If you have need to get rid of unwanted clothing but don’t want to part with it for free, firstly I don’t blame you and secondly I have the solution for you.
The other day was my first experience of exchanging my clothes with a business. I’ve donated before and tried to sell my own clothes but I’d never contacted someone to come and look at my clothes for their own sale. Undertaking this wardrobe clean out has made me think more about where I get my clothes from but also what I do with the ones I don’t want anymore.
I came across Mutual Muse via my sister; she loved the Instagram account and thought because I was trying to clean out my wardrobe that I would find it interesting. I looked through Mutual Muse’s Instagram and Facebook accounts and their website to see what it was all about and I was really interested in being involved. But it wasn’t until I was walking along High street in Thornbury (Melbourne) the other day with my sister that I came across their sign in a vacant shop window. It had the email address and said that she was happy to take clothes for cash or store credit and as I’d been thinking about it, it seemed like a sign (literally).
Mutual Muse is a ‘gently-used’ clothing website founded in 2014 by Kirsta and her family. The idea began with her love of vintage clothing and op-shopping back home in America. Kirtsa pointed out to me when we met, that America has a really big vintage clothing scene but that it’s different to how we do things in Australia. We do have a lot of second hand stores such as Savers, the Salvos and Vinnies but there aren’t as many ‘good quality’ or specialty vintage stores (she’s a big fan of Savers on Sydney Road in Brunswick).
She began Mutual Muse by selling clothes at markets and through word of mouth then followed with her website and social media accounts. Something she mentioned while chatting is that it’s important for her to separate op-shopping for herself and for Mutual Muse because she sees shopping for herself as down time and wants to make sure she doesn’t go into business mode and start turning what she loves into a job.
Gradually she began to find a community in Melbourne who wanted or needed to get rid of their clothes. She now buys clothes from people in exchange for cash or for store credit with the motivation of giving new life to old clothes, scaling back on clothing consumption, reducing our waste, and keeping value in local communities. She sees it as ‘a simple, guilt-free solution’.
But she doesn’t just take any old rags that you have in your wardrobe, she does have great taste and understandably is only looking for ‘gently-used’, good quality, sellable clothes. She can’t take clothes that are over worn, as their resale value wouldn’t be very high (and she is running a business). She is unlikely to take your Cotton On clothes (unless they are virtually new) because she finds that they just don’t sell as ‘used’. And she doesn’t take shoes.
But after you take those out of the equation Mutual Muse is a great, sustainable and economic way to get rid of the clothes you no longer want as well as purchase some great used clothing for yourself. Kirsta, through Mutual Muse, is bringing sustainability and an awareness of the cost and re-use of fashion, that is often lost on our generation, to the forefront and hopefully even just this mention can help to get her name out there!
For more details on Mutual Muse head over to Ronnie’s people page and keep an eye out for the store opening towards the end of April.
Ronnie 