How clothes that would otherwise go to the landfill end up in vintage lovers' closets
'Anything that you could possibly want is already made,' Lindsay Scarrow says
Lindsay Scarrow first stepped foot into a thrift store at six years old when her father took her to buy a leather jacket. She fell in love with vintage clothing and hasn't looked back since.
"I remember thinking, 'Why would I ever want to buy something new if I can just get it second hand?'" Scarrow said.
Now, Scarrow is breathing life into clothes that other people have discarded. She sells garments that would have ended up in a landfill, giving them a second chance in Saskatchewan closets.
Scarrow is the owner of Replacing You Curated Vintage in Saskatoon, a business that restores discarded clothing.
She began Replacing You on Instagram in 2019, selling thrifted men's pieces. Since then it's turned into much more.
Scarrow said she and her business partner would initially hit the thrift stores in Saskatoon every morning.
"He would go to the north end and I would go to the south end," Scarrow said. "Then the next day we would switch."
As the business grew, so did their need for vintage clothing. Scarrow eventually opened a physical store a few months ago, with an emphasis on women's vintage pieces. With a surge of demand, Scarrow switched to receiving her clothing in bulk from a rag warehouse in Vancouver.
Saving clothes from the landfill
Clothes that are rejected by thrift stores and would otherwise go to the landfill are sent to rag houses: huge warehouses covered floor-to-ceiling in garments.
Every month, Scarrow works with The Room Vintage, a rag house based in Langley, B.C.
Scarrow sends her inspiration list and budget to the head picker at the warehouse, where he digs through hundreds of thousands of pounds of clothes to find what she's looking for. She gravitates toward vintage sports jerseys, college sweatshirts and women's Y2K fashion.
"I'll have two people up on a platform sorting a sweatshirt bale and have two people down below sorting a T-shirt bale or a mix-clothing bale," Kelly Jimeno-Hansen, head picker at The Room Vintage, said.
In an average month, The Room Vintage receives more than 110,000 kilograms of clothing sent from thrift stores, clothing organizations and charities across Canada. The rag house then resells the best finds to stores across North America.
"I don't think people realize how much we're really polluting the planet at the end of the day and how much second hand can really help off-set the effects of it," Jimeno-Hansen said.
Scarrow pays by the pound and receives a few boxes of items picked for her.
"I do feel like it's spot on in the sense that it's like the same esthetic, but it might not necessarily be the exact same items," Scarrow said. "Which is completely fine with me because that would be crazy if they found the exact things that I wanted.
"I like the aspect of it that's like a mystery. It's a surprise when I open the bulk orders. There's a lot more variety because it's coming from the Vancouver area, so it's different brands than we would see here."
Clothes that don't sell from the warehouse get turned into rags for mechanics or cleaners, so nothing goes to waste. Last summer the warehouse created rags to send to firefighters during the B.C. wildfires.
"What kind of drew me to vintage in the first place was that aspect of sustainability and I think just knowing that we can keep all this clothing from going to a landfill or polluting the world honestly just helps me sleep at night," Jimeno-Hansen said.
When clothes hit the rack
Once Scarrow receives her bulk orders, she launders every piece in bleach and soap to bring them back to life before pricing them and displaying them at her shop.
In the last few years, she's noticed a surge of people looking for vintage in Saskatchewan.
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Scarrow said the business has inspired her to shop more sustainably in every aspect of her life. She said her apartment is filled with Facebook Marketplace finds.
"Textile waste is astronomical nowadays," Scarrow said. "It definitely feels good to know that I'm contributing, even in a small way, to helping that.
"Anything that you could possibly want is already made, you just need to find it second hand."
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