Used clothes filling market gap

IF you’ve been looking for a place to offload your old clothes while giving back to the community, then there’s now a new outlet for you.

Reworn Ballarat is offering a space where people can hire a stall to sell their pre-loved clothing.

Founded by sisters-in-law Jacqui Jarvis and Rochelle Tournier-Jarvis, the thrift and consignment store held its second market day on last Saturday after starting up in February.

The market is operating monthly out of St James’ Parish School Hall and Ms Jarvis said the aim is to provide a sustainable platform for people to sell their used clothing.

“I definitely was into a lot of fast fashion and wasn’t liking how much I was spending on clothes, and Rochelle’s always worked in fashion,” she said.

“It’s amazing how much Australians spend on fast fashion. I think on average people buy 25 kilos of clothing and discard 23 kilos. That’s a lot of landfill.

“We’d heard of a couple of markets around Australia that do this sort of thing and there was nothing like it in Ballarat, so we thought we’d give it a crack and see what happens.”

With 20 stalls available, Ms Jarvis said their main stock is in women’s clothes with the plan to include more men’s and children’s clothing as well.

Although only two market days in, Reworn Ballarat is already experimenting with different offerings, with eight children’s stalls to be held at their next event followed by a twilight market at the Western Hotel.

With stalls sold out across the market days, and over half hired for the upcoming Western pop-up, Ms Jarvis said interest in the initiative is growing.

“Word’s definitely getting out, and everyone we’ve talked to has been really positive. It’s giving these used clothes a second life, and people have wanted to do something like this,” she said.

“We want this to become really community-based, that’s why we’ve started with the Western, but we’d like to look at other places like non-profits and other businesses.”

Reworn Ballarat’s regular market will take place from 9am to 12pm on the third Saturday of every month at St James’ Parish School, 252 Albert Street, Sebastopol.

To hire a stall, a booking link is available via instagram.com/reworn_ballarat.