Forget the Extinction Rebellion – Vintage clothing is helping save the world

According to waste charity WRAP UK, an estimated £140m worth of clothing goes into UK landfills each and every year, that’s 300,000 tonnes of textile waste. However, the online vintage clothing retailer, TrueVintage.com, is just one outlet helping to save tons of clothing from going to landfills by finding it a new home on the fashion scene.

True Vintage was founded in 2013 by Rory Westbrook from his Portsmouth University dorm when he realised the retro revival was here to stay, and the company now ships vintage clothing worldwide, listing an average of 125 new items a day to their site.

While they predominantly focus on vintage 80s and 90s stock, True Vintage is saving items for all by-gone eras – even the 00s which will make some of us feel rather old.

Founder and CEO of TrueVintage.com, Rory Westbrook, commented:

“The great thing about the vintage clothing space is that as time marches on and we grow older, items from other decades start to come into the fold and become popular. At the same time, the established classics that have already come full circle and are now back in the mainstream fashion spotlight are always in high demand.  

However, style isn’t everything and the quality of items produced in the eighties and nineties are still far superior to the throwaway fashion that currently dominates the market.   

Regardless of what you say, new age knock-offs of previous vintage fashion trends don’t come close to the real McCoy and so we’re sure to salvage everything we can because once these original items are gone, there’s no getting them back.”

True Vintage stocks everything from Adidas, Nike and Fila, to Tommy Hilfiger and Champion, and even the more premium and exclusive labels like Stone Island, Christian Dior and Versace.

One of the UK’s leading vintage retailers, the last two years has seen True Vintage collaborated with Tommy Hilfiger, feature in Vogue magazine, and they’ve even held several events at Urban Outfitters stores around the UK. But there’s more to the business model than the clothing itself.

Since it started, True Vintage has dispatched over 92,000 vintage clothing orders, with the average shopper picking up 1.3 items per order – that’s some 120,000 items of clothing recycled via True Vintage’s platform.

With an average weight of a True Vintage item coming in at 0.5 kg, so far the company has saved 60 tonnes of clothes from ending up in UK landfills!

Westbrook continued:

“Like many vintage clothes retailers, True Vintage was born from a love of unique fashion trends from previous decades that you just don’t see in high street retailers today. Everything from the quality of the product, the colours, the styles and the variety of items, means the vintage space offers so much more than today’s throw away fashion retailers. Not only this, but vintage clothing holds its value over time in contrast to modern fashion items which tend to halve in value once you take them out of the packaging.

Vintage clothing isn’t old tat, and thanks to the merging of killer styles from the 80s and 90s with new-age channels such as Instagram to showcase them, the passion and the appetite for vintage clothing amongst buyers around the world hasn’t just been revived, it’s snowballed into a booming industry.  

Not only does it save you from sporting the same clothes as 90% of the population but you get a quality piece of clothing that will outlast anything from your local Primani style outlet, which also has an impact on the amount of waste you produce.  

As the youngest of three brothers, I’ve certainly done my part in terms of recycling their previous sports gear, school uniforms and everything in between, but I’m glad that my love for vintage fashion has also enabled me to save a lot more from going to waste.”  

*Figures sourced from True Vintage internal sales database.