Onanon is in the business of fighting fast fashion
Local Oxford clothing company is promoting sustainable fashion as an alternative to fast-fashion.
Onanon sources high-quality secondhand clothing and locally made pieces. Once the pieces are sourced, they are sold at pop-up stores around Oxfordshire.
The founder, Amy Williams, aims to curate a ‘value driven’ shopping experience for her customers. She believes the presentation of the clothing is something that adds value to the overall shopping experience.
Amy strives to carry high-quality brands, such as TOAST, Arkett and COS, and only sell clothing with natural materials. The standard of Onanon’s clothing paired with a ‘value driven’ shopping experience challenges the paradigm of fast fashion consumption.
Amy explains when the clothing is presented, washed, steamed and tagged nicely there is value added to the piece. She adds that you could put that same piece, crumpled and not ironed, on Vinted and it would not have the same value to the customer.
When a customer buys a piece that they see holding value, the hope is that they will take good care of that piece and hold on to it for longer.
A regular Onanon customer reflects on her experience shopping at the pop-up stores. She says that she has “became more aware of how much waste comes from clothing, and secondhand felt like a way to align [her] wardrobe with [her] values while still enjoying beautiful, well-made pieces.”
This concept challenges the high-street shopping trend of cheap fashion and short trend cycles, that creates a pattern of consumption and waste.
Current fast fashion consumption in the UK
In the UK, the average person buys an average of 26.7kg of clothing annually - more than any other European country. Around 90,000 tonnes of clothes in the UK are disposed of into landfills annually. Even with the shocking amount of clothing waste, brands are producing 50% more clothing than they were 25 years ago.
Initiatives like Amy’s challenge the ‘race to the bottom’ that is the current trend in the clothing industry.
Onanon’s next pop-up event is scheduled for Friday 28th and Saturday 29th November 2025. More information on the event can be found here or on Instagram at, onanonclothing.