The change of seasons is upon us, and while impending beach time is no doubt significant to both sexes, we ladies have an added challenge when dressing for the weather. Though both men and women change the basic nature of their wardrobe come summer, an inevitable (and, some might argue, unnecessary) shift in women’s styles and trends seems to accompany any shift in temperature.

Blame it on our materialistic, consumer-driven culture, but as the days grow longer it’s hard to avoid the pull to purchase the season’s myriad offerings.

Enter the clothing swap.

For the last 3 years, be it on natural-fibers-centric Vancouver Island or in fast-paced, fashionable Vancouver, my girlfriends and I have assembled to combat the shopping beast (or barely satiate it, as the case may be). We trade up our old goods for new ones in an effort to save money and diminish waste.

Here’s how it works: The week, month, day, or hour before a clothing exchange, we each review what in our closet no longer needs to be. Just as one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, one woman’s ill-fitting sweater may flatter her friend’s figure to a tee.

At the event items are amassed into a heap and then sorted, typically while a considerable amount of wine and baked goods are consumed. Then, we model. The friend-filled environment provides an opportunity to try out styles we might not touch in a store.

Numbers are drawn and top items are selected in succession. This keeps the distribution of goods fair and civilized, so of course we only go a maximum three rounds before things descend into an adrenaline-fueled free-for-all. The elbows come out and the hip checks are vicious as we dive for choice items, but thus is the cost of fashion. Pain, after all, is beauty.

For those of you wondering at this point what fashion has to do with the Gumboot (although gumboots are pretty hot right now), swaps also contribute to incredibly positive female communities.

Think about it: shopping tends to be a social activity for women, but the clothing exchange takes it to the next level. Instead of wandering malls fraught with unrealistic body images, urging women to purchase their way to self-acceptance, swaps happen in cozy living rooms full of all shapes and sizes. We advise, opine, model the goods, and subtly and overtly remind one another that size 2 does not necessarily equal beauty.

And when you’re standing in your living room, in your underwear, balancing a glass of wine and a brownie while trying to squeeze into your best friend’s high-waisted button-front shorts that you’ve secretly coveted since she bought them in March of 2004, only to realize that they never, ever would have fit you anyway, that’s a good thing to be reminded of.

In hosting these semi-regular exchanges, we actively build the kind of community we admire: one that recreates what being a woman’s all about. We are feminine, eco-friendly, supportive, slightly boozy, and, by the end of the night, incredibly well-dressed.

Dedicated to the Estronauts and their impeccable style.

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