What is Closet Swap?
Playing on the age-old premise of borrowing your sister’s clothes, this app (also available online) encourages users to build an online closet, they can share, swap and even customise through the upload of pictures.
What else can it do?
Closet Swap teaches users about the wider debates surrounding sustainable fashion production too. In a bid to get teenagers thinking more carefully about frivolous spending habits, the app also includes a Google Maps fashion finder and educational magazine. Helping users discover local charity shops, vintage stores and sustainable designers, the store finder automatically geolocates to the users postcode.
Who is involved?
Getting on board with the project are London-based accessories duo Tatty Devine and vintage style icons Broken Hearts DJs. Ethical Fashion Forum Innovation Award Winner, Ada Zanditon is also getting involved, explaining: “It’s always been my aim to pioneer a high design fashion line with a common sense approach to sustainability, treating the planet and profit with equal importance. Swapping clothes with your friends is a fantastic idea, because it makes clothes go that little bit further, giving young people access to independent British design.”
What are its goals and potential?
As part of their Education programme aimed at 14 to 19 year olds, Channel 4 outlined ethical fashion as one of their key commissioning territories for 2012. With their teaching style taking on a slightly more interactive slant, the first of these commissions came in the form of an online game named Sweatshop. Apple recently featured Closet Swap on the ‘New and Noteworthy’ section of the Store, proof that innovations in technology, the future of a more sustainable fashion industry and a trend in consumer spending habits can all successfully be part and parcel of the same product.
Why its going viral?
With the digital media landscape now so integral to the everyday life of the British teenager, for Channel 4’s Education programme there was no better space for learning. With support from innovative technologies, it seems that Channel 4 have plugged into a subliminal style of teaching far more likely to change a young consumer’s mindset than any textbook.
