KK Swaps, founded by Kirsi Harris and Kate Rosegard, is a circular fashion marketplace. It is a place for those of all ages to sell and buy clothes, which is helping to contribute to sustainable shopping and the decline of “fast fashion.” What started as an idea to better the community, KK Swaps has amassed into a local business supporting sustainable shopping and having a large number of customers across Marin. 

During the depth of the COVID-19 pandemic, Harris and Rosegard began to notice that the topic of fast fashion had become more prevalent as home-dwellers were forced to purchase their clothes from unsustainable, online stores such as Amazon and Shein. According to GreenPeace, a non-profit organization, fast fashion is a way for large name companies to mass produce clothes at a low cost in order to stay in line with the current trends. 

“As fast fashion was becoming a bigger problem, Kirsi and I felt we could definitely do something about it,” Rosegard said. 

Every year, $500 billion is lost as a result of clothing being thrown away instead of recycled properly, and 20 percent of global wastewater comes from textile dyeing, according to Earth.org. KK Swaps is working directly to combat the negative effects of fast fashion by creating a place where Marin County residents can shop sustainably. 

“We’ve learned so much about sustainable shopping, so much about fast fashion and just keeping that knowledge throughout our future is gonna be really important,” Rosegard said. 

“Also shopping sustainably can be hard sometimes and KK Swaps is a fun way to do it,” Harris added.

The two realized how often they would borrow clothes from their friends and trade clothes with one another. 

“We would always go over to a friend’s house and they would have a pile in the corner of the room of clothes they didn’t want anymore and they would say, ‘you can just go through it, I need to get rid of these clothes anyways,’ so we took up on that idea of made it into a business,” Rosegard said. 

Harris and Rosegard also created KK Swaps with the idea of community in mind. “We wanted to create a safe place where everyone can come together and shop and have fun,” Harris said. 

KK Swaps is not just geared toward girls, but people of all genders and styles. “You’re able to find clothing for a cheap price while supporting a local business along with being conscious of the environment,” local customer Owen Dasovich said. 

Over the past couple of years, KK Swaps has transformed from a small-scale clothing exchange to a county-wide phenomenon. “When we first started off, we had maybe 20 sellers, because no one thought they would actually make money off it, now we have over 80 sellers,” Harris said. “It has been really amazing to see the growth of KK Swaps and see how it has expanded to girls all throughout Marin.” 

As of now, KK Swaps has held nine sales and one fashion show at the Mill Valley Lumber Yard sponsored by Athleta. They are planning to hold another show this spring and several more sales before then. 

While college is in the plans for both Harris and Rosegard, they are hopeful that KK Swaps will remain a part of their lives in the future. 

“A goal of ours is to revisit KK swaps in the future and be able to travel around the world and teach other girls how to start their own business and help them in their own community,” Harris said.