A sharing shop: the story of TaleMe

Why buy clothes you will only wear for a short time, when you could rent them? This is was the question Anna Balez, a chemical engineer and mother of two, had when she was searching for affordable ways to clothe her two small sons.

She wanted them to wear what she calls “quality clothes”, made from fair labour practices, sustainable materials and without noxious chemical dyes, but she found the cost of organic and Fairtrade clothing to be prohibitive, especially since she knew her sons would only wear them for a short time.

From this struggle, TaleMe was born. Not just any other children’s wear shop in Brussels, TaleMe has come up with a unique way of providing sustainably made clothes to children and mothers-to-be at affordable prices.

The concept is simple. Customers pay for subscriptions costing between €17 and €27 per month. These give them access to three to five articles of children’s or maternity clothing that they pick out each month. They take the articles home, wear them and exchange them at the end of the month for new outfits. There is no punishment for kids for being kids – or grown ups for being grown ups, for that matter; if an item gets stained, there is no fine or penalty. The clothes they return are cleaned, repaired and sent on to further mothers and children to be used. 

The name TaleMe, which Balez admits sounds a little clunky in English, comes from the notion that they are trying to create stories of every piece of clothing, enhancing its value through continual renewal and use.

Balez started the business a year ago, running it out of her home. Today they have a shop and workshop space in the beautiful Ateliers de les Tanneurs in Les Marolles. Clothes can be picked out in the shop or browsed through and ordered online. Thanks to the online service, they also deliver to France, Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain.

A circle game

TaleMe is an example of a circular economy, Balez explains. Unlike the resource-guzzling “buy, use, dispose” model of our current purchasing habits, circular economies source materials in ways that maintain the equilibrium needed for safe and stable ecosystems. This means using sustainable materials and fair labour practices.

But the circle is not only about how the product is made, but about what you do with it when you’re done. TaleMe has an in-house seamstress on staff who repairs all the clothes. When they reach a point where they can no longer be repaired, they send them to an organisation in New Zealand that recycles old fabrics into new clothes – thus the circle continues and the landfill avoided.

“Today, clothes have no value,” says Anna Balez says, “We buy them and when we no longer want them, we throw them in the trash. TaleMe gives an alternative.” For pregnant women, a subscription works out to €8 per item. “That’s H&M prices,” Balez points out, but for quality, responsibly made and well maintained clothes.