The HotHive Textiles campaign to bring fashion back to charity shops

Article Added: 19/06/2009 12:47:11
The D-Day campaign aims to encourage businesses to donate more high-quality items to their local charity shops. The idea of the scheme is for companies to select a designated D-Day where all employees bring in one item of high-quality clothing that they no longer wear that can then be donated to a local charity.

The campaign was endorsed by Mary Portas in her recent TV series, Mary Queen of Charity Shops, and here at HotHive Textiles we would like to encourage you all to get on board. We recently held our own D-Day where members of our team brought in some great pieces that were hiding at the back of the wardrobe destined never to see the light of day again – until now!

As well as helping charity shops raise more money your donations are also reducing the environmental impact throwing these clothes away would have. According to the Donate, Don’t Dump website www.ddaydonate.charityshops.org.uk charity shops re-use and recycle over 250,000 tonnes of textiles each year. This means that your local charity shops are a treasure trove of great vintage textiles and classic pieces.

With this in mind we headed out to some of the charity shops here in Evesham to speak to some of the managers and take a look at some of the gems hidden in their stores. For Carol, manager of our local St Richard’s Hospice shop, the D-Day campaign is important as it puts emphasis on high-quality clothing. She says, “We do a lot of bag drops in the local area and can often find that people are using them to get rid of their rubbish, as our local council no longer take textiles with the recycling. We have to pay for waste disposal even though we’re a charity, so being sent rubbish can be costly as we have to find ways to recycle it.”

Mary Portas’ campaign in charity shops has helped raise their profile, and Carol reported “a definite increase in sales in the few weeks since the show.” However her main concern was that now the show has ended the interest will fade away, and we have vowed not to let that happen!

Here at HotHive Textiles we believe that charity shops are a great place to find that signature piece and we are going to prove this with a challenge to University College Falmouth student Natalie Fulcher, who is joining us on work experience later this month. We will give Natalie a budget of £10 and she has to go out and find an entire outfit sourced from charity shops. She will be able to retouch and revamp the clothes to create a stylish outfit that anyone would be proud to wear – so make sure you come back to HotHive Textiles to see how she gets on!

We would love to hear your charity shop stories too. Have you found some great pieces in charity shops Do you manage a charity shop and want to share your thoughts on the Mary Portas show Or are you a company who will be hosting your own D-Day Then let us know by adding your comments in the box below.

You can also show your support for our campaign by joining our Facebook Group here and getting all your friends and family on board too! Together we will get charity shops back on the map!