Something you purged showed up

[VTDresser]

I have an interesting question...

If you have ever purged did you see something you discarded show up in public? I had a pair of black satin cargo pants I gave to the local clothes center that I saw on a woman in a grocery store. They were definitely mine (easily identifiable logo and style); I wanted to ask her how she liked them.

[Karren H]

That's too funny... I've seen women wearing the same dress or skirt suit but never seen anything I've donated and I recycle clothing on a monthly basis... Not purges just setting them free to make room for my real obsession.. Shopping!

[Kate Simmons]

I dunno, I'd probably be damn proud if someone, especially a woman got to use it.:)

[Jessinthesprings]

How weird! Never purged myself so; no, never happend to me.

[Karren H]

I dunno, I'd probably be damn proud if someone, especially a woman got to use it.:)

Bet they wouldn't be? We should sew in tags before youe donate them. "Proudly worn by a crossdresser". Lol.

[AmberLynn]

Bet they wouldn't be? We should sew in tags before youe donate them. "Proudly worn by a crossdresser". Lol.

I like that karren, i wonder if someone would buy an item of fem clothing if they new it belonged to a cd,tv,ts :daydreaming: sound's like a fun idea

[krisinpink]

The closest I've come to this is I spotted a pair of cords on the thrift store rack that I had dropped off some weeks earlier. I knew they had been mine by the sewing repair I'd done to them when they were mine.

(They were kinda special as they were part of the first outfit I wore out in public when I finally got brave enough to go out in the daylight!) :daydreaming:

[SabrinaDubh]

When I was younger I used to purge regularly. I would go to the local discount store, buy an outfit and discard it later that night or in the next day or two. In the mobile home complex we lived in there was a common trash area with the big bins for trash recycling, etc. Well we also had a few shelves for donating/recycling things with neighbors... stick your stuff up there to be taken and used by someone else. When I purged I would put my things on the shelves, and they would be taken by the women in the complex. After a while I would see my things walking around almost daily.

That was what got me to finally stop purging. Not only wasting money but seeing it walking around and realizing that I was being a fool by wasting it.

[Jessica Who]

Heh that's so cool glad you could help out the woman with her wardrobe :)

[Chloe' Buffington]

4 years ago, wile trying to placate my now x-girl friend, I purged my faux mink coat. Last winter wile at a drag show one of the participants used it in a musical number. I talked to her later and she showed me the coat and oddly enough it had my name tag in it. She had bought it in a thrift store for $25.00, it cost me $99.99 back in 1989, and she just loves it. It does make me happy it found a good home.

[Amy Hepker]

I bought a shirt at Goodwill that I donated there a few months back. Yes, I bought it back. I did not want to get rid of it really, but you know how purges go.

[Sally24]

I bought a shirt at Goodwill that I donated there a few months back. Yes, I bought it back.
So funny!!:lol2:

The closest I've been is donating clothing to a sale at First Event and then seeing the clothing walking around later the next day. Plus it looked so much better on them!!:Angry3:

[sandra-leigh]

We do a semi-annual clothing swap at our social club; once or twice a year, people bring in things they no longer wear or no longer fit, and the other people go through and take whatever they want; what-ever is left over is donated to one of the charities.

I do recall that one of the items I traded in showed up on one of the other members a month or two later; it felt slightly odd at first, but that feeling quickly passed, since the idea was, after-all, that the clothing would go to someone who would have a use for it.


I had the situation of the main topic happen in reverse. :o

There's a consignment store a few blocks from me that is very supportive of me at an individual level (but doesn't want to be considered "part of the CD community".) Part of the culture of that store is that people are invited to come out of the change- rooms into the main area of the store and get opinions from the staff and from the other customers. Wearing the item while moving around does give one a better idea of whether it is really suitable; and the main area of the store has natural light; and the other customers often have good advice about which items look better on you or may have suggestions about other items in the store they think will look good for you.

Yes, this does mean that a bunch of random and unsuspecting customers have seen me boldly walk out into the main area in a dress or skirt, with me probably wearing forms of some size (otherwise I wouldn't know if the clothes fit right!), but me very likely in my "guy face". And the customers that bother to pay attention at all have all adapted to the situation very well; I have never received a personally-directed negative comment from even one of them. I have been advised by customers that the colours of one of the items goes better with my skin tone better than another, or that one of the items is shaped better on me than another -- constructive criticism. And I've been going there long enough, that I'm sure that if someone were to raise a fuss about me being there, that they would be the one told firmly that the store aims to do its best for all of its customers, and that if they were not comfortable with that, then they could leave and/or make a private shopping appointment.


