"All sisters on earrings": Alice Taiga - about swap parties
Imagine a party whose guests bring with them clothes, shoes or accessories and then exchange them.
Participants in the party (most often these are girls, but the guys often appear) in turn represent their things, telling their story and explaining why they decided to part with them.
Those who liked the dress or bag, raise their hand or somehow indicate their interest.
Such meetings are called swap.
In Moscow, they have been conducted by film critic Alice Taiga for several years.
Everything happens in a relaxed atmosphere, which Taiga describes as “chaos and anarchy”, bearing in mind that the clothes are not hung on hangers and no one makes sure that a person takes exactly as many things as he brought with him to the swap.
Everyone brings as much as he is ready to give (the main thing is clean and beautiful), and takes as much as he receives.
So dresses, boots and beads that are not needed by someone get the right to a new life.
As the organizer of SWAP Gala, Taiga told DEEPLA how the idea of conducting such events was born.
The first swap-warehouse was actually invented five years ago by my friend Nail Golman, a very good Event manager and film critic.
In 2014, she invited her girlfriends, about ten people, to her home.
We joyfully drank wine, ate cheese and exchanged things.
It became clear that the statement One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure (“What is garbage for one, for another – a treasure.
” – DEEPLA) is very relevant.
It turned out that people are happy to part with things when they see how the person who receives them lights up.
Moreover, in the home atmosphere, gaining new things was also much more pleasant than in the store – without price tags, the supervision of consultants and guards.
It’s relaxing.
During the first exchanges, I realized how much time, effort and money I had to buy things with which I never had a mental connection: I either did not go or did not like them.
At the same time, it turned out that these things are a great way to convey love, care and your taste to other girls, girlfriends.
I really liked this feeling of some kind of “sisterhood”, family, and I realized that I was missing.
Since then, I began to arrange swaps at home – I just called my girlfriends through Facebook, asked them to bring their girlfriends.
Now my swap group has grown to 2.
5 thousand people.
At one time, I added all-all-all to it, but when there were too many requests, I began to “sort” people simply by the number of common friends.
I do not want the group to lose its backbone and some misunderstandings begin.
I try my best to stop it.
At some point, people ceased to fit into the apartment.
They came with suitcases, 50 pairs of shoes were typed for each swap, other people’s scarves accidentally climbed, because the girls thought they were “stabbing”.
I still had two dogs, in short – a real crazy house.
Nail suggested holding swaps in a public place, and it became a little easier.
Photo: Julia Spiridonova for DEEPLA There is such a sexist stereotype that any girlish community is a serpenter where everyone gossips and washes each other’s bones.
We are perfectly fun without it.
We have become easier to relate to things, a change in style.
Moreover, very many of my friends at the same time with participation in the swap movement came to an absolutely relaxed, body-positive attitude towards themselves, stopped holding the jeans for which they need to lose weight, a dress, “which is waiting for the best of you.
” I did not refuse to buy things at all.
I am a normal adult, I have needs.
But my wardrobe is no longer clogged with something My shopaholism and excessive “consumerism”, I think, appeared from the fact that I grew up in a wild shortage of clothes: one jacket for the winter, two pairs of jeans.
Many of my peers (and I was born in 1986), I think that they also went through it when I had to stomp on an oilcloth in my underpants at minus 20 degrees.
No H&M, of course, was not there.
The current 16-19-year-olds, it seems to me, are completely different about things.
Yes, and the dress code is no longer “proclaimed” who you are.
After all, the Goths used to dress like Goths, metallists – like metalworkers, skinheads – like skinheads.
It was directly important.
Now, in our form, it is difficult to determine who we are.
We identify each other differently.
I do not know anything about what the swap movement in Russia was before us and whether it was at all.
It seems to me that before there was simply no request, there was no sensation of “renewal”, his readiness to part with things.
For readiness to appear, you need a certain “glue”.
The girls told me (and this is very flattered to me) that they came to Western swap-sovereigns, and there people gave real nonsense.
Our swaps bring very little frankly bad things.
And very often they give good, expensive things.
I have never been to foreign swaps, but I am well familiar with foreign second-hand.
In the West, of course, they are different.
Our seconds are still very much associated with poverty, and not at all with the desire to save.
The story crushed us too much collectivism.
Slaring economy Send consciousness: new and recent history of joint consumption I did not study the history of world swaps, because I knew that in Russia everything would still go in its own way.
What rules we will lead, it will be.
We have no task to become the first in the world, the best, to get some kind of “Oscar” in swaps.
The most important thing is just to do.
Yes, swaps are a rather energy -consuming event, but I always stood and will stand that they were free.
For me, this story is not about money at all.
And it upsets me when swaps are trying to monetize.
I try not to publicly sort things out: I am a feminist, and scold other girls for the fact that they do something and get money for their organization, I do not want to.
On the other hand, people have an alternative.
We have chaos and a mess, and he is not comfortable for everyone.
And they have hangers, comfort, calmness and salon conversations.
Someone is ready to pay money for this.
In general, I am entirely for Skupov as much as possible.
I really want to make a multi -dermal swap, but it is too difficult.
The girlish socialization is still fundamentally different from the male.
I periodically, especially when I get tired, ask myself the question: why am I doing this? Probably because I love communities and love to build them – intuitively, without making this marketing.
I like to watch how “grow”, people around are changing.
It is, in fact, about planting, the establishment of a new habit, and this is a rather cool sensation.
A habit is not a trend, it is durable.
You will not be, but people will have a habit.
I am just that left idealist, anarchist and I believe that we must live without a state, without capital, without control.
We ourselves know what we need.
Therefore, when it comes to something where there is no money, hierarchy and control, I am entirely for this option.
I think that Russia is a red power and it will always be it, no matter what they are imposed on us.
We are very collective, absolute communists in all our manifestations.
No matter how we were explained that we are disconnecting people, we are uniting people.
And if something disconnects us, then this is most likely frost.
Slaring economy Sergey Izmalkov: “This is definitely not about the collective farm”
HELPFUL LINKS:
- Green Trend of this article: “All sisters on earrings”: Alice Taiga – about swap parties;
- DEEPLA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deeplaeu/;
- DEEPLA Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DEEEPLAEU/;
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DeeplaEu;
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.it/deeplaeu;
- Email to: info@deepla.eu.
DEEPLA Staff thanks you a lot for reading us. About our project…
In DEEPLA we talk about Green Trends that are changing our lives. The Green Economy project is based on the need to protect national interests while strengthening global technological trends. Why we talk about GreenEconomy? Because human activity causes irreparable damage to the environment. Until recently, people lived according to the principle "after us, even a flood." Fortunately, today the trend is changing. The development of a green economy is a direct proof of this. And in DEEPLA we are committed.