A fashion ‘library’ has opened in Amsterdam

A different “library” in Amsterdam lends original dresses, tunics, blouses and jackets instead of books, an initiative that aims to limit the impact of the fashion industry on the environment, AFP reports.

“LENA, the fashion library” offers customers to change their style as they wish by renting quality clothes.

“It’s just really good,” enthused Ikram Cakir before returning a blue and white patterned blouse and leaving with a similar light pink item. The 37-year-old campaigner for an NGO visits the site about once every three weeks, delighted to be able to renew her wardrobe regularly thanks to this sustainable initiative.

“A lot of clothes are bought and not worn. I think it’s a really nice way to be able to wear new clothes without depleting the planet,” she added to AFP.

Located on a busy street in the center of the Dutch capital, the “library” offers a diverse collection of hundreds of regularly renewed pieces, also available for purchase. On each article of clothing, a label indicates the price, often high, but also the rental cost per day, which varies from 50 cents to a few euros.

“The fashion industry is one of the most polluting in the world,” says Elisa Jansen, co-founder of this initiative, which she founded in 2014 with her two sisters and a friend.

In the era of “fast fashion”, the average person buys 60% more clothes on average than 15 years ago, and each item is kept for half the time, according to the UN.

Every second, an amount equivalent to a garbage truck load of clothes is burned or landfilled, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation also states. Fashion is responsible for a third of the discharge of toxic microplastics (microplastics) into the oceans, consumes up to 215,000 billion liters of water per year from textile production and is responsible for up to 8% of greenhouse gas emissions.