Iconic pre-loved vintage market returns home with 85 stalls

A former TAFE student who made her mark in the fashion world by co-founding a unique upcycling event in Perth at the start of her studies has now come full circle.

Meg Charnaud, who graduated from North Metropolitan TAFE just two years ago, started Second Life Markets with Stella Brackenridge in 2019 in Perth.

After running the event successfully for three years, it finally made its debut last year in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. This month it launched overseas in London.

But it makes its return home this weekend, featuring more than 85 stalls of carefully curated pre-loved vintage and upcycled sellers — with a few very special vendors running on Sunday.

For the past six months, second-year design and merchandising students at North Metropolitan TAFE have been focusing on sustainability and circularity — something Ms Charnaud pushed for when she graduated.

“When I was completing my advanced diploma, I found that upcycling and reworking wasn’t commonly taught or in the curriculum,” the 25-year-old said.

“I constantly felt guilty going to stores and buying new materials off rolls of fabric when there is already so much unwanted fabric.”

She approached her former lecturer with the idea to run an upcycled project for students and returned as an alumni to teach the unit this year.

The idea was to focus on the value and obvious need for designers to consider using materials that already existed.

Students can showcase and sell their designs on Sunday at the markets to gain experience as a vendor and to further understand their customers.

Materials and resources were provided by Good Sammy.

“It’s so exciting to see the unique approach each student designer has while using pre-existing materials,” Ms Charnaud said.

“When working with pieces that have already been constructed once, it almost encourages extra creativity and problem-solving in design which leads to unique ideas.

“The students will all be working with old ties, men’s shirts and denim so their individual collections will have some sort of cohesiveness. It’s almost like a capsule collection of upcycled accessories.”

The event on Sunday will be at the CPP Cultural Centre on 2 Roe Street — right under the Art Gallery of WA in Northbridge.

There will be crowd-favourite food trucks and coffee all day. Tickets are $10 from 11am to 4pm and $5 between 2pm to 4pm.

Ms Charnaud launched her own swimwear brand C The Label, with a slick website that attracted interstate and international sales, in 2016 when she was 18 years old.

The homegrown product focused on small runs of limited colourways. The endeavour lasted five years in production, including multiple overseas production trips, marketing and sampling specifically in women’s and resort wear.