Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - Live
Second-hand, first choice
Even Pernia Qureshi digs pre-loved fashion. See how onceworn clothes went from being embarrassing cast-offs to becoming the hottest look of the moment
There used to be a time when they were called hand-me-downs, when people were too embarrassed to admit they wore them, and when they would give them away secretly. Now they are called pre-loved and are celebrated. People wait for thrift-store pop-ups, raid the shelf for their size, and gleefully browse the other shelves too. They are happy to buy designer lehengas someone wore to one season of weddings, and boho dresses worn exactly once for an influencer’s photo shoot in Greece. They know what sole damage, label-intact and nearly new mean. Some are even setting up thrifting circles among same-sized family and friends.
Even Pernia Qureshi is on the scene, with her newest venture, Saritoria. A stylist, fashion icon and serial entrepreneur, Qureshi co-founded the online marketplace, in 2021 with Shehlina Soomro, a London-based investment banker and hedge fund manager. Here, people sell their pre-loved designer outfits, giving them a new lease of life in a willing buyer’s wardrobe.
Of course, Qureshi is neither the first person to see the value in pre-owned clothes, nor the only one exploring the market. But as one of the better-known names in fashion, she epitomises all the new-age entrepreneurs who see merit in a circular economy. Especially in a world that, due to humankind’s polluting excesses, is coming apart at the seams.
None of the thrifting battle cries are untrue. When people buy pre-loved outfits, they do help save the world because the fashion industry is one of the most polluting. Every new garment that arrives in a store has already stressed limited water resources, will perhaps affect soil fertility, and may well end up in a landfill.
And when people buy, wear and then chuck a garment, they add to that stress.
A systematic, pre-loved fashion economy has just begun to take root in the country.
Thanks to Qureshi and her fellow entrepreneurs, Indians may be able to turn this vicious circle into a virtuous one.
“We wanted to create
Saritoria as a solution to empower 1.8 billion South
Asians to promote a circular economy,” says Qureshi, who had begun questioning the ecological effects of fashion during the 2020 lockdown. “Many of us de-cluttered our wardrobes at the time, which also served as a much-needed mental detox. In the process, I learned that South Asian clothes take up a lot of closet space compared to Western outfits and are rarely re-worn, despite the huge amount of human and environmental resources that went into their creation.”
Some 85% of textiles ultimately end up in landfills or are incinerated, Qureshi learned. But having bought pre-loved clothes since her college days, and raided her mother’s and grandmothers’ closets for vintage pieces, she knew she could provide a solution.
“After selling Pernia’s Pop Up Shop, I
Just as popular as Saritoria is economist Komal Hiranandani’s online social enterprise Dolce Vee. Launched four years ago, Dolce Vee initially sold outfits pre-loved by celebrities like Alia Bhatt, Disha Patani, Gauri Khan, Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli to raise money for charity. (This feature still available on the Dolce Vee website.) Now, it is also an online marketplace for clothes from people from all walks of life, and accepts non-designer clothes.
“We set out to change how India shops, and make the economics of pre-loved fashion really work,” says Hiranandani.
To educate buyers and sellers, the website has an environmentimpact calculator that works out how much eco-damage they avoided by opting for a pre-loved product. By their own estimates, they’ve avoided wasting 19 million litres of water used to
manufacture
garments, and suspended over 30,000 kilos of carbon in the environment in the last 18 months, says Hiranandani.
Relove, another pre-loved fashion marketplace, follows a similar model. Co-founded by Kirti Poonia, it recently tied up with Okhai, a crafts and sustainable fashion company, to sell pre-loved clothes.
Indians have been thrifting or buying pre-loved clothing for decades, but this went out of fashion in the 1990s. It wasn’t until the pandemic that the trend picked up again, as people started questioning their consumption patterns and young fashion enthusiasts, mostly college students, set up thrifting stores online.
Instagram pages such as Bombay Closet Cleanse, Curated Findings, Amalfi, which directs its profits to charities, and Vintage Laundry have found a small but dedicated fan base.
As time passed, some people decided to exchange outfits that were sitting in their wardrobes for outfits that were just sitting in other people’s wardrobes. For example, urban farmer Manasvini Tyagi, 42, got seven of her friends to exchange outfits they weren’t wearing anymore.
“I have outgrown so many clothes sizewise or emotionally,” says Tyagi. “The same with my friends. So I set up an informal thrifting pop-up to put our ignored outfits to better use.”
You can’t just empty your closet at Tyagi’s events. You need to pick up stuff in exchange. At her first pop-up, Tyagi exchanged Western outfits she no longer wears, for shirts and T-shirts for her father and son. Her next pop-up will be bigger, she says. do as well as the things the ladki waale do. That means two mehendis, dancing in the baraat, checking on the bride, conveying to the groom that she’s annoyed by the delay. For dance performances and entry, pick a side – and concentrate on responsibilities there. Don’t leave out the parents. You don’t want the mother-in-law to-be belatedly added to the Besharam Rang troupe on D-day.
Grab a bag:
Safety pins and battery backs, yes. But also water and packs of PartySmart so that no one is hungover the next day. And a bit of chocolate to calm a nervous bride. You’re not holding the veil and train, you’re holding the couple’s phones, and possibly the groom’s shoes and his secret vape. If either of them has a pet that they want at the wedding, be ready to babysit. Add treats and such to the bag.
The family will accompany the to-be-weds for all the big purchases – the lehenga, shoes and jewellery. Your job is to find time for lingerie buying in the midst of it all. If the family is conservative, it will be you who suggests buying intimate toys too.
Why make guests lug a microwave to the reception only for the couple to lug it back home? If the couple doesn’t have a wedding registry, subtly ask them what they’re hoping to receive and circulate the list among friends. With money transfers and home delivered presents everyone will breathe easier.
The actor has been diagnosed with dementia. He was there at Nakatomi Plaza, saving people from Hans Gruber in Die Hard. He gave Neelu a reason to live (thereby preventing apocalypse once) in The Fifth Element. He went back in time to stop the spread of a virus (thereby preventing apocalypse again) in 12 Monkeys. He sacrificed himself to prevent an asteroid hitting Earth (thereby preventing apocalypse again) in Armageddon. Who’s going to save us now?
First, Twitter changed our feed to For You and Following and now we can’t find anything. Then Instagram went and put the notifications button right at the top. Muscle memory is strong. We’re making more mistakes than we are posting content. Who asked for this? people are still getting away with casual sexism in 2023. Golfer
in the news for all the wrong reasons since we learnt of him cheating on his wife in 2009, handed fellow player Justin Thomas a tampon during the first round of the Genesis Invitational in California, after outdriving him on the ninth hole last week. Woods said that it was a joke. But the truly obnoxious part is how many women golfers rushed to his defence on social media. C’mon women, do better.