Female friendships (and sustainable fashion) are at the heart of Lauren Bravo's debut novel

As the author of What Would The Spice Girls Do, How To Break Up With Fast Fashion, and reams of lifestyle magazine articles, Preloved by Lauren Bravo is the writer’s debut novel and TBH, we’re thrilled she’s diversified into fiction.

How To Break Up With Fast Fashion came out in 2020 as an exposé of everything wrong with the high street...  It is a must-read if you want to learn about sustainability and fashion industry reform. And while that’s high up our priority list, sometimes we just want to curl up with a chai latte of a novel – an optimistic and engaging (but not too edgy) story that comforts and cossets us.

Enter Preloved… Telling the tale of Gwen, a thirty-something navigating redundancy, painful family relationships, bereavement and friendship that seems to be trickling away… Preloved centres around the charity shop where Gwen volunteers. Gwen has the kind of I know her / I am her reliability, and even though her adventures aren’t glossed over with main character energy (she’s rooting around the donations bags in a North London charity shop), you root for her on every turn of the page. We’re waiting for Preloved to be optioned by Reese Witherspoon or at least adapted into a binge-worthy Netflix series…

While Gwen’s romantic antics and relationships at every level are spliced through with narratives of charity shop life, the golden thread of the book is female friendship.

GLAMOUR caught up with Lauren over Zoom from her home while her two-month-old baby was sleeping to discuss shopping, sustainability and how to navigate grown-up friendships. Lauren explained, “I had been sold this idea (through TV shows like Friends and Girls) that female friendship is only valid if it's incredibly intense, incredibly close… if you are having baths together, seeing each other naked on a daily basis, holding each other's skirt when you pee onto a pregnancy test stick… If you're really lucky, you do have that in your early 20s, but once you get into your 30s, people's lives start changing. 

"You have to prioritise work, family commitments, children, potentially partners, potentially ageing parents (over) friendships, and it becomes much harder. There can be a real disconnect between the friendships we imagined we would have and the friendships that we actually have.” As we watch Gwen clamber over familial relationships, potential romances and sex as well as as best friend who seems impossibly far away, Lauren believes “Preloved is definitely a love story about friendships more than anything else.” 

Scattered through Gwen’s story are mini-chapters telling the tales of the treasures that populate the shop. “Society has taught us to be quite materialistic,” muses Lauren. “We value things, but there's a real romance to objects as well. It's not always the flashy or expensive thing that you become sentimentally attached to… often it will be a really innocuous item that sparks some kind of memory. In an increasingly isolated world, where often we're more connected through our devices than through face-to-face contact, objects can actually hold a special place.” 

Indeed, Gwen’s relationships are mainly conducted digitally. And in comparison to homes that have been Marie Kondo’d within an inch of their lives, Lauren believes there's nothing wrong with surrounding yourself with stuff. “I love clutter!” she joyfully admits. But when it is time for a clearout… the charity shop is often our first port of call. 

As a regular volunteer herself, Lauren shares the secrets of the charity shop… Preloved describes the ‘Oh my God’ moments of volunteering when Gwen discovers a dildo in a bag of donations. So, what was Lauren’s most gruesome discovery? “I haven't actually had a dildo, sadly, but I know they are frequently donated… We've definitely had bondage gear, and we found something with human hair in, too… Dubious stains are a weekly occurrence.” 

With charity shops, there’s a moral code that if you wouldn’t buy it, you shouldn’t donate it. But sometimes charity shops seem closer to bins than boutiques. It seems people lose their sense of shame when donating, but Lauren disagrees, “I think people are actually trying to retain their moral compass. Donating is potentially a way of appeasing their guilt at having bought a life full of things that are ultimately going to end up in the bin. They think, ‘If I give it to a charity shop, hopefully, they'll be able to do something with it and make some money from it.’ I think it's a way of appeasing their own conscience.”

Lauren compares society’s misguided optimism as to the magic charity shops can create to wish cycling, the equally misguided way in which we put things in the recycling that probably can’t be recycled. We’re hopeful that maybe technology has advanced, and maybe they can turn that baby wipe/crisp packet/blister pack into something new. 

“We know deep down that it can’t [be recycled], and we’re probably causing more problems for somebody down the line, but we still think, ‘Oh, if I put it in recycling, maybe there's a chance that it will get turned into something new.’ I think it's similar thinking when people donate crap to charity shops because they believe maybe someone can cut it up and make something from it… and maybe they can.”