In 2024, we celebrated our milestone 25th anniversary as London’s leading fashion charity retailer. Over the years we have pioneered shopping, donating and wearing second-hand clothing as a first choice to change the fashion industry for the better, today we are proud to continue our mission. From unveiling our new look to opening our brand new warehouse, supporting our global projects and more, take a look back at some of our highlights this year!  

Celebrating 25 years of Traid

We kicked off the year of our milestone 25th anniversary by launching Traid’s refreshed brand identity, with a renewed focus on making second-hand fashion the first and most normal choice over new. Starting with our Shepherd’s Bush store, we’ve been rolling out our new look throughout the year with more to come in 2025!  

Inside our new look Shepherd’s Bush store.
Our community shopping and celebrating our new look Camden store at our Summer Late.
Our home collection vans also had a makeover and they’re out on the road picking up your donations.

Our in-store workshops   

We launched our free workshop space at the front of our Shepherd’s Bush store as a hub for our community to craft, repair and create together using second-hand materials sourced at our warehouse. Throughout the year we teamed up with leading designers, creators and makers to host variety of creative workshops including a TRAID REmade workshop led by Lydia Bolton and a ‘You Can Knit With Us’ residency hosted by Colèchi, as well as special features from the TOAST Repair Specialists, CQ Studio and more!  

A Sashiko and patchwork repair workshop at Traid Shepherd’s Bush hosted by the TOAST Repair Specialists.
A ‘You Can Knit With Us’ crochet workshop session hosted by Colèchi at Traid Shepherd’s Bush.

Our 2024 global projects  

In 2024 we were proud to commit £532,367 to fund five projects in five countries around the world to support and empower garment workers, their families and communities. By working closely with our project partners, we want to make sure that the people who make our clothes have access to safer working conditions, higher incomes, workers’ rights, better health and education opportunities, making fashion fairer for everyone. Take a look at the projects we’re supporting.  

Traid’s Closet Clear-out Challenge   

In September, we launched our biggest campaign to date – Traid’s Closet Clear-out Challenge. We challenged the public to look into their wardrobes and pass on the clothes they no longer wear to help us achieve a whopping 250,000 donations in just one month. Backed by our community, partners and celebrities including Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Sharon Horgan, Sabrina Grant, Jim and Nancy Moir, Patrick Grant Grant, Erin O’Connor, Gilles Peterson, Michelle Dockery and Caryn Franklin, we smashed our target and generated just under 300,000 garment donations, saving 786 tonnes of CO2 and 147,968 m3 of water! In October, our campaign’s results came to life where we released Traid Treasures, our biggest and best second-hand drop to date in-store and online to raise vital funds to support our global projects.

Championing charity retail

Our educational work this year saw our team joining podcasts, panel talks and more to share the power of second-hand and highlight the environmental impacts of the fashion industry and clothing consumption. Check out some of our educational work this year:

Listen to Traid Chief Executive, Maria Chenoweth, on The Sustainable Fashion Wingman Podcast with Sebastian Volney where she shares Traid’s journey and impact over the past 25 years. Listen here.

Traid’s Head of Partnerships, Jose Baladron, (left) hosted students from UAL’s Central Saint Martins on a tour of our brand new warehouse in Alperton.
Traid’s Head of Marketing and Communications, Sophie Calderbank, (second left) was invited to speak to Fashion Buying students at the University of West London on the impacts of the fashion industry.

In October, we were excited to celebrate the news of Traid Chief Executive, Maria Chenoweth, receiving an Honorary Doctorate from The Open University. Maria was awarded with this prestigious degree in recognition for her exceptional contributions to teaching and research in the fields of sustainability and gender equality alongside her lifelong work championing the social and environmental benefits of charity retail and second-hand fashion.

Traid Chief Executive, Maria Chenoweth (left) and Executive Dean of The Open University’s Faculty of Business and Law, Professor Mark Durkin (right).

The new Traid warehouse

This year we said goodbye to our Wembley warehouse, which we’ve been operating in for the past 20 years, and opened the doors to our brand new warehouse in Alperton! Behind the scenes, our incredible team works hard to collect and hand sort donations, processing over 100,000 items per week. Our work means we save these garments from going to landfill or incineration, whilst reducing the need to buy new. To date we’ve put back 238 million garments into use, saving 647,447 tonnes of CO2 and 110 million m3 of water – and counting.  Take a look behind the scenes at the setup of our new warehouse. 

A huge thank you to everyone who has supported us this year, stick around to see what we get up to in 2025!