Calgary’s Trend Fashions paying it forward one jacket at a time

If you need a coat, take a coat. If you can leave a coat — or scarves, socks, toques, gloves for that matter — leave those for someone who could use them.

It’s all part of a heartwarming idea created by the team at Trend Fashions, a Kensington women’s consignment store that wanted to give back to the community this winter.

“Our owner does a lot of work with local people in the area, and she had the idea of putting a bunch of jackets out, just because it is so cold,” Trend employee Layne Hammel explains.

“We have a lot of people in our community who live outside, so we’ve gotten to know them and want to help them as much as we can,” Trend employee Jenn Naturkach adds.

“We wanted to help out the people of Kensington. This is just a small way for us to do that.”

A tight-knit community

The coat rack and a subsequent donation box for gloves, toques, scarves, and socks have only been up since Sunday and are already garnering a lot of attention, including new donations and a lot of word-of-mouth in the community.

“One of our local friends Jay, he loves it very much. He has been requesting scarves if anyone has any,” Hammel says.

“We’ve been getting a great response. People think it’s a great idea. And hopefully, it’ll inspire other people to maybe even just set up a little bin outside their home or their business as well.”

Kensington BRZ executive director Annie MacInnis applauds TrendFashions for their efforts, saying all of the community businesses have been very philanthropic over the years.

“We are so proud of our Kensington business members. We have many businesses who are involved in a greater community of Calgary, and who do wonderful work,” MacInnis says.

“Trend is just the most recent example of the kind of altruism that we practice here in Kensington.”

Trend Fashions is open seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and the coat rack and donation box will be available for people to donate or take what they need during those hours.