Jacket Slashers

Cynthia Magnus says she often finds clothes — destroyed and discarded — behind the H & M store on 34th Street in Manhattan, reports Jim Dwyer in the New York Times (1/6/10). She recently came across "about 20 bags filled with H & M clothing that had been cut up." Just to be sure the clothes couldn’t be worn, "someone had slashed most of them with box cutters or razors." Cynthia went through it and was amazed by what she found.

"Gloves with the fingers cut off … Warm socks. Cute patent leather Mary Jane school shoes, maybe for fourth-graders, with the instep cut up with a scissor. Men’s jackets, slashed across the body and the arms. The puffy