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Mainz /Â DPA
Ethical and fashionable at the same time — this is the idea behind Darpdecade, a digital swapping platform for clothes that aims to combine trend awareness with conscience-free consumption.It all started with a gin and tonic and a scarf swapped for a jacket at a flea market in Tallinn some five years ago.
University student Robin Balser from Mainz in Germany was doing an internship in the Estonian capital when he saw a young man wearing a jacket that he coveted.”I definitely wanted it, but I had no more money on me and only a glass of gin in my hand,” Balser, now 26, says recalling the exchange. “Then I fell to thinking about what it would be like to swap clothes instead of buying them.”
Balser has come up with
a counter model to what
consumer researchers have dubbed Fast Fashion.
Today’s youth strive to make new and individual statements with their clothing while staying up to date. This means
that they spend a great deal of their money on clothes, haunting the aisles of the major fashion chains.
But Fast Fashion also demands low prices and a rapid stock turnover — and that means sweatshops in places like Bangladesh and Cambodia.”Yes, I am fashion conscious and often want something new, but I want to break the cycle
of discarding and buying
again,” says Marie, a 27-year-old student.
She has just picked out a thick Norwegian sweater
knitted from pure wool at a market for second-hand clothes in the German city of Offenbach. Darpdecade has organised five such markets in Germany, where clothes are sold by
the kilogram.
The flea market parties are just the first step, says Balser. Two or three months later they are followed by swap parties
so that the clothes can change hands yet again — this time
via an app that works much
like Tinder.
Swapping partners are found by swiping left or right on photos of clothes, with the aim being to swap with someone living just a few kilometres away.” It could certainly work,” says Matthias Rohrer, a researcher at a youth culture institute in Vienna. He notes that young women with a high level of education have a strong inclination to ethical consumption and reusing articles.
Verena Muntschick of the “Future Institute” in Frankfurt perceives a rising readiness to wear second-hand clothes and to swap clothes.”Many people can partake of a luxury clothing style by sharing and swapping and without having to spend the kind of money normally required,” she says.
Balser says the startup’s smartphone app for swapping clothes is ready to go and a trial run has already been conducted. But good developers are expensive and the team is lacking the capital needed to launch the platform.That’s why Darpdecade is planning to start a crowdfunding campaign in September or October.
“The clothes tell a never-ending story,” says Kim Gerlach, one of the trio behind Darpdecade, along with Balser and Dominik Breu. “Clothes at the swap parties carry story tags instead of price tags, telling their history and the associated emotions.” The business model has not yet been
decided. Balser envisions a freemium model, financed by advertising, while paying subscribers can access an advert-free service and other functions.
The clothes cupboard may be locked into the analogue world, where unlike music and books, it cannot be digitized. Nevertheless, the Darpdecade team say they want to exhaust all digital options for bringing people together to swap their clothes.
