Please join our Facebook group 'Rehome-it!' for details on Open Days, and what items are currently looking for a good home!
Rehome It! Open Days
Since January 2024, we have held regular open days to rehome a fluctuating stock of surplus costumes and fabrics for free within our local community.
In 2024 over 2600 items were given a new lease of life with local schools, colleges, community groups, students and individuals working within the arts, theatre or education.
That's just over 1.5 tonnes of textiles repurposed and prevented from going to incineration or landfill. Thanks to
Big Yellow Brighton for hosting our Scheme and enabling Rehome-It! to be proactive in addressing textile waste.
Costume Rehoming & Repurposing
Gladrags' planet-friendly principles are key to our ethos. By fostering and promoting the concept of rehoming and recycling costumes since 1994, we have built a resource of over 8,000 items that we restyle and adapt in order to benefit the community time and time again.
95% of our stock is donated to Gladrags in the first instance, and by offering surplus items back to the community, we complete the circle, promoting an affordable and sustainable way to reduce the impact of textile production and waste to the environment.
New life to old costumes
"As a charity for awesome young adults with additional needs, we struggle to provide the “extras” which give so much enrichment. These costumes will be treasured for performances, role-playing, and building confidence and self-worth plus an amazing amount of laughter already! You have all been so very supportive; we can’t thank you enough!" Jackie Thurtle, Oaks Specialist College.
Dressing-up box creativity
“I was gifted some old costumes from Gladrags Re-homing scheme.. The next week I did a pre-GCSE day and the students were so excited to see the costumes, I incorporated their use into the workshop. They loved them! Dressing up is always fun, some of my students were living their best lives that day, but it just brought a vitality and theatricality to the occasion. I wanted them to create and be playful, and they did. Thanks so much !” Charlotte Grovesnor, Kings School Hove.
Repurposing costumes, textiles and props
Championing sustainable costume practise also means adapting and repurposing textiles for improved costume use. This repurposing stretches our reach to communities, from costume hire provision to schools resource boxes and outreach dress-up sessions.
Original fabric, rescued from going to a charity rag-bin
The redesigned bodice ready to take on a new lease of life.
The finished dress, conceived and adapted by our volunteer, Cherry Solon.
Costumes find a whole new expresssion at our Community dress-up days with Chomp Moulsecoomb, after being strengthened and repaired by our skilled sewing team to withstand repeated use, bringing joy to local families.
Self-taught seamstress and Gladrags volunteer Marilyn sews the final button on an 18th century jacket she made from repurposed furnishing fabrics and donated trimmings.
"Having the artefacts here means we can really see and feel what they're like and what it would feel like to people back then." Pupil at Patcham Junior School talking about our Titanic Resource Box, created from repurposed vintage objects.
Re-cycle Re-use Re-Fashion Event
This event saw us collaborating with Sew Fabulous who hosted an event to celebrate textile and apparal sustainability. We joined them to promote our ethos of repurposing and our role as a community resource.
Upcycling for Sales
In an on-going exercise, we have been refining our huge collection of costumes to make more space in our store, and therefore making it easier for visitors and volunteers to locate individual pieces. These duplicate and surplus items are designated to be sold or re-homed.
Items which have a second-hand value find their way on to our Sale rails. We hold sale events a couple of times a year usually in a central Brighton venue. Anything suitable for online selling will be listed in our Ebay shop. This was particularly successful during the 2020/21 pandemic when we sold a few valuable vintage garments online and helped to sustain us financially during the time we were closed to hires.
"I'm very happy with my purchase and knowing it’s helping a worthy charity is the icing on the cake. Good luck with your work." Feedback from an eBay customer.
Our volunteers will restore, mend & clean garments before sale; this delicate printed robe was donated to us as part of a dusty amount of clothing stored in bin liners. After a careful hand wash, it came back to life and was snapped up by an eBayer.
The Textile Re-use Hub
Gladrags Costumes, Leftover Threads and Smarter Uniforms have collaborated to form a Textile Re-use Hub. At the heart of each of our organisations is the ambition to reduce textile waste by reusing and repurposing textiles whilst helping people to access free or low-cost clothing. Thanks to the support of East Brighton Trust, for funding and securing our hub provision from their building.
This collaboration has enabled the hub to deliver:
Services addressing financial hardship and promoting textile re-use in East Brighton.
Activities enhancing community wellbeing in East Brighton.
Innovative sustainable initiatives supporting a circular economy and Brighton & Hove City Council’s goal to be carbon neutral by 2030.
Find out more here.