SUSTAINABLE FASHION HAS A NEW FRONTIER – COLLECTIVE CLOTHING. FROM CO-OWNED SWEATERS TO THE ‘LONG-TERM LOAN’, AJA BARBER CELEBRATES THE JOY AND POWER OF COLLABORATIVE DRESSING
I FIND MYSELF PACKING UP A COLOURFUL Christopher John Rogers striped sweater to be delivered to my colleague Ronaé Fagon’s house. It’s not that I don’t want the sweater; in fact, I totally love it. It’s that we agreed to share it. We both spotted it at the ELLE Absolut Swap last year… and both went for it. (I got there first, let the record show. Also, you should come to ELLE swaps, they’re always the best.)
The truth is, I have a lot of knitwear. A shelf’s worth, to be honest, collected over the course of a decade. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that when people think of me, they think of colourful knitwear. And if you already have so much of something, why not… share. So when Ronaé and I, clearly with mutual impeccable taste, both reached for the same garment on the rack, rather than fight it out, I realised there was an elegant solution to our conundrum. I suggested that I enjoy the sweater that winter (2023) and the following year I would send it her way so she could enjoy it too. Because a striped sweater is pretty timeless and never goes out of style. In this way, not only is the item going to get more use than most of the clothing in our wardrobe, but it means we both get to enjoy something fabulous. Moreover, the garment now has a wonderful story that we’ll share with friends, hopefully sparking others in our circles to consider doing the same. In this scenario, everyone wins.
Of course, this isn’t the first time I’ve shared my clothing. Growing up in Virginia as the middle of three girls in the Nineties meant ‘ownership’ was a meaningless concept. The absolute bangers of items in our wardrobes got worn by everybody. Not that this always ended happily. When we were teenagers, I vividly remember a favourite T-shirt I had bought and loved getting left out in the sun by one sister (a careless mistake), causing its beautiful bright-red colour to fade to orange (Aisha, you still owe me). Obviously, I’m not quite over that one – a lesson in the perils of siblings. But, more often than not, sharing was the dream. In particular, I think about all my rude streetwear that I brought home from the UK after my first stint in London, that was worn by each of my sisters in turn and today resides in my pre-teen niece’s wardrobe because it fits her perfectly – which does leave me wondering how on earth it ever fit us. There have been a great many purchases that have made their way through four sets of hands within one family.
So, naturally, I now take the same approach with my friends. It was something I had to circle back to. It started in about 2008, when my best friend Sofia and I came up with the notion of a ‘long-term loan’. Anything I wa
