Bagging A Bargain: Chatting With Wings Vintage

According to the Boston Consulting Group, second-hand clothes are projected to make up 27% of people’s wardrobes by 2023.

However, many thrifty shoppers will tell you they’re way past that point. Once you’ve started charity and vintage shopping, that’s likely the only way you will ever shop again. It’s not just the fact that when a seasoned thrifter steps out of a charity shop and into a retail chain store, even the sale prices often seem steep, but once you’re ethically conscious, it’s hard to reverse that.

We all know fast fashion is bad for the environment. We understand how clothing production pollutes the planet, and we know shopping second-hand is a better choice. But do we realise how much of a better choice it is?

Wired’s recent research showed that buying a handbag second-hand rather than buying new can reduce the bag’s environmental impact by up to 91%. According to the EMF, adding a mere nine months to an item’s lifespan can decrease its environmental impact by up to 40%. Those are significant improvements as a result of such a small change.

While the switch to second-hand is a small change, the second-hand market has seen huge developments over the past few years. The number of people buying second-hand has increased dramatically alongside the way people consume second-hand and vintage. We’ve gone from charity shops to websites like eBay and apps like Depop and Vinted. Now, the latest purchasing mediums to take TikTok by storm are fill a bag events and kilo sales.

These events are hailed as one of the best ways to secure second-hand and vintage items without paying half your monthly wages. As the name suggests, kilo sales use the weight of your overall clothing purchase to determine what you pay, with a price being set per kilo. Fill a bag events are pretty self-explanatory. You cram as much as you can into as few bags as possible and pay a fixed price per bag.

Regardless of the brand, the style, and the ‘trendiness’ of your purchases, the price stays the same because conventional pricing rules don’t apply.

In all stores, online or high street, fast-fashion or second-hand, you pay more for higher quality items, known brand names, or pieces that are in right now. This isn’t the case with kilo sales and fill a bag events. In fact, you might actually pay less for premium quality materials, such as silk, because it simply doesn’t weigh much or take up much space.

While many European high streets boast pay per kilo or fill a bag stores as permanent fixtures, in the UK, the only way we can get our hands on these affordable finds at the moment is at pop up events. Taking TikTok by storm, one such event is run by London-based Wings Vintage.

The company’s founder and CEO, Megan Wing, never set out to make such a wave. She told us:

“I was so sure of what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be, but, unexpectedly and oddly obviously, you can’t always plan your life or the journeys you will take. You often fall into things that just happen to take you by surprise yet amplify what you believe in. I always wanted to be an actress and studied at drama school. But after my father, Peter Gordon Wing, who founded ‘PG WING’, the biggest government surplus wholesaler in Europe, passed away in 2018, my mindset changed. I had different responsibilities; I had to support my mother, and Wings Vintage has grown to be a homage to my father’s life’s work and the undying love and respect I have for him.”

“In August 2021, I had loads of clothes I needed to shift, and, to be honest, I wanted to make a quick profit. I made a TikTok promoting this £10 fill a bag event to see if I could get some more people to come. I thought maybe 20 people would turn up if I was lucky. On the morning of the event, I got to the studio at 8 AM, the event started at 12 PM, and as I drove around the corner, there was a queue of people lining up outside the doors. The cafe next door told me people had been there since they opened at 6 AM! I checked the TikTok, and it had over 200,000 views!

“I was pretty stressed as it was only myself stocking up, my mum on the till, and my two best mates were helping out. We had four staff against 6000 people. It was madness. We had a father fly over from Ireland just to take his daughter to my event, and there was another girl who flew over from Morocco just to attend. It was very hectic but showed me there was a huge gap in the market for these events.”

Stating there was a gap in the market may have been an understatement.

People flock to Wing’s events, queuing for hours in all types of weather to grab a bargain and meet Megan and her staff, simply to hang out.

Talking to Megan, it’s easy to see why. She loves people almost as much as she loves clothes, and she’s driven by not only getting people a bargain but doing it at no cost to the plant.

“People love fill a bag events because it’s super affordable. You fill up a decent-sized bag full of clothes that you’ve handpicked for a tenner. I think the people that come to my events appreciate being thrifty. They love the thrill of finding rare items or can see the vision to up-cycle and re-work clothes.”

“After the pandemic, everyone has been super aware of sustainability and trying to keep the environmental cost of fashion down, especially as we saw the world heal for a brief moment while we were all in lockdown. I believe this generation is driving towards making a change and making things better.”

Scrolling through the Wings Vintage socials, you’re inundated with videos and photos of happy customers showing off their purchases, listing their outfit details, and hanging out with Wings Vintage employees. This highlights one of the main reasons Wings’ fill a bag sales are thriving and why thrifty shoppers across the UK are heading to these events.

Post-pandemic, even among sellers with tens of thousands of Instagram followers and millions of TikTok likes, there’s heightened importance in being offline and building genuine in-person connections. People want a sense of community and to be surrounded by people who share their interests and values. If there are gorgeous and cheap clothes there too, it’s a bonus.

It’s that combination of having really sick clothing and having a place where you feel very comfortable. We can’t ignore the importance of socials, “TikTok has done so much for Wings – I have my little cousin to thank for that. She kept telling me to start making TikToks, but I had too much pride and honestly didn’t want to give in. But I can’t recommend it enough if you have a small business.”

“I have to separate myself and the business. Personally, I’m quite old school and still have a Nokia flip as my personal phone, but if I want to have a successful business, I have to keep up with the times. So, we move.”

While TikTok pushes out vintage clothing content to anyone on the platform, this way of shopping in the real world hasn’t always been, and often still isn’t, a place where everyone feels comfortable. Plus-size people often struggle to find clothing in their size due to selective sourcing or smaller people buying bigger sizes to ‘upcycle’ them.

Wings Vintage ensures there’s something for everyone at their events: “the main ethos at Wings is that we are accessible and inclusive for everyone. We source our clothes all around the world, we try to keep up with trends as well as set them, and we have ALL sizes available.”

While many love these events, hailing them as thrifty and environmentally friendly, others aren’t so keen. We can agree that on the surface, the idea of kilo sales and fill a bag events inherently promote the idea of overconsumption.

But, when you think about it, a kilo or one shopping bag is a pretty standard shopping spree. On top of this, the average shopper isn’t going to be traipsing down to these events every other day of the week. These are special, pop up events that come and go.

For the sake of argument, let’s say these sales promote overconsumption; when you weigh up the alternative which is clothing going to landfill because these items are sourced at the final stage of their life cycle, the wholesale events are far more environmentally friendly.

Megan battles with her stance on the topic, “I do understand what people are saying when they talk about overconsumption. From my point of view, I think I would rather have somebody spend £10 on a bag of second-hand clothes that would have otherwise gone to the landfill than them spending £10 at a fast-fashion company. I’m hoping that everybody that shops with me is mindful enough to not make purchases they do not need and that everyone is conscious of what they are consuming.”

“I do one of these events every month at my studio in Euston. They help unwanted clothes get back in circulation at affordable prices, and they always bring the good vibes.”

Keep up with Wings Vintage on TikTok.

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