Fashion changes faster than the seasons. Most of us are constantly trying to keep up. In the UK, we spend a staggering £46 billion on clothes and accessories every year.

Over the past five years, a number of discount shops have appeared on the high street offering affordable catwalk fashion to the masses. They have compressed the time it takes for clothing to travel from catwalk to shop rails. Stores are accepting shipments of the latest styles several times a week and selling them just as quickly. These pieces of clothing are sold at such affordable prices that consumers don’t think twice about wearing them only a handful of times before relegating them to the backs of their closets – or worse, throwing them away.

The problems with cheap chic and throwaway fashion are complex. There are already hundreds of millions items of clothing that are being thrown away year after year in the UK. Many of the older clothing is of high quality and very durable. Why not reuse this clothing again and again? UK consumers would have a plethora of styles to choose from while less natural resources would be needed to create new clothes and less waste would be sent to landfill.

TRAID aims to provide a stylish alternative to the high street by supplying good quality second-hand clothing to the UK public in its chain of charity shops.

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