The Wardrobe is a local non-profit social enterprise focused on combating clothing insecurity.
When talking about clothing insecurity, The Wardrobe focuses on giving people access to clothing from events to special occasions. They have made it a special mission to provide clothes to individuals coming out of incarceration, individuals with medical crises, the LGBTQ+ community, victims of domestic violence, and so many more. Their closet is curated to whatever someone may need, for any time in their life.
The Wardrobe is determined to provide a secure source of clothing that has been well-maintained and is suitable for any need. Their clothing, from casual to workwear, is available for sale but is also free to anyone who qualifies. They have locations across Southeastern Pennsylvania, with a Philadelphia location on 4th and Callow Hill. The Wardrobe even provides resale stores that are available for individuals who can afford clothing to shop at a discounted rate. And even a program called the “Wardrobe Box Program,” which is the closest thing to their online store. Customers can order a box by filling out a style profile and a Wardrobe Box Styler will handpick your curated closet and ship it to your door.
And of course, all the profits go back into the organization’s original mission-
providing accessible clothing for everyone.
The organization was founded by a small group of volunteer women in 1995, and their original mission was to get women into business suits. They were geared more toward women who were just entering the workforce and to provide them with professional affordable clothing. Since then, their original mission has changed, and now is a closet accessible to everyone and has expanded exponentially, serving all genders from all walks of life.
Thanks to the government and outside funders, The Wardrobe can continuously provide clothing to the underprivileged and underserved.
But to put it simply: all of their donations come from donors. Everything they receive at their sites is all from people who bring their unwanted wearable items that come straight through the front door. However, at times, their donations come from clothing drives or at times retailers whose clothes are out of season. The Wardrobe works with a recycling partner, so they encourage everyone to donate their clothing even if it is worn out or out of style, so it can be recycled responsibly, which is one of the values the organization holds.
How is your organization beneficial to your community?
In an interview with Mars Sharrock (he/they), the Program Director for the Wardrobe he stated that
“We are on track this year to serve about 10,000 people so we are seeing major impacts throughout the region where we are able to get free clothing to anyone who needs it. We focus on a variety of different communities in our region like the LGBTQ community and the trans community by providing gender-affirming underwear, and binders, as well as stylists who are trained to work with Trans people, so I think that getting people into clothing that affirms their gender is a huge thing that we do. It is a big passion of ours.”
Other places we see a lot of impact is the formal justice-involved communities in the region. Folks coming out of incarceration, we are able to get them basic stuff: t-shirts, underwear, sweatpants, things like that once they are released, which is huge!” They added “Another major group that we work a lot with are refugees. They are a big part of the region; in 2022 we had a big Afghan crisis in the region, and we had a lot of refugees coming into the Philly region and in one day we were able to reach over 200 people who were refugees in the region. It was a really really beautiful time because the community came through. Since all our clothing is donated, we had donors in the community who had
previously been immigrants and refugees donate their things with beautiful notes to the newcomers in our region, saying things like “Welcome! We are so happy to have you! We love you!” It was really awesome to see the community be here for each other.
Why are you a part of this organization?
I got started in The Wardrobe when I was working as a case manager in a recovery reentry program, and we would refer people to The Wardrobe, so that was sort of how I heard about them. However, I remember giving our current executive director a lot of crap when I worked for the recovery reentry program because I was coming out as trans and at the time they only served women. And I was sort of like “would you serve me?” and “are there any programs for me?” I was pushing her on that, and a few years later when I applied for this job, I was basically like “if you accept me, we are pushing this forward.” And they were really excited about it because this is where the times were going.
When I had started, the organization had already started serving men, but didn’t really have an LGBT presence. Clothing for me, I come to The Wardrobe looking for clothing as an essential need, you can’t leave your house without wearing something. I look at it as you need to put something on in order to do anything in your life. And meeting people’s basic needs is really my passion, but in working here I have grown to understand fashion as also a really important part of our culture. It is a way to express yourself, a way to be seen by other people, it’s a way to be seen in the way you want to be seen, and it’s a form of communication. I have found a passion in not just helping people find their basic essential needs met, but to help express themselves and be seen as who they are.
Where do you get your donations from? What determines whether you can take the donation or not? What donations do you accept?
All of our donations come from donors. They are from people who bring us their clothing. A lot of it walks through our front doors like if someone is cleaning out their closet and they have some of the clothes they are getting rid of. Somethings come from drives and corporations that do drives; and very occasionally we will get a retailer who will donate their things that are out of season or something like that. But most and the vast majority of our donations come from individuals walking through the front door. What determines what we accept, we accept anything that is wearable. Any sort of shoes, accessories, clothing, anything like that. We do not accept like couches or furniture. But it is anything that is wearable. We work with a recycling partner so we are able to accept anything wearable, and anything that we can’t keep because it’s stained, really out of season or out of style, or anything like that, we still encourage people to donate it to us because then we can send it out to be recycled responsibly.
What is the importance of buying used clothes or furniture compared to buying new?
I saw a study recently, do you follow Clothes Horse Podcast? I recommend them, they are really passionate about thrifting and resale stores and things like that. They published something recently talking about how we have enough clothing right now that we don’t need to make more. There is already enough in circulation, we really could not make clothing again for many many years and we would still have enough for everyone on this planet. So I think it’s important to yes, indeed like eliminate fashion waste and to eliminate that waste from our consciousness and from our world, but also the additional piece that we talk a lot about at The Wardrobe is that we want fashion to be accessible to them.
So if you find a piece that you really like and that works really well for you. We want you to be able to wear that piece for many years to come. And I think that if you buy cheap sh*t, it’s gonna fall apart really quickly. So, we are working on, and we want to make sure that the things we offer to, especially to the people who need free clothing is that they get a lot of mileage from it so then they don’t have to come back here all the time because their things fell apart. I think that is really the importance to me; more sustainable things as also a practical thing for the people we’re serving.
Is there any change within your organization you would make? Why not? Do you think there is more you can be doing?
My strategic focus right now is on the suburbs. So I think we have a decent presence in Philadelphia, of course we could always have a better presence everywhere, but my biggest focus right ow is working with the two sites we opened in Chester County, we now have a site in Kennet Square and in Exton. We also have a site in Delaware County and Bucks County.
And you know, clothing insecurity isn’t just a city problem, it’s not just a Philadelphia problem, it’s a problem all over our region and obviously the whole country. So my current focus is a little bit more on the suburbs. Kennet Square especially has a massive population of migrant workers and folks who are working in the mushroom farms in Kennet Square. A lot of the clothing needs that they have are different than the clothing needs in Philadelphia. So that is something I am working on improving for us. And I am kinda getting the word out there.
I guess another improvement that I am interested in, is that once a month I hear people telling me or contacted me saying “Oh, this organization really needs to open a clothing closet” “Nowhere for clothing exists in the city” and I just wish that more people knew that we existed! I guess? Because, and I mean, I am not against clothing closets. A lot of times there are a lot of great organizations that we work with that also have clothing closets on site. You know, if someone comes in, and they’ve soiled their pants, or they haven’t changed their shirt in five days, of course they come into their office being able to give that person a fresh pair of pants and a shirt is incredibly valuable.
But what we offer is a real shopping experience, it’s not just like “Oh throw this shirt on, it’s all we have” and ushering people out the door. It’s a really respectful, full store environment where people get to try things on, they get to experiment, they get to have fun. So, I really think there’s value in our services and I just wish that more people knew about us.
The Wardrobe is always hosting a variety of events that impact the community. You can check some of them out on their main website, as well as their volunteer opportunities.
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