Tansy Hoskins on fashion and charity shops

Have you ever wondered what happens to the contents of the bags you drop off at the charity shop?

With over 80 billion pieces of clothing produced each year and with human made stuff now outweighing living biomass, this is the story of the first sorting site for the deluge of items we discard every single day.

Having spent decades exploring charity shops for bargains and treasure, Tansy Hoskins decided to dig deep into the world of charity shop volunteering. From used underwear to wolf pelts, Charity Shop World is a personal account of sorting through donations to reveal the entanglement of people and products. This book also investigates the export of clothes to overseas markets and landfill, revealing hidden shareholders behind a multi-million pound business.

Taking us to the heart of a country hit by austerity and the cost of living crisis, Charity Shop World reveals surprising places of human connectivity, where local communities struggle to find their way through economic hardship to reach a more sustainable way of living.

Tansy Hoskins is an author and journalist who investigates the global fashion industry. Her books include The Anti-Capitalist Book Of Fashion which Vogue selected for the 'Best Fashion Books Of All Time’ and Foot Work – What Your Shoes Tell You About Globalisation. Tansy has won the ICA Bookshop Book of the Year Award, was shortlisted for the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing and has been nominated for a British Journalism Award. She is a trainer at the Centre for Investigative Journalism.

Tansy lectures on the politics of fashion supply chains across the UK at universities, museums, cultural events and political gatherings and regularly does the ‘heavy lifting’ for media interviews on the workings of the global garment industry.

Refreshments included