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Date: 11/20/2019
SOUTHWICK – At Southwick Regional High School, two staff members are starting a new year-round clothing store to help students get the formal wear and clothing they need all year long.
When the drive was just an idea, neither of its founders, Mary Downie, a guidance counselor, and Apryl Penland, who works in the office at the school, had any clue that the other was interested in starting a school store for clothes.
“We were both thinking about something but we didn’t know each other was starting something, it just kind of happened,” Downie said.
Penland added, “I asked if I could get a space to start a closet for clothes, but Mary had already asked so we just joined forces.”
Downie explained the closet received its first donation in the form of dresses from the Designer Consigner store in Southwick in April of this year. While the closet began with just dresses, Downie and Penland said they are accepting all kinds of clothes for boys and girls in grades 7-12.
Penland added the amount of clothing they had to begin with has exploded into something entirely unexpected.
“We started with one rack with just 15 dresses on it. Now it’s just morphed into an entire room of shoes, coats, and probably 100 dresses, easy,” she said.
Now that they have a clothing space opened up, they are just waiting to move into their closet store location. Penland added that the Woodshop is going to build a fitting area and bars to hang dresses while Downie said she hoped to have students in the graphics classes make signs for it. “We’d like to get everyone involved because then we get the word out,” Penland said.
Penland explained that the drive started on a needs-basis when it came to the formal wear, but she and Downie said they want to make it into a loaner program.
“You wear it and if you can dry clean it when you’re done, great. If not we’ll figure something out here. We’d like to be able to not deplete the collection at the end of that season and keep that collection going for the next couple years,” Downie said.
Penland said Facebook was one of the key contributors in their push for donations.
“Most of it has been through Facebook and social media, so it’s been crazy,” she said, adding that through Facebook she and Downie have been able to receive donations from outside the community, including in West Springfield and Suffield, CT.
Downie added the support they have received so far has been outstanding. She said, “We’ve had an outpouring of responses. People have been very generous.”
Penland was also thankful for the support in Southwick and said, “The Southwick Community has been huge. They’re just bringing it here to the office, dropping off anything that we’ve needed.”
Downie added that they may also be expanding into food donations as well.
“The Southwick Food Pantry has also reached out to us to maybe give us some food donations for our needier students. So we’ll have stuff available to them if they’re going to go home and know they’re not gonna have a meal,” she said. She added that they are not quite sure about how this program will work yet.
Penland said the clothes can be used for anything, including events outside the school.
“I wouldn’t want someone to not go to their prom or homecoming – or even their cousin’s wedding – because they didn’t have something to wear,” she said.
They explained that participation from students has been sparse so far, but they are still waiting to get the word out to students about the clothing closet and make sure it’s not an embarrassing experience to anyone, because the store is open to everyone.
“We need to get the word out that it’s not going to be an embarrassing moment to do this. It shouldn’t be about whether you can afford it or not, it doesn’t matter at this point. If you need a coat, here you go,” Penland said.
They added that prom is going to be the grand opening for the closet store.
“We figured prom would be our big opening. We want to be all stocked and ready to hopefully get the students wearing the dresses and not spending so much,” Penland said.
Currently Downie and Penland said the items they are looking for the most at this time is boy’s formal wear like tuxedos and suits, and winter wear, including hats, gloves, and winter coats.
Downie added that if anyone is interested in making a donation for the drive, the easiest way is to drop the clothes off at the main office at the Southwick Regional High School.