• Lost Property Clothes Library manager Rain Wickham (top), and the store on Beach Street (below).

A POPULAR Fremantle clothes library is almost back up and running after torrential rain in August destroyed much of its stock.

Lost Property manager Rain Wickham told the Herald she hopes to reopen the Beach Street clothes library in the new year.

“We were devastated; here we are trying to save the world through ethical fashion and mother nature just hit us,” Ms Wickham says.

“When I went to check it in the morning, the whole front of the shop was soaked and a lot of our stock and precious vintage was destroyed.”

Ethical

Ms Wickham says library members and friends pitched in, offering to help wash and dry any salvageable stock.

“We all had houses filled with dresses hanging up to dry, after taking four days to clean the shop up,” she says.

St Patrick’s community support centre owns the building and will repair the entire roof so that Ms Wickham can continue her mission to promote sustainable fashion consumption.

Her husband James, marketing consultant and graphic designer for Lost Property, says the enforced break was a good opportunity to re-group and analyse how to make the project better.

“It brought the committee of friends and supporters together to step in and help revive it; no one wanted to see it gone,” Mr Wickham says.

by STACEY HARDING