Fashion With a Purpose to #doDifferent
We all know the thrill of the find: a dress at the back of a rail that fits like it was made for you, a jacket with just the right amount of history, a handbag that still has someone’s old business card tucked in the zip pocket. Now imagine that the same find is also keeping a child in a reading programme, funding a teacher’s bursary, and keeping good clothes out of landfill. That’s not wishful thinking. That’s Vintage with Love.
Vintage with Love (VWL) is a South African non-profit that sells gently worn, pre-loved fashion and hands the profits to literacy and education charities across the country. It’s a wardrobe clear-out with a conscience, and it’s been quietly changing lives for more than a decade.
Every great South African story starts somewhere modest. VWL’s began in 2013, when friends Leigh Ord and Jacquie Myburgh Chemaly asked a simple question: what if the clothes languishing at the back of our cupboards could help children learn to read? They invited women to donate their once-loved fashion and held a big sale, and the idea took off. Cape Town followed in 2015, with Debbie Smuts joining the team there.
Today, VWL has grown from a single sale into a platform that includes online shopping, pop-up events, furniture sales and retail stores in Johannesburg and Cape Town. The Melrose shop in Johannesburg opened in June 2024. But the idea at the heart of it hasn’t changed.
says managing director Tracey van Gass, and VWL’s volunteers have it down to a science.
Why literacy? Because the need is enormous. The 2021 PIRLS study found that 81% of South African Grade 4 learners could not read for meaning in any of the country’s eleven official languages. That’s roughly nine out of every ten children in a classroom, in a country where reading is the foundation for everything that follows.
VWL’s answer is practical and direct. As the team puts it, R50 keeps a child in a learning programme for a week.
Here’s what sets VWL apart: it isn’t a thrift store, and it isn’t a jumble sale. Everything is collected, sorted, cleaned, priced and sold by an army of volunteers in Johannesburg and Cape Town, so what reaches the rail is curated, quality fashion. Each piece is one of a kind. If you love it and it’s your size, the team’s advice is to take it as a sign.
And nothing goes to waste. Items that don’t make the cut are donated onward, and some are sold to street vendors at a nominal fee. As Jacquie has said, it’s fashion recycling in its best form: turning something no longer worn into something desperately needed.
VWL’s network of charities reads like a roll call of South Africans doing the hard work of education, and these are only some of them:
Realema funds bursaries for talented students who couldn’t otherwise afford a Bachelor of Education, placing them as teacher interns at top schools. It builds careers and the teachers South Africa needs, all at once.
Shine Literacy is working towards a nation of readers, providing storybooks, structured English literacy support and family literacy workshops for parents and caregivers.
The Click Foundation brings online English and numeracy programmes to under-resourced primary schools, building digital skills alongside literacy.
Nuwe Hoop Centre is South Africa’s largest centre for the education and training of deaf and hard of hearing learners, and those with learning disabilities.
Project Playground, Home From Home, Hangberg Pre-Primary, Mme Dimpho Hani ECD Centre, Little Artists, Ikhaya Le Themba, Kidz2Kidz, Community Assisting Schools, Chic Mamas and Uphawu are all part of the network, from township preschools and foster families to art tuition and school upgrades.
These aren’t abstract names. Mme Dimpho Hani began with one woman’s dream of a safe place for the children of Doornkop. It now has brick classrooms, a kitchen, a vegetable garden and five teachers feeding and caring for children every day.
By 2016, VWL had raised more than R2 million. A single Cape Town sale in 2022 raised R1 million. By mid-2024 the total had passed R8 million, and the team now says it’s more than R10 million and counting.
It also travels. In November 2024, 105 women gathered on Thesen Island in Knysna for a VWL fundraising event in aid of a preschool in Nekkies and The Click Foundation. It was organised by local volunteers and every cent stayed in the Knysna community.
Behind every rail is a volunteer who sorts, steams, prices and packs. The VWL team is made up of generous women who give their time because they believe in the cause. And the impact reaches beyond the charities. In a story shared by their partners at Workshop17, the team stood by a man through his rehabilitation. Today he is sober, has his own apartment, is mastering literacy and writing, and is working towards his driver’s licence.
There’s a lovely small story too: one volunteer donated a collection of her own shirts, only to discover that VWL’s Head of Operations had unknowingly bought them all. That’s the circle of pre-loved fashion in action.
There are four easy ways to get involved:
Donate your gently worn clothes. As VWL says, it’s better to donate than accumulate. You can also consign items and earn a percentage, with the rest going to charity.
Shop, online, at the Johannesburg and Cape Town stores, or at their pop-ups and Furniture Fest. It’s guilt-free, and every purchase is a donation.
Give a monetary donation of any size. VWL will provide a tax certificate for you or your company.
Volunteer in Johannesburg or Cape Town. They’d love to hear from you.
Together, let’s choose differently. Let’s make second-hand the first choice, and let’s clear out our cupboards for something bigger than ourselves. Because a world where the clothes we’ve finished with help a child begin to read is absolutely the world we want to live in.
