By ROBIN STANTON GERROW
BG Independent News
At the intersection of fashion and sustainability, you’ll find Meara Holden and the BG Thrift Fest.
Holden started the event as a fashion merchandising student at Bowling Green State University, when she realized her closets were too full.
“I got really into thrifting during COVID back in about 2020 and 2021,” she said. “When I got to college, I realized that I had way too much in my closet, but I didn’t want to just discard it all. I wanted to find those pieces new homes, the ones that I didn’t wear or were not my style anymore. So, I decided to start an online secondhand shop with a couple of my roommates in college.”
Selling clothing online worked for a while but had its limitations.
“We ran it from our Instagram, and we would meet up with other BGSU students on campus to drop off orders and pick up payments, that kind of thing,” she said. “We met a lot of people by doing that, but it was very slow-paced and took up a lot of our time. So I had the idea, why don’t we just have a pop-up event? That way we can see multiple people and they can look at the garments in person.”
In its third year, Saturday’s event drew 45 vendors with used and vintage clothing, shoes and jewelry.
“The first year we had about 15 vendors, the second year 30 and now we’re up to about 45,” Holden said. “Some vendors are people that resell for a living, so they’ll go hunting for curated vintage pieces and secondhand clothing and accessories and resell them, going from event to event and doing pop-up shows. The rest of them are local community members that might have some extra clothes or cleaned out closets.”
For Holden, and many of the shoppers, reducing waste is an important factor.
“All of us are very passionate people,” she said. “We want to keep clothing out of the landfill and we love shopping secondhand. It’s been really wonderful to see it grow and really foster a community of like-minded people that are enthusiastic about fashion and thrifting.”
Many of the vendors strictly go to pop-up shows like the BG Thrift Fest, while others have brick and mortar stores as a base, like Voshon Cousin from A Martian’s Closet.
“I have a store in Fostoria, but we travel everywhere,” he said. “We were in Atlanta and Tennessee last year—we are somewhere different every weekend.”
A lot of the attendees and vendors started thrift-shopping with their mothers at garage sales, or in the case of Kellan Fullmer of Purrfectly Vintage, looking for something very specific that turned into a business.
“I’m a big Star Wars fan, so looking for old Star Wars tees got me hooked,” he said. “I was always hoping to always find one, but then I just started finding more and more stuff that I wanted to buy and kind of went from there.”
Shoppers Emerson Sheets and Jackson Triggs both find the price point of thrifting appealing.
“I love to go to like Plato’s Closet and Goodwill and get stuff like from those places,” Sheets said. “I am a biology major, so I know that over consumption is a big issue. I like to buy things secondhand and just get them for a lower price because I’m a broke college student.”
“It’s a more fun, more interesting way to get clothes and it’s a bit cheaper,” Triggs said.
Holden hopes to see the Thrift Fest grow again next year and is excited that other people are ready to jump in and help with the event.
“Because of word-of-mouth and how big it keeps getting every year, I just think it’s going to continue expanding,” she said. “We’re going to try to keep it in Bowling Green. I’ve got a bunch of like-minded people that want to coordinate together because right now I’m a one-woman show and I do it all on my own, but by collaborating and sharing the responsibilities amongst each other, we could really make it even bigger and better.”
