Fashion for change: A chat with Thread Together CEO Anthony Chesler

In an ideal world, Thread Together CEO Anthony Chesler wishes that his organisation didn’t exist. After all, the not-for-profit exists to solve two giant problems: redirecting excess clothes from landfill and supporting people living in vulnerable communities.

“We're tackling two problems with one solution. Sadly, those problems are getting away from us due to the magnitude of people who continue to be in need of clothing, which is a forgotten basic human right. Meanwhile, the amount of new clothing that isn’t being sold continues to grow,” says Chesler. 

“We would actually prefer to not exist and there was no new clothing for us to redistribute or people in need of clothing.”

Launched in 2012 by former Seafolly owner Andie Halas, Thread Together donates excess stock from fashion brands to marginalised communities including people living with homelessness and seeking refugee, youth at risk, survivors of domestic violence, Australians living with disabilities, the financially disadvantaged – and plenty more. Thread Together currently has an online store, a fleet of mobile wardrobes that visits areas in need as well as physical clothing hubs in vulnerable communities across the nation.

In the last 10 years, the organisation has diverted more than 5.5 million pieces of clothing from landfill each year and it currently works with more than 1000 fashion brands that donate clothing and provide other support.

Here, Thread Together CEO Anthony Chesler chats with The General Store content and insights director Jo-Anne Hui-Miller about the organisation’s latest initiatives, how the fashion industry is stepping up and the greatest misconceptions around Australians in need. 

Jo-Anne: What are some of the initiatives that you’re focused on at the moment at Thread Together?

Anthony: We’ve just launched a wardrobe and capsule service, which will be delivered in crisis accommodation centres. We piloted this in the Gold Coast at a women’s shelter called McLeod Refuge and we recognised that there was just no clothing for women escaping domestic violence. We ran a pilot, we put a solution in place, took some learnings from that, then we went into lots of women's refuges. 

We learnt that while these refuges save lives, they don’t distribute new clothing. That means that lots of women – mostly affluent women who are used to having full wardrobes of clothing – usually live in the same clothes for a few days when they first arrive. Then they have nothing to wear, maybe secondhand clothing if that. 

So now we're offering capsules of clothing, which include underwear, sleepwear, and loungewear, as well as the physical wardrobe that carries product for women and children in various sizes. We’ve moved those into 10 locations in Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Sydney and we want to get into 100 refuges by June next year. 

We're looking at ways to manage excess clothing that we can't give away to people because the demand doesn't match the supply. We’ll be doing more of it in the future but it requires us to find partners and a bit of investment. 

Right now, with Cotton Australia and farms in Gunnedah and Goondiwindi, we’re regenerating soil on cotton farms. We’re getting shirts, taking off their buttons, collars and sleeves and trimming them down to their shredded form so they get pelletised, added to fertiliser and ploughed into cotton fields to regenerate the soil.

Jo-Anne: Tell me about some of the ways that the fashion retail industry is supporting Thread Together and Australians in need.

Anthony: I've been in the role for just over three years. I started in July 2019 when the business was very, very small. When I started, there were 20 charities and maybe 10 or so fashion brands. Natural disasters have exacerbated the need for us to support the community and that's where the fashion industry has really stepped up. Thousands of fashion brands are donating clothing to us almost every day now – we're taking 100,000 units a month of clothing. We're working with volunteers every single day. 

What's really exciting is that fashion brands are actually getting behind us. Not only are they just seeing us as an opportunity to offload excess stock, they're actually engaging, which is really exciting. Some brands send their teams out to volunteer with us. Lots of brands are helping us fundraise, lots of brands are helping us to move our workload forward. Fashion retailer Incu helped us build our Shopify store and The Iconic helped us build the floorplates in the warehouse. We clothed girls and guys up in Lismore recently and we took stylists from Bec and Bridge. 

Jo-Anne: If you could change anything about the fashion retail industry tomorrow, what would it be?

Anthony: I'd like to see brands not just sit on the boundaries and watch, but actually take responsibility for creating scalable solutions to manage textile waste and end-of-life. We need clothes, they serve more than just a functional purpose and we need them to feel good about ourselves. That's not going away, so we’re not going to just stop buying clothes. 

But what we can start from tomorrow is create pathways to incentivise, encourage or create opportunities for people to give their clothing back to brands and have it reused in some way, shape, or form. Retailers don't take enough ownership for end-of-life and that's because they don't see it as their function or responsibility. They don't see themselves as textile recyclers. But the reality is that what we wear is not waste, it's actually a valuable resource that can be reused, rented, repurposed and reimagined in different ways. You can actually create a lot more value. 

It would be my dream for people to be able to give back an item of clothing to the retailer once they’ve finished wearing it. It didn't actually just sit on a shelf or go tothe  Salvos to get sorted then exported – instead, it would stay here locally and become available for reuse. 

Jo-Anne: Off the back of Covid and various natural disasters lately, there's been an increase of people in need. What are some of the biggest misconceptions Australians have about people in vulnerable situations?

Anthony: I think people think that we live in an affluent first world country. A lot of people just turn a blind eye to the extent of the vulnerability that currently exists. 

One in eight adults and one in six children don't have adequate access to essential services. They don't have sufficient disposable income to support health care, education, housing, food – and that doesn't even include clothing. The greatest misconception is that there's a small percentage of people in these communities, but it's not – 3.4 million Australians are living below the poverty line. 

You're almost running a two-tiered economy in Australia. There are a lot of people with a lot of disposable income who are spending a lot of money at the moment and that puts pressure on those who have less disposable income. Those are the ones that are actually pinched with rises in inflation and interest rates and cost of living pressures. 

I don't think people really understand the extent of marginalised communities in Australia, whether it's people that have lost their home due to a flood or a fire, someone who has arrived in our country with nothing and are seeking refuge, whether it's someone who's come out of jail. There's also a lot of domestic violence. Mental health is a big challenge and that's a form of vulnerability. 

We're speaking about this more than 10 years ago, but are we doing anything about it as a broader population? Probably not.