A little Q&A with Pip and Sophie, the founders of Worn For Good.

Wow I love the idea of Worn for Good, what a beautiful concept to assist in reducing fashion waste.  I imagine all that beautiful clothing sitting in people’s wardrobes or stockrooms not being worn and here is a way to get it to someone who would like it while supporting a charity. I hope you enjoy learning more about Worn For Good and the founders Pip and Sophie.

Can you tell us about how the concept for Worn for Good came about? Were your backgrounds in fashion? Or sustainability?

The concept of Worn For Good came about as we both share a passion for social and environmental impact and wanted to be able to contribute to this by offering a creative solution to waste for the fashion industry and support the move towards a circular economy.

Pip has worked for almost a decade in the not-for-profit sector as a social worker. Primarily working in youth homelessness, then working in Kenya for 18 months for a children’s charity, Flying Kites. Going on to become a marriage celebrant and running out-of-office retreats, Pip has always had the passion to help others, which helped forge this journey of creating Worn For Good.

Sophie has had first-hand experience in the fashion industry, with a degree in Journalism and Marketing and gaining experience in the glossy sector of magazines. Taking a radical career shift, Sophie now teaches yoga and mediation and works for A Sound Life, which is an Australian not-for-profit that brings free yoga and meditation workshops for people in need.

Both being heavily involved with issues that affect local and global communities, Worn For Good essentially came about with the awareness of the needs and challenges that confront some of society’s most vulnerable. Worn For Good gives us the ability to strive for this change needed in society, and a passage to build a community around the causes we care about.

Can you tell us who your charity partners are and what led you to selecting them?

Our current charity partners are Women’s Community Shelters, Look Good Feel Better and Greening Australia. We emphasise the importance of empowering at-risk women and children, alongside regenerative solutions for the Earth as being the two most effective investments we can make as a community.

Women’s Community Shelters was established in 2010 and works tirelessly to protect and support women and children escaping homelessness, domestic and family violence. Look Good Feel Better is a community service program facilitated by the Cancer Patients Foundation, dedicated to teaching cancer patients how to manage the appearance-related side effects caused by cancer-treatments. Lastly, Greening Australia works on restoring and conserving Australia’s unique landscape on a large scale by focusing on environmental challenges such as saving the Great Barrier Reef, tackling climate change, reversing the decline in our threatened species and so on.

We hope that in some way, our business can help support and contribute to these charities in a meaningful way, and that together, we are able to help improve the lives of women and the health of our planet.

I love the idea of not just selling excess donated stock but also beautiful preloved pieces from women’s wardrobes. How do you go about sourcing the garments for the shop?

We love how we can offer excess stock and pre-loved clothes as well – it gives us the opportunity to help contribute to a circular economy in a broader sense and giving our community a range of products. We currently source stock from a range of brands, who we have developed a relationship with and who donate to us their excess stock and sample items. We are always collaborating with new brands to keep our business growing. Additionally, we collaborate with influences, who donate to us their beautiful preloved items, often which have been hardly worn.

At this stage I can see women’s clothing and accessories on the website, do you have any plans to expand to include menswear or childrenswear?

We always have millions of idea (so yes!) but we really want to focus on doing womenswear well for now before we move on to anything else.

If I want to learn more about Worn For Good and maybe even try on some clothes is there somewhere people can do this?

Of course! In fact, we have just opened a store in Bronte, NSW, alongside Among Equals. We did a Pop-Up just before Christmas and absolutely loved the atmosphere of having a store, as well as being able to meet customers and explain to them about how Worn For Good works and why we established it as a business. We can’t wait to meet our community in person, and give people the opportunity to try on the clothes as well as learn more about the concept behind WFG.

What advice would you give to those just starting out on their slow fashion journey?

Just take it one step at a time! There’s a lot about being sustainable at the moment, which we love, and want people to know it doesn’t happen overnight. Read, listen, learn, and slowly implement more conscious fashion choices into your life.

Do you have any tips on building a sustainable wardrobe, are there any strategies in particular that you follow?

Invest in good quality, key pieces. Start with sourcing from places like Worn for Good, Depop, Marketplace. It’s more time consuming but worth it. If I (Pip) personally see something I like, I save it to a Pinterest board (“wish list”) or Instagram folder and come back to it in a week’s or month’s time. If I still like it, then I look at buying it. More often than not when I’ve thought about it, I realise I don’t really have a need for it.

At Slow Wardrobe we love to know who are some labels you admire that we can share with our audience?

We love our brand partners, like Bassike, SIR, Showroom-X, My Chameleon, Zulu & Zephyr, Matteau, Matin, St Agni (plus the many others)!

Would you like to learn more about Worn For Good:

wornforgood.com /  @wornforgood