They changed their life.
Garment will change their wardrobe.
“Garment absolutely nailed her style and she loved every single piece! The work you are doing is incredible and promotes real and true healing.”
- Megan Lammers, LCSW
About
It’s common for people to give the size of their clothing too much power. For more than 30 million people in the U.S. struggling with an eating disorder, that power can have a crippling hold over their ability to ever recover. Less than one in 10 people with an eating disorder will be lucky enough to receive treatment.
“After all the mental, physical, and emotional struggles, plus the financial burden of medical bills, the cost alone of rebuilding a wardrobe that fit my new body was out of the question. Going shopping, trying on multiple sizes, and being surrounded by mirrors was a vulnerable and ultimately intolerable experience for myself, and far too many others. I was stuck with a closet full of clothes that didn’t fit my body or soul.”
Erin, Garment Founder
In February of 2017, The Garment Project launched with the idea of creating a service designed to provide new, never-worn clothing to people in different stages of recovery from an eating disorder. To help each individual maintain their focused recovery and develop positive relationships with clothing regardless of a brand’s size, Garment uses its unique attention to detail and removes all of the tags and sizing information from each piece of clothing donated by its generous retail partners. All of the clothing is checked for quality and logged into the size-less inventory.
Garment continues to develop relationships with treatment facilities and professionals across North America and collaborate with recovery friends and heroes to create a simple method of matching candidates with our size-less inventory. Candidates are nominated by a therapist or ED treatment professional. The candidate’s identity and any HIPAA protected information is never shared with Garment. All of the size-less clothing is individually selected and styled by Garment using only general information provided by the advocating therapist or treatment professional and a short style questionnaire submitted by the candidate. No photos or measurements necessary.
Garment has raised over $30,000 towards its project and maintains a size-less inventory of more than 5,000 pieces of clothing, shoes, and accessories. In 2019, the first 10 candidates were nominated and successfully sent boxes of size-less clothing. Garment’s goal is to serve 12 candidates in the year 2021.
How it works
Retail Partners Donate New Clothing
Garment organizes donations of new, never worn clothing from generous retailers in the United States and the UK.
Candidate Nomination and Individual Styling
A therapist nominates a candidate to Garment. Our team collaborates with treatment professionals to create a fit and style profile for each individual that Garment serves.
Tags and Sizes are Removed
To encourage and support our candidate’s focus on recovery, we remove all tags and sizing information.
Folded, Packed and Delivered
Uniquely styled boxes of clothes and accessories are sent to our candidate’s therapist. Using a custom style guide and try-on suggestions from Garment, our candidate can get to know their new clothing.
Treatment professionals interested in more information can e-mail: info@thegarmentproject.org
Testimonials & Feedback
“I think I heard her say “This is so me” at least a dozen times while opening the boxes, which I pointed out was really profound given that she’d come into treatment telling me she didn’t know who she was.”
Stacie Fanelli, MSW, CSWA
“This will make a huge improvement to the way she sees herself, and she reflected how powerful and healing this clothing try on experience has been for her.”
Nicole Podell, LSCW
“I loved every single second of our collaboration! So easy and fun to work with and the outcome was beyond our wildest expectations.”
Jacqueline McGivern, Primary Therapist at EDCP
“[Garment] are my heroes. This is an amazing thing.”
Carolyn Costin, ED Therapist, Author & International Speaker
“Garment is a recovery dream come true. Erin and Jordan, thank you for helping others to embrace their recovery.”
Anna Kowalski, Eating Disorder Expert and Advocate
Get Involved
Volunteer
Our volunteer days with retailers allow us to meet so many generous, kind, and caring people in our community. At each event, employees spend their afternoon helping Garment organize, de-tag, log, and inventory each piece of donated clothing and accessories.
Donate
Every contribution is appreciated, no matter what size! Help us give strong people an important resource for continued success in their recovery.
Be Social
Connect with us on social media to share your story, see behind the scenes, and share our accounts with your followers to get them involved too.
Fundraising
Start a fundraiser on Facebook to support Garment’s efforts. It’s quick and very easy to set up, and 100% of proceeds go to eating disorder education and size-less styling projects.
Be Educated
With resources from the National Eating Disorder Association you can educate yourself and others about what exactly eating disorders are, warning signs and symptoms, prevention and more.
Contact Us
Say hello
Send e-mail to:
info@thegarmentproject.org
Send old-school mail to:
PO Box 7100
Pittsburgh, PA 15212
