalfashionxchange.org/events
• http://www.globalfashionxchange.org/about