Anyhow.... One time, after having tried on one dress and shown it off in the main area, I went and tried on some others and eventually came back out and showed something else off. The store owner mentioned to me with a bit of amusement that a customer that had seen me try on the dress (and had commented positively on its fit and suitability for me) had pulled the owner aside briefly and said "That was my dress! I brought that one in!" (that is, she was the person who had put it on consignment or had sold it outright to the store.) Thus she (the customer) had little bit of Trans Shock, not having dreamed her dress might go for such a purpose as me wearing it, but to her credit when she spoke to me about it, she addressed the issues at hand: was it the right fit for me, and did it look good on me. (I think I did end up buying the dress, but I do not recall for certain now.)

[Karen564]

This reminds me of when I'm at the airport, and go to claim my suitcase, and see so many just like mine,,,around & around they go.then see someone grab one that looks like mine, & say, Hey!!, are you sure that's yours....LOL

:hugs:

[Shannah]

Could be interesting, since I mainly wear lingerie.

[allisonrn06]

I did purge once about 10 years ago, and thought I saw a lady at the market wearing a dress that I had donated. I had purged out of necessity, not because I wanted to quit, so it felt horrible seeing my dress on her.

[Danielle Gee]

Hi Girls: I believe that a large percentage of clothes we donate to charity never again see the light of day. I think that a large percentage are cut up and sold as rags or possibly just sold to re-cyclers.

I live in a small town (30,00) with a rather large (1600 employees) automotive manufacturing facility (I work there). Each employee is issued 12 uniform items each year. This may be 12 shirts, or 6 shirts and 6 pants or so on. All new uniforms are handed out in the same week.

That's almost 20 thousand clothing items to hit the Goodwills & Salvation Armies in one week. In 35 years of employment I've never saw a person who didn't work there with a uniform on. (to my knowledge)

[sandra-leigh]

Hi Girls: I believe that a large percentage of clothes we donate to charity never again see the light of day. I think that a large percentage are cut up and sold as rags or possibly just sold to re-cyclers.

Warning: seriousness ahead!

I saw a part of a documentary on this subject. A lot of clothes are shipped to third-world countries as waste for disposal, often without even having been checked for quality. A big sub-industry has grown up in one of the commonly-shipped-to areas (Manila is what comes to mind, but that's quite possibly wrong), in which the officials turn a blind eye (or take payoffs) to the locals going through the clothes and sorting out the better quality ones and selling them.

A fair number of the clothes they got were manufacturer overruns or cancellation of lines or high end clothes that just didn't move fast enough, so a non-trivial portion of the clothes were direct from factory or store in perfect shape from high-end designers or companies that had paid a lot of money to deliberately remove the clothes from the market (because selling them at a discount would "dilute" the brand), so the locals doing the sorting and re-selling were violating the disposal contracts, so it was illegal (against the contracts). On the other hand, shipping your waste to a third world country for disposal is against international treaties, so I can't find much sympathy for the "damage" to the "intellectual property rights" of the companies.

I think I remember some of the clothes were buried and a lot of them were burned in places with relatively low chimneys -- releasing the smoke to mix easily into the air breathed by the city. But remember that a lot of cloth these days is not natural fibres, and even denim jeans have been chemically treated for the colouring and to make manufacture easier and so on. And then think about the add-on's like the buttons and random bling. The result is that a lot of poisons and heavy metals get emitted into the air of the city. And the clothes that are buried, the chemicals and metals mix in with the water table used for drinking. The major cities where this is happening are, in other words, ecological disaster areas, and the people going in and "rescuing" the good clothes are materially risking their health. They don't make a lot of money from it either -- even if they find something that could be resold for a couple of thousand dollars, individually they don't have the contacts to get them shipped and sold into the right markets, so they have to sell to middlemen for a fraction of what the garments will eventually resell for.

It's a sad situation, with many similarities to the situation for the disposal of electronics (such as computers and DVD players), often (in violation of treaties and advertising promises) shipped to third world disposal, where they simultaneously support a local economy that would otherwise have nothing -- and poison the area badly.