The Next Web

RehashClothes.com helps out green fashion victims

Written on April 16, 2008 – 3:03 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

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If fashion trends come and go with the seasons, what will happen once global warming takes over and seasons cease to exist?

That’s quite a bold question. Yet RehashClotes.com revolves around it. It’s a web site where people can exchange clothes to save the environment. Sort of a fashionable recycling service. When the guys from Orpheux Design found out that only in America, an average person throws away an average of 67.9 lbs of clothing and textiles per year, they figured something had to be done. Therefore they started working on a “a worldwide movement to lower your consumption and create a greener Earth for everyone”.

So what if you’re not into the whole Al Gore global warming thing? RehashClotes.com still seems interesting for not so green fashion victims. And not just because you change the web site’s green-colored design into a brown or blue one (did they do that on purpose?), also because it’s a good source for second-hand, vintage or original clothing. What seems worthless to you, can be valuable for someone else. And naturally, this works the other way around as well. After some quick browsing through the RehashClotes’ archive, I already found some good items, not the dull and dusty things you’ll find at the Salvation Army.

I think Rehash is part of an interesting trend. Now we’re used to buying stuff online, we also like to hire and swap our goods online. Whereas we used to place classifieds ads in local newspapers or hang up notes is supermarkets, we now just browse to our favorite web service. Craigslist started this trend a long time ago by offering these services for major cities, yet geographical distances are getting less important. Why wouldn’t we swap clothes with someone who lives 1,000 miles away? Most of us trust the web now, and that leads to beautiful initiatives like Rehash.

clothing, environment, fashion, green, rehashclotes, Start-ups

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RestyleMe is styling 2.0 and certainly not 3.0

Written on March 28, 2008 – 4:07 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Although Web 3.0 seems to be coming closer by the day, typical 2.0 initiatives are still launched on a daily bases. Just for the record, I follow Calacanis’ definition of Web 3.0: balancing the ‘wisdom of crowds’ by embracing experts. A good example is Topicle, a search community with a pool of small search engines that use the human intelligence of experts.

So I just registered to ReStyleme, a service that allows users to rate other users’ clothing style. What pleads for the ReStyleMe is that they don’t just offer a dull 1 to 10 rating system but actually make it possible to judge in detail. To be more specific, you can rate the hair style, body style (?), accessories, makeup, eye glasses, dental style, facial hair, clothing and tattoos. Moreover, it’s possible to pinpoint good and bad points on the picture. And of course, users can leave comments as well. Like this one, from DieWeissenRose about steph19812006:

You need to cheer up some! :) try straightening or curling your hair. Also wear clothes that are your size.

KillerStartUps is raving about this service in their review:

RestyleMe fills a gap for a website that’s specifically built for actually useful style advice. (..) It utilizes Web 2.0 features that makes it user-friendly and fun to provide or obtain style advice.

Yet you could also see their remark as negative. If you think about it: who wants a style advice based on the wisdom of the crowds? I mean, a business man might want to see if other business people dig his suit. And a goth teenager only cares about the dark view of other goths. ReStyleMe doesn’t offer this possibility. You can only sort the style results by age, geographical location and sex.

Moreover, if every body pays attention to the fashion sense of the majority, that would be disastrous for creativity. People would just adapt their style to the generally safe (= dull) judgments of Average Joe. So I hope ReStyleMe will soon create some more options to select opinions. Otherwise they’re just making the world a bit more gray.

Don’t agree with me? Express your anger here by giving me a thumbs down for my clothes.. or hair. Whatever you want.

clothes, fashion, Opinion, restyleme, topicle, web 2.0, web 3.0, wisdom of the crowds

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