Shows presented by eBay and Oxfam exclusively featured preloved pieces.
When you think of runways, fashion weeks, and cities such as Paris, Milan, New York, and London, the last thing you’ll probably think of is secondhand clothes. What blasphemy, some may say. How can you even think of preloved clothing and fashion in one train of thought?
But London Fashion Week has challenged this mindset with shows presented by eBay and Oxfam that exclusively featured preloved pieces. To even put more emphasis on circular fashion, the organizers placed them first on-schedule, too.
“Endless Runway”
Underneath a railway arch in Shoreditch there’s a cavernous event space where eBay, in partnership with the British Fashion Council (BFC), kicked off London Fashion Week last Thursday, Sept 13, with clothes by leading British designers from different decades, a nod to LFW’s 40th anniversary.
Called the “Endless Runway,” the event was curated by eBay’s preloved style director, Amy Bannerman, and was hosted by model and presenter Leomie Anderson. By presenting in both the New York and London Fashion Weeks, eBay is hoping to make pre-loved fashion “more aspirational.”
“This is the first time an on-schedule London Fashion Week show has been exclusively preloved clothes, so it is a monumental moment for circular fashion,” Bannerman told The Guardian. What made the event an even more significant pivot away from fashion week shows was that shoppers were able to buy the items immediately via the eBay app. Talk about democratizing fashion week in one fell swoop!
Among the memorable items featured on the show was a punky deconstructed kilt from London-based brand Chopova Lowena. There were also items from other in-demand designers such as Martine Rose, Grace Wales Bonner, and Simone Rocha. These shared the runway with archival fashion, such as an Alexander McQueen trouser suit from 2003, and high street pieces.
“I wanted to put preloved clothes from different eras together to make coherent looks, because that is something that people do find challenging, and I wanted to show it can be done,” Bannerman said, as quoted in the same article.
The Guardian praised her curation, calling her styling “whip-smart,” making each ensemble felt like it could have come from the pages of Vogue, or the feed of a trend-setting TikToker.
“Style for Change”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the British capital, Oxfam, in partnership with preloved resale app Vinted, hosted its own fashion show as well. Titled “Style for Change,” it brought together personalities such as Sex Education actor George Robinson, Dragons’ Den’s Deborah Meaden, actor Robert Sheehan, and activist fashion designer Katharine Hamnett on the runway.
“Having a catwalk full of celebrities dressed in all secondhand clothing at London Fashion Week is a statement that this is, and has to be, the way forward,” said Kehinde Brown, the nonprofit’s strategic communications lead and director of “Style for Change,” in the same The Guardian article.
The show was styled by Bay Garnett, a pioneer in secondhand fashion and longtime Oxfam collaborator. Garnett is perhaps best known for dressing up Kate Moss in pieces the designer found in charity and vintage shops for a shoot in British Vogue in 2003.
The show took place amid new Oxfam research findings which revealed that two-thirds or 65% of people in the UK own secondhand clothing, while one in 10 say the majority of the clothes they plan to buy in the next 12 months will be secondhand.
It was the fourth time Oxfam took part in London Fashion Week, but Garnett said it was the first time she observed a “real shift in the way people view it.” The shift, she added, was long overdue.
Brown has the same sentiments, adding that people are starting to realize the benefits of preloved clothing. “People are appreciating secondhand fashion as something more unique, often cheaper to buy, but also better for the planet.”
Every outfit shown on the catwalk was available for purchase on Vinted through Oxfam’s secondhand wardrobe online shop. Money from the sales went to charity, with Vinted also supporting Oxfam’s Second Hand September campaign.
More work ahead for sustainable fashion
Ebay’s and Oxfam’s shows couldn’t have come at a better time, given that only a few weeks before London Fashion Week opened, nonprofit organization Collective Fashion Justice released a report which revealed that only 3.4% of British Fashion Council members have published public targets to reduce their emissions aligned with the Paris Agreement.
In the UK, the fashion industry is the largest within the creative sector, employing 800,000 and worth £26 billion, but for brands, there are few incentives to tackle the climate crisis, as per another report on The Guardian.
Globally, 58% of 250 of the world’s largest fashion brands have made no clear progress on their climate targets, according to a study by Fashion Revolution, another nonprofit which campaigns for reform within the industry.
Aja Barber, author of Consumed: The Need for Collective Change, Colonialism, Climate Change and Consumerism, suggested looking into tax cuts for brands that do reach their climate goals.
Another option could be for London Fashion Week to follow Copenhagen Fashion Week’s lead, where brands that present during the event have to adhere to a sustainability requirements framework. Currently, the framework spans six focus areas covering the entire value chain. On top of those, brands are asked to answer a set of questions to get insights into their current standing on their sustainability efforts. The Minimum Standards include 19 action points.
“Setting this standard in London would send such a strong message that the British fashion industry is serious about tackling climate action, as well as other issues such as working conditions,” said Hannah Rochell, founder of sustainable style website Slowette.
According to eBay data, nearly $50 billion worth of secondhand luxury products were sold worldwide in 2023. On its app, “preloved and refurbished makes up 40% of eBay’s gross merchandise volume, and in June 2024, global eBay users searched for ‘vintage’ over 1,000 times a minute, on average.”
Meanwhile, an Oxfam analysis released earlier this month found that buying just one pair of jeans and a T-shirt secondhand could help save the equivalent of 20,000 standard bottles of water.
Giving secondhand fashion the platform it so urgently needs is a most welcome development. Much, however, still needs to be done. For Garnett, “fundamentally, we need to change the way we think about fashion. Something that was made four weeks ago does not hold more value than something that was made four years ago – they are both clothes. The difference with secondhand fashion is it has that edge that makes it cooler.”
