Goodwill Label Stories

Author: Lynda Grose, designer, author, educator
Professor Fashion Design and Critical Studies, California College of the Arts

Aim of study

Goodwill Label Stories is based on the premise that everyday people may be willing to publicly indicate their second hand purchases and that this coding could be leveraged as a potent tool to challenge the power of brands in perpetuating the ‘culture of the new’. Three questions guide the study:

-Could a label be deployed to speed the uptake of resale purchases by economically diverse customers?

-What latent emotional associations with second hand may hinder or be leveraged to enable this goal? 

-Can garments be activated to directly engage the broader public?

Study objective:

-To surface current attitudes to second hand garments, across a wide demographic of wearers

-To actively diversify the voices in sustainable fashion practice and education

-To ‘create and share new narratives based on sharing and abundance’ (Forum for the Future 2021) 

Context: influence or inspiration

Building on previous research conducted in collaboration with anthropologist Sydney Martin (Grose, Martin 2017), this study was initially prompted by my impulse to ‘flash’ a Goodwill label to counter the righteous signaling by wearers sporting ‘sustainable’ branded garments. Some years later, at the 2021 Textile Exchange conference set in Dublin, Ireland, economic anthropologist, Jason Hickel, delivered a informative and hopeful keynote address on de-growth. At the end of the five-day conference, Paul Marchant, CEO of Primark, made closing remarks, which began:

‘I make no apologies for being a large volume retailer.  

We bring sustainable fashion to our customers at a price they can afford’.

This stance from Primark’s leader signaled that despite the science, the fashion sector would remain unyielding to deep systemic change. Yet, Marchant’s statement also delivered a blunt critique of the current sustainable fashion movement; its expense, its privileged market, and its inaccessibility to lower income-level customers. 

The irony of a fast-fashion brand claiming its products to be sustainable while also delivering well-founded critique of sustainable fashion as it is currently practiced prompted me to reboot the study:

-to investigate if a stigma exists around second hand garments for lower income level customers

-to bring these stigmas to the surface so they can be re-examined anew

-to help popularize more second-hand purchases

The method was also inspired by Michael Swaine’s Mending for the People, Kate Fletcher’s Local Wisdom, and Daver Isay’s Story Corp

How do you go about using this method?

Seated in a Goodwill store by the cash register, I invite randomly selected shoppers to contribute to the study by giving their opinion on the concept and opting to label their newly purchased garment. 

Two simple questions guide the conversations:

Would you identify your garment as second hand using a label on the outside?

Why?

Why not?

The responses and reflections are audio-recorded and the participant’s body language captured in writing. When people opt in, I sew the label onto the garment free of charge, working with the participant to decide the best position and treatment. The person is also photographed wearing or holding the garment. Themes from the conversations are then analyzed and collated. Stories, images and particularly succinct comments are presented out again in the form of posters, conference slides, exhibitions, and published articles/papers. 

A story:

One woman in a Goodwill store lingered by the station, watching people choosing to label their garment and noted:

‘This is a really interesting project…but I wouldn’t do it (label my garment). I guess that says something about me’. I reassured the customer that there were no right or wrong answers, no judgements. “I know’, she said. ‘This is a really good project’ and she continued to watch the interactions and process for some time. 

For me, this indicated a cognitive ah-ha moment, where the norm of participating in hierarchical branding was recognized and the Goodwill label’s challenge to it appreciated. Labeling of the garment is secondary to these conversations and the realizations.

How could this be used by others

This study can be used by researchers, educators and students relatively easily. Set-up is simple, requiring a domestic portable sewing machine, a variety of colored threads, a seam-ripper, scissors, work table and a cell phone to take photos. A solid clean wall as a backdrop for photography is helpful. Student researchers would need to be pre-instructed in the art of active listening and ethnographic documentation.

It’s particularly valuable to do this study in low-income and ethnically diverse regions/neighborhoods, which are often unrepresented in fashion sustainability discourse. However, as noted below, there are insights to be gained at all demographic levels. 

The woven Goodwill label was developed with permission from the organization. Other researchers/ educators would need to build a relationship with their local Goodwill to develop a label, work with a different organization or develop a generic ‘second-hand’ label for more general use.

It’s important to approach customers after they make a purchase, so that the decision to label the garment clearly comes from directly them as the owner of the piece. This avoids potential copyright liabilities for Goodwill/participating charity shop.

Share insights for those new to wardrobe studies

Engaging with members of the public about their own attitudes to clothing and sustainable fashion is exciting and fun. It bypasses the narrow lens through which brands view their customers and broadens the capacity of researchers and everyday people to engage in solutions for sustainable fashion. 

What insights does the method generate?

-Goodwill Label Stories started with the assumption that there is a stigma associated with second-hand items for customers in a lower economic demographic, and that higher economic demographic customers would more readily opt into labeling their garment. In fact, many customers across all demographics are proud to shop at Goodwill and happy to have an opportunity to show that they do. Conversely, some higher economic demographic customers are afraid to be seen shopping at Goodwill by their peers.

-Contrary to brands finding the public uneducated about the complexities of sustainable fashion, I have found them to be very smart and informed about the root problem of overproduction. People are happy to be asked their opinion and have great ideas. For example:

‘It’s a public label. When it’s donated, it becomes public!’ 

‘It’s Goodwill certified!’

Other insights include the label being seen as:

-A sign of doing something good

-Knowing about the problem (of overproduction) and doing something about it

-Building community (that is normally invisible)

-Being kind to each other

Most recently, one participant noted the Goodwill label might, in itself, be a righteous signal!  

Busted!

References

Isay, D (2003-present ) Story Corp: https://storycorps.org/about/

Fletcher, K (2009) Local Wisdom: http://localwisdom.info

Forum for the Future (2021) Guide to Critical Shifts V1.0: https://www.forumforthefuture.org/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=9a4e9add-03cc-4c10-bb03-8a0c2d559039

Grose, L. Martin, S. (2017) Goodwill Label Research Project, in Opening up the Wardrobe: a methods book, by (2017) Kate Fletcher and Ingun Grimstad Klepp (Eds.), Novus Press

Swaine, M. (2009) Mending for the People: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G0J0RmcV8c