Join us as we create a sustainable fashion future together
Open Closet is a circular trading and resale platform for pre-loved tonlé garments. Each piece is carefully cleaned, repaired, and reimagined if needed. Open Closet is a way to extend the life of those finished garments, prevent them from ending up in a landfill, and avoid the undermining of another economy when they hit the donation bin.
Subscription
How it works: Subscribe and rent 3-5 items per month. Wear and enjoy your styles. If you love something, you can buy it. Send back unwanted items by your billing date. Expect your newly curated box next month! Don’t worry about laundry, it will be handled by the tonlé team with the smallest carbon footprint possible.
Great for: Low investment for fresh styles each month / Exposure to various styles hand-curated to fit your preferences / Feedback cards included so we can keep track of what you've received and what you loved or didn't love / Automatic billing and shipping / Change, cancel, or update your subscription and preferences at any time on your account page
Why Open Closet?
Let's be honest, sometimes we love a piece of clothing, but then it sits in the back of our closet. Maybe it doesn’t fit the way it once did, maybe our lifestyle has changed, or maybe we’ve just moved on from that style. The garment, once in heavy rotation, gets cast to the back of the closet. When a friend comes over, we’ll open our wardrobe to them and encourage them to try on these pieces, with the hopes that they’ll feel as great in the clothing as we once did. What a joy it is when old favorites can find a new home!
Benefits of open closet boxes
Garments are kept in circulation and out of landfills
We can project more accurately what customers are looking for and offer a better quality experience
Provides more stable and predictable income to designer-makers while keeping pricing accessible
Brands like tonlé can plan production more accurately which reduces both pre-and-post-consumer waste
Partner retailers can add a circular component to their shops, reducing retail waste and increasing customer satisfaction
FAQ's:
Simply package the rented items in the reusable mailer by the end of the billing cycle. A prepaid return label will be included with each Open Closet shipment.
Yes, if you love one or more of your rented items and decide to keep them, don’t return those items and you will be charged $25 per item. It’s that simple!
Yes, we would be glad to help you upcycle your previously loved garments! If other tonlé items are returned in place of the rental box contents, it will be considered a trade. Those items will enter the Open Closet rotation and you will not be charged to keep the previously rented garment(s) of your choice.
The retail (new) cost of these items is estimated at $85 on average per item. Each used item from the Open Closet rental program is available to purchase for $25.
If this goes well, we may consider inviting other ethical brands into the mix. For the time being, we will only be recirculating tonlé clothing, but if there are other brands you know and love that you think would be a good fit for this program, let us know.
We’ve been working on curated sample boxes for our customers for years and it’s been a big hit! If we don’t think we can meet your specific needs based on your preference form, we will reach out to discuss options, including the potential for a refund. If you receive an item that doesn’t suit you, you can send it back to us - that’s one benefit of the rental model. We believe this is a fun and low-risk way to try out new and sustainable styles.
You can expect a mix of classic styles, pre-loved products, new & never seen items, one-of-a-kind samples, and reimagined items with your subscription. What a win-win! You will get a variety of exclusive, limited-edition tonlé pieces, many of which are only available to subscribing members. Meanwhile, we at tonlé can further minimize textile waste as we can use every bit of fabric for small-batch production. This will lead to an improved experience for all of our customers while keeping both pre- and post-consumer waste out of landfills and oceans!
Reimagined is our way of stating that an item has been upcycled or mended in some way. We work with a network of artists in the US who are paid upfront to “reimagine” products, including dying, printing, embroidering, and visibly mending tears. We believe that this allows garments that just need a little extra something to be kept in circulation while creating one-of-a-kind pieces and supporting small and local artists.
Subscribing to our monthly curated box and only keeping things you truly love reduces the amount of new clothing in circulation, and that mitigates the fashion industry’s devastating impact on the planet. While some rental companies create more environmental issues, i.e. laundering, packaging, and shipping, we do things differently.
We are committed to minimizing waste in every step of the process:
· Each item is produced according to our zero-waste process
· We ship all orders in reusable, returnable fabric mailers (also produced by our team)
· Damaged garments are given new life through our network of artist partners
· All packages are hand-curated by our own team – not sent through a warehouse with exploitative conditions. We make sure every person who touches our inventory is treated fairly
· We utilize environmentally-friendly laundering practices to extend the life of each garment and minimize the environmental footprint that comes from washing and drying clothing
· Loved clothes last – we promote a culture of care around our clothing, encouraging people to choose quality over quantity, ultimately leading to less production and clothes that stay in circulation longer
Since all tonlé pieces are made from reclaimed textiles, your participation in Open Closet ensures that each garment is effectively recycled twice (or three times or more) in our circular fashion system. You are helping us keep usable textile from going to the landfill by building your wardrobe with minimal environmental impact.
Great! We’re so glad you want to open your closet to the tonlé community. First, fill out this form with details about your pieces, and we’ll send you a mailing label so you can send them to us. Once we receive your clothing, we’ll check the quality, then send a note to you about how we’ll value each piece, and the number of points you’ll get to use towards new, or new-to-you, tonlé pieces. Then, garments are cleaned and minor repairs are done if needed.
tonlé Open Closet is a resale platform, not a consignment program. We consider anyone who sends their pre-worn clothing in to be a tonlé activist and awards them points towards a gift card through the tonlé activist program, which you can learn more about here.
When you trade in a product, you will earn points which can be converted into tonlé gift cards through our rewards program: tonlé activists. Just click the gift icon at the bottom left corner of tonle.com to see how many points you have and redeem them for a code to be applied to your next order.
tonlé Open Closet is a subscription program, not a consignment program. We consider anyone who sends their pre-worn clothing to be a tonlé activist, and award them points towards a tonlé gift card, which you can learn more about here.
Please send us only the tonlé pieces that you are ready to part with. If some of the clothing you send cannot be resold in its current condition, we may reimagine and reconstruct it into a different garment. If it's not possible for us to do that, we’ll responsibly recycle that piece.
Yes, please do! We encourage this practice, it brings us joy to know another chapter is being opened in the life of a treasured tonlé piece.
This subscription-based program has multiple benefits. On our side, we are always trying to find ways to be more efficient with our use of materials. Getting specific style requests from customers for the subscription box helps us to better plan production, allows us to find good homes for reimagined pieces or smaller runs of products, and enables us to reduce waste. Being able to anticipate subscription boxes each month also helps us to guarantee stable, ongoing work for our team.
We believe customers will benefit greatly by having increased accessibility to a rotating variety of ethically-made garments at a more affordable rate, as well as the excitement that comes from fresh styles each month.
In order to produce a low carbon footprint, all garments are washed with eco-friendly detergents and minimal water/dryer usage. Dry-cleaning is never utilized.
We have chosen to call this platform Open Closet because our clothes, and the textiles that they are made from, have had, and will continue to have (we hope!) multiple lives. Our products are already made from pre-consumer waste, so in some ways they are not “new” to begin with. The word secondhand doesn’t really cover the truly circular nature of what we are describing with Open Closet.
There is no evidence that Covid-19 particles can attach to fabric (more on that here), and there have been no confirmed cases of Covid-19 being contracted through packages or other delivered goods. After quarantining a piece for three days, we wash all of the pieces that come in, and steam them out at a high enough temperature to kill any germs. Covid-19 precautions are taken by our employees during all shipping and handling processes. Read more about how we’re protecting our team and our community here.