Coronavirus: Clothing charity helps victims thread their lives back together

Australian activewear fashion label P.E Nation is hoping to motivate the rest of the industry to help lift up those in need.

Pip Edwards, left, Andie Halas and Claire Tregoning. Picture: Adam Yip

As one of the success stories of the Australian fashion industry, active­wear label P.E Nation is hoping to motivate the rest of the industry to lift up those in need.

On Thursday, co-founders Pip Edwards and Claire Tregoning ­delivered four pallets containing about 2000 items of clothing to the not-for-profit group Thread Together, which was launched by Andie Halas in 2012 to connect excess stock from the fashion industr­y with those most in need.

“It’s about closing the fashion loop but also about giving back,” says Tregoning. “And in such a dignified way as well.”

Adds Edwards: “Rather than feeling like a charity case, they’re choosing what they want to wear, so it represents them.”
Helping those affected by the bushfires has been a priority for Thread Together this year. At the beginning of the crisis, the group managed to get clothing where it was needed most, setting up clothing hubs in evacuation centres in NSW and Victoria.

“It’s hard to imagine getting up in the morning and you don’t have a pair of underpants, a pair of shoes,” Halas tells The Australian. “People literally lost everything.”

But soon after they had begun to distribute clothing to affected areas with their mobile vans, the country was hit by COVID-19.

“It’s heartbreaking because nothing has changed for the victim­s of the bushfires,” says Halas. “They have been forgotten a bit in all of this.”

Edwards and Tregoning will join the mobile wardrobe vans on a multi-stop trip later this month to help distribute the clothes.

So far, more than 350,000 ­people have been given clothing.