I Started Clothing Swaps To Help Heal Our Immigrant Clutter Core Baggage

As fast fashion continues to flood our closets with cheaply made clothes and overpopulate landfills, the environmental and emotional costs are growing too large to ignore. The average U.S. consumer throws away 81.5 pounds of clothing each year. While legislation like California’s Responsible Textile Recovery Act is an important step toward holding manufacturers accountable, real change also requires grassroots, community-led solutions.

That’s where my work begins.

Photo Credit: Nikki Hernandez Left to Right: Eugenia Nicole Macias Co-Founder & CEO, Enriquetta Navarro Co-Director, Jannine Mancilla Co-Founder

I co-founded Radical Clothes Swap, a women of color-led mutual-aid nonprofit in Los Angeles that promotes radical sustainability through free citywide clothing swaps. At our events, people take what they need, leave what they don’t, and reimagine fashion as something rooted in care not consumption. There’s no cost, no stigma, and no pressure to buy anything.

In a culture rooted in overproduction and waste, this kind of community sharing is both powerful and necessary. We’ve diverted thousands of pounds of clothing from landfills, and more importantly, we’ve helped normalize secondhand style while making fashion accessible to everyone—regardless of income.

But our work is about more than just clothes.

Sustainable fashion, for us, is also about mental health and cultural healing. 

There’s a growing conversation around what some online are calling “immigrant clutter core”, the experience of growing up in homes where nothing was thrown away because every item might one day be useful. For many first- and second-generation immigrants, this was a survival strategy, born from scarcity.

Now, many millennials raised in those environments are seeking intentional minimalism and conscious consumption—not just to reduce waste, but to heal. Decluttering, organizing, and rethinking what we bring into our lives can ease anxiety and improve self-worth. These practices can feel especially empowering for communities historically excluded from mainstream wellness narratives.

We believe in making these practices free, communal, and joyful.

Radical Clothes Swap isn’t just a place to get a new outfit—it’s a gathering space where people connect, learn, and imagine new ways of living. We also host mending workshops, educational events, and collaborations with mutual aid networks, expanding the conversation around sustainable fashion to include justice, culture, and care. And we are not the only ones doing this type of work. All across the US, more organizations and businesses are prioritizing sustainable practices. LA based companies like Suay and HomeBoyThreads are finding innovative ways to reduce waste, recycle textiles into new goods, empower people with new skillsets, and encourage change.

And yes, fashion is a justice issue. The fast fashion industry profits from the exploitation of garment workers, mostly women of color, while exporting its waste to the Global South. The same communities harmed by production and pollution are rarely centered in sustainability conversations.

That’s why our work centers on local artisans, LA-natives, and women of color who’ve long practiced sustainability not as a trend, but as a way of life.

As we face the climate crisis, economic inequality, and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s clear we can’t shop our way into sustainability. We need new systems rooted in community, not consumption.

At Radical Clothes Swap, we’re building new systems of change—garment by garment, person by person. Because fashion can be a tool for healing, empowerment, and transformation. And because a better world doesn’t start in the mall—it starts with each other.