Anyone been to a clothes swish or clothes swap?

[Yoghurtflavours]

Apparently a clothes swish is basically a clothes-swapping event where people bring stuff along, it gets sorted through and then everyone can take stuff that's new to them that other people have brought.

If you've been to one, how successful have you been? What happens if you can't find anything you like, or if you're a size 14 but everyone else has brought size 10 clothes? I'm not convinced it's a good idea.

Bump

I've been to two or three, and never found them good, even though I'm keen on the idea. The first one was the biggest wash out. It was at least ten years ago, and I might have been the oldest person there. I had sorted out some decent things, whereas everyone else was about 17 and came with wool jumpers that had shrunk in the wash and were cut off into vests or midriff tops and mad things like that. Very few things even my size, nothing decent. I've gone to two more, but been very selective about what I've brought since I know there's a good chance it's just being "given to charity" as it were. And so it has. Last time I went with my daughter. We came away with a little handbag that was so-so, but nothing else. All the stuff we brought was taken, mind, which goes to show that we brought ok things.

The way it worked was that you hand in say 7 items and you get 7 coupons, and then you can "buy" 7 items from everything that's there. So I basically just hand in my unused coupons when I leave, or if I'm petty I buy back some of my own stuff.

Unfortunately I don't think they've attracted the right crowd so to speak. If everyone is a student then the wardrobes will be studenty. It's just not attractive enough. Too many people handing in old jumpers and t-shirts.

Just saw on my Facebook that someone is organizing a clothes swap for "brands" as they put it. One person immediately queried what a "brand" was and the answer implied it's basically anything that isn't H&M. I haven't got my hopes up.

My DCs' school sometimes organises them and I think they are brilliant! To be honest I think it helps if you're a smallish size as you get more choice. I've had some nice stuff, and picked up things that I might not have risked spending money on.

My church had one a few years ago. You paid £5 and that got you tea and biscuits and the rest went to charity I took along a brand new with tags satin skirt. I got an LK Bennett suit and a long t.shirt. One woman was giving up her career as a solicitor as she hated it to retrain in a touchy freely occupation that escapes me but she bought all her rather lovely stuff along.

My advice: get there early!

A friend of mine hosted a 'scarf swap' we all came along with a few scarves we no longer wore and took home the same amount of scarves that were new to us (my favourite scarf atm is from that day)

She put on teas & coffees and a few of us brought a cake, we all made a donation to charity - she raised quite a bit. It was a great morning.