Dolce Vee’s thrift community saves over 50 lakh litres of water in its first 6 months by choosing preloved fashion
While the explosive growth of secondhand fashion globally has been making headlines, homegrown brand Dolce Vee has been making strong inroads bringing preloved fashion to the Indian mass market. Since their launch in May this year, Dolce Vee customers have conservatively saved well over 50 lakh litres of water and 10,000 kg of carbon by choosing preloved over newly manufactured pieces.
With environmental sustainability as their guiding motivation, Dolce Vee launched India’s first Clothing Environmental Footprint Calculator in partnership with the Centre for Environmental Research and Education (CERE), enabling both buyers and people who share their pieces back into the circular fashion system to see the tangible environmental benefit by buying each piece preloved over a newly manufactured one.
“This has been key to bringing more people to embrace preloved,” explains Dolce Vee Founder Komal Hiranandani. “When they see the statistics – like a dress gathering dust at the back of your closet took 11,000 litres of water to produce – it’s very surprising, and people then really want to see these pieces being used and loved. So more people than ever before are sharing their pieces back into the circular fashion system, and people across demographics – not just the youth – are proudly shopping secondhand as they look to live a more conscious lifestyle.”
The shift to thrift has spread wide, with their customers spanning from Mumbai, Kolkata, Srinagar and Gangtok to Khedbrahma, Varkala, Khariar and Machilipatnam. To put their environmental savings in perspective, it’s about as much water as a person would drink in over 2700 years, and as much carbon as driving nearly 1.5 times across the earth's equator.
So far, all Dolce Vee’s clothing supplies have come as donations, with clothing donors choosing the charity that benefits from the sale of their pieces. This has been popular among building societies, corporates, social groups and other institutions, as they come together to contribute to a cause as a community without making demands directly on their wallets, and learning the water and carbon savings they have contributed as a group by donating their pieces. As Dolce Vee expands its environmental savings targets, they have now opened consignment sales as well, so people can monetize excess pieces of clothing in their closets, motivating them to maximize the use per garment as much as possible.
Dolce Vee, a brand of SaltScout, also regularly sets up featured celebrity closets, from Deepika Padukone and Anushka Sharma to Soha Ali Khan and Bhumi Pednekar. This has been instrumental in boosting the ecosystem for preloved fashion in the country.
Siddharth Sah, Dolce Vee’s Cofounder, adds “It’s clear that people are seeking more responsible ways to shop, and even with a small beginning, struggling through a launch in the middle of a lockdown, our buyers and clothing suppliers have already contributed so much by making a more responsible choice. We've seen the excitement around preloved fashion through influencer, stylists and celebrities grow exponentially since then, and through Dolce Vee, we look forward to growing our impact!”
So whether you’re looking for a thrift gem that’s lighter on your pocket and on the planet, or looking to share pieces from your closet you that you aren’t doing justice to, look no further than Dolce Vee!
Dolce Vee is live on www.SaltScout.com/DolceVee
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