The London department store, John Lewis on Oxford Street will be celebrating Second-Hand September later this month by hosting a one-day ‘patching, repair, and resale extravaganza’ in partnership with some of the leading names in sustainable fashion.
Taking place on September 10th, the special event has been developed and led by the team at The Re-Action Collective, a community movement based on the principles of clothing repair, repurpose, and rental.
The event has been curated to mark both this year’s Second-Hand September – an initiative devised to encourage shoppers to purchase at least one second-hand item rather than new over the course of the month – as well as the launch of a special pop-up hosted by the ‘children’s clothing library’ The Little Loop – a business built to establish a circular economy for new and second-hand children’s clothing through rental and repair.
On the bill for the day’s celebration, Lisa Matzi, the founder of the clothing upcycling specialist, Rebel Patch will be hosting various sessions to teach shoppers how to better care for their clothing while ‘jazzing up their wardrobes’ by repairing old clothing with creative patches.
Rebel Patch is a Bristol-based business working with local artists to create limited edition art patches, encouraging the visible mending movement among consumers and fashionistas. As part of the initiative, the team will host a special competition in which store visitors will be encouraged to create their own patch design. The winning design will be produced in a limited run.
The Little Loop pop-up is located on the fourth floor of John Lewis’ Oxford Street flagship and where it will be open to shoppers for the next 12 months. Promoting circularity in fashion, the Little Loop enables customers to buy pre-owned dresses, jumpers, jackets, and t-shirts for children up to six years old.
Plans to host the fashion resale hub at the store’s newly opened childrenswear department were revealed in August this year, following an online rental trial ran with the platform back in 2022.
John Lewis innovation lead, Danielle Gagola, said: “Bringing resale options like the Little Loop into shops is a great way to encourage more of our customers to purchase in a more sustainable and affordable way.
“Children grow out of clothes so quickly, they can often be left in the back of wardrobes. With the Little Loop, we’re encouraging customers to purchase second-hand clothing and pick up a bag to trade in their outgrown clothing in return for store credit, too.”
In 2021, the Little Loop received a £140,000 investment on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den. Since launching resale in 2023, the Little Loop has resold around 10,000 items, saving 2.5 tonnes of clothing waste, 150 tonnes of CO2, and 6,000,000 litres of water.
Completing the day’s ‘extravaganza’ event on September 10th, members of the Re-Action team will be on hand throughout the celebration to talk through its global community of people and businesses working to reshape the outdoor sports industry through sustainable practices like repair, repurpose, and rental to make the outdoors more inclusive and accessible from the ground up.
Re-Action began life itself as a preloved clothing repair and patching operation, recovering high end sports gear no longer wanted and repairing and repurposing for its local community of users. It has since grown into a wider movement and community of like-minded businesses driving more sustainable approaches to fashion through the circular economy.
Booking is required to participate in the day’s events. More information can be found here.
