How the Bed-Stuy Clothes Swap is Trending Towards Sustainability through Togetherness

Stepping off the subway on Sunday at the Chauncey J stop, I was eager for my very first Bed-Stuy Clothes Swap experience. As I turned the corner down Rockaway Ave, I saw All Night Skate lit up, absolutely bustling with energy. The venue of the swap, a Roller Rink-themed bar, gave major escapist energy, and made for the perfect setting for this month’s Bed-Stuy Clothing Swap (BSCS) x Sustainable Baddie Collab. The ambience of the space was playful and colorful, making it an approachable event that reflected that values that both of our communities share. If you made it to the swap this past weekend, the energy I experienced likely rang true for you too. However, if you weren’t able to make it out for this event, we want to take you with us into the experience of the December swap, and give you the push to go to a BSCS event if you are local to NYC/Brooklyn or ideas to curate your own inclusive clothing swap in your community. 

I brought a bag of clothes that had been collecting dust in my closet over the years, but definitely have a few years of life still in them. BSCS makes it a point to encourage swappers to bring clothes that are clean and in used-but-still-good condition. The five items I brought were handed off to the team of volunteers, and I was given five tickets to swap for five new pieces. Based on my experience, my advice is to come towards the beginning or middle of the event if you are hoping to swap a larger volume of pieces. Once clothing started to pile up, the team imposed limits on the amount of pieces that could be donated to ensure they were not overwhelmed with leftovers. Both BSCS and Sustainable Baddie brought in a ton of loyal swappers and newbie swappers alike, so All Night Skate was bustling with folks. I explored every pile and rack to make sure I didn’t miss anything, and made periodic returns to various racks to see if new items had appeared. I ended up with a pretty sick pair of Dickies slacks and a few other fun finds. As I continued shopping, I chatted with a few folks snagging some experimental pieces, and others opting for more solid basics they expect to get a lot of wear from. Basics with a long life always make for a susty moment, but the beauty of a clothing swap is that you have an opportunity to take sartorial risks. When everything is secondhand, you can guiltlessly go for the experimental pieces you might not want to spend an entire paycheck on. 

In the interim, while the Bed Stuy Clothing Swap team added new pieces to the racks, I decided to strike up some conversations with them. I was curious to know how the team was processing the event in real time; if you have ever planned something like this before, you know that once an event is in full swing, the reflections, perspectives, and thoughts just hit a little different. 

I started by chatting with the movement's founder, Akiera Charles (She/Her). I asked Akiera how she was feeling about the event so far, and she told me,

“It is so amazing to see the breadth of the amount of people that's here, and us coming together to build community and reimagine our clothing in new ways.”

For Akiera, it meant a lot to see the change in the movement and how the swap is collaborating with new businesses. Akiera told me,

“we are incorporating so many facets of community; it's not just us getting a venue it's about so many people getting fed and acknowledged through us building community.”  When asked what the community itself means to her, she said “it was purposeful in us just calling ourselves Bed Stuy Clothing Swap… knowing that this community is Black-led, and knowing that there is a whole myriad of Black BIPOC folks that are in this community, and other transplant folks who come into the space with great intention who also want to build community too.”

She explained that the swap illustrates and challeneges notions outside of gentrification through building community, and also provides access to clothing outside of capitalism. For anyone who has not been to the swap before, she hopes that people recognize the swap as a space “for people who want to build a more place-space connection to Bed Stuy… this is a good way to get their footing in an intentional community.”  When I asked Akiera what she hopes for the future of the organization, she told me that the goal is all about growth. She envisions more programming and collaborations with other similar BIPOC-led groups, and education for building similar movements.

She is looking forward to “paying our team good money so that they can survive and do this work for a living… this means so much to us and it takes precedence to so much stuff in our lives.” 

Hearing about Akiera’s love and admiration for the movement, but also for each member of her team, left me wanting to hear more from the community and what it means for the members of Bed Stuy Clothing Swap. I was able to flag down BSCS team member Zay (He/They), to get a bit of their perspective. They joined the community about a year ago after moving from the Bay Area.

They were looking for a space to “meet new people… and to hold space for the QTBIPOC community.” Zay told me that his hope is that when people think of Bed Stuy Clothing Swap, they “reimagine a way that we shop and engage with retail… we are dealing with a period of isolation, both from COVID, but also the way that late stage capitalism impacts how we interact with each other.”

He emphasized that BSCS isn’t just about  “getting new clothes, but about rethinking the way that shopping and clothing works. It doesn't have to be this capitalist consumption and destruction of our planet.” After our conversation, Zay introduced me to another team member, Traci. Traci shared many sentiments similar to those of Zay and Akiera. She is the content editor for BSCS and works in business and communications for the movement. She connects directly with the businesses that Bed Stuy Clothing Swap collaborates with on their programming. Traci told me that the BSCS community is becoming her second family.

“This is a mecca of so many different folks who have so many different jobs and aspirations, and interests.” When asked what she would want new folks to know about BSCS, she told me “you are one thousand percent welcome, and included… Even if you can't bring anything, just bring yourself and bring your people. I would rather just get to know you and have a space IRL [in real life] to get to say hi.” 

It was clear through my conversations with the Bed Stuy Clothing Swap team that this was a close-knit group that shared some deep core values. Everyone I talked to had a vision of community that was inclusive, diverse, and energetic.

Following the event, I reflected on the influence of sustainability in not only benefitting our planet, but for bringing people together around environmental justice. Not only was this clothing swap intended to be a way to fight capitalist notions of consumption, but it was also a way to foster togetherness through creativity and community care.

It reminded me that when we practice sustainability, especially in fashion, we unlock opportunities to connect with new people in new environments, and share our resources intentionally. If you are new to the world of clothing swaps, we hope that this narrative experience of the Bed Stuy Clothing Swap not only provides you with a framework for conducting your own swap, but also gives you inspiration to do regenerative and inclusive work. If you are a part of a community, transplant or native, these can be spaces for deep intentional connection, and offer tangible steps towards a more socially and environmentally just future.