Sustainability// From Hand-Me-Downs to Handing Sideways: Rethinking Attitudes to Pre-Loved Clothing.
By Chloe de Lullington
25 April 2021
Something I talk about a lot, and have done for a long time now, is the absolute joy of secondhand clothing and charity shopping. There are a multitude of reasons I love it, from the financial to the environmental to the yes, believe it or not, feminist – but it wasn’t always something I shouted from the rooftops with such enthusiasm.
As a small child, hand-me-downs were a rite of passage. I didn’t have any older siblings, so they came from older, distant cousins I never met – cousins whose parents were rather more traditional and conservative than my own. Once or twice a year, a big black bin bag bulging with fabrics would arrive, and without fail, I would eagerly rummage through it – and also without fail, would be met with reams upon reams of floral knee-length dresses and pastel cardigans. Given the choice (which, fair play to my folks, I was most of the time from about the age of two!) I would be cutting about in unisex chequered trousers, denim dungarees, and colourful knitwear (nothing much changes in 20 years) so this was very much Not My Vibe, but we made the best of it. Floral dresses and pastel cardigans had their place, and I reluctantly but obligingly donned them for Sunday services and visits to grandparents.
When I grew older, the hand-me-downs started coming directly from my mum, who has a truly excellent taste, especially when it comes to knitwear. She was given a gorgeous pillar box red St Michael wool jumper from a lady she looked after many years ago, and in turn, when the existence of my brother and I meant she could no longer pour herself into its unforgiving woollen structure, she passed it on to me. It’s grown slightly more bobbled with age, but for a garment we estimate to be about 50 years old, it has done phenomenally well!
But the real fun started when I stopped having hand-me-downs and started, instead, embracing the possibilities of handing sideways. It wasn’t about people handing me their cast-offs like some sort of scavenger – it was about taking advantage of opportunities, extending the life of pre-loved items.
For instance, I went through a phase during which I pretty obsessively only wore jeans and David Bowie t-shirts. It didn’t matter where they came from, I was all over them – at one point, my then-boyfriend and I bought each other the exact same one for Christmas, in a charming display of accidental synchronicity. When people became aware of this particular sartorial quirk, they started sending David Bowie t-shirts my way. I got them from friends who had outgrown them, friends who were throwing them out in wardrobe clearances, and once, notably, through the post from a friend’s little brother who had shot up like a beanpole, as little brothers are wont to do, and was thrilled at the thought of his Bowie t-shirt going to a loving home.
By this point, I was becoming a voracious thrifter; charity shops were good, but free things were better. If a friend (or friend’s sibling!) had a wardrobe clear out, I would be invited round like some sort of resident fashion raccoon to get my grubby little paws in their bin bags and exercise first refusal.
It was an odd and transitional time, coinciding with my reluctant advance to adolescence and eventually adulthood. The little girl next door shot up and I stayed resolutely five foot tall – round I went to look through her clothes from the previous summer, my heart slightly aching for the days where I babysat her, when we’d play Mario Kart together and she’d braid my hair while telling me all about her favourite characters from Glee. My own not-so-little brother covered the four years between us one growth spurt at a time, and I cut up pairs of his old jeans and spent a summer kicking about in the woods wearing them as shorts in one last pre-university burst of grass-stained childhood.
In amongst this, my parents and I would happily swap fleeces, jumpers, scarves – age and gender don’t matter when you’re wrapping up for a blustery walk across the South Downs; the wind and the waves don’t care whether your layers came from the men’s or women’s departments, or how much you paid for them.
And so, as the years went on, my attitude to pre-loved clothing shifted from a reluctant resignation to an active enthusiasm – it wasn’t something simply to settle for, it was something to participate in, something in which to find a playful joy. Hand-me-downs have a pejorative connotation, suggesting you’re just getting someone’s old tat, something fundamentally second best. Handing sideways, though, that’s a conscious choice – it’s saying “I’m clearing this out and I thought of you”, it’s working together to democratise fashion and keep things out of landfill. On a personal level, it’s about keeping the stories going – I still have a few of those old Bowie t-shirts (the ones I didn’t keep went, of course, to new homes – nothing was thrown out) and when I put them on, I think of the friends who had them first, the times spent together and the music over which we bonded. Likewise, when I wear the old red jumper, it’s always Mum at the forefront of my mind. They’re not just clothes, they’re pre-loved clothes, with an emphasis on the love.
Looking back, it’s been a patchwork journey towards my current slow fashion and vintage loving lifestyle, starting from a place of financial and social necessity and blossoming into something quite beautiful, a hodgepodge ethos I’m proud to follow in my own small way – especially as we celebrate Earth Day 2021.
If you want to chat about your own pre-loved and sustainability journey, whether that’s to discuss top tips, charity shopping hacks, or just to gush about the best bargain you ever got, come and find me on Instagram and Twitter!
Chloe de Lullington is a writer and lifelong thrifter, interested in the repurposing of clothes and culture in contemporary life. Originally from Kent, she gained a First Class degree in English Literature and Film and Theatre from the University of Reading and now lives in Shropshire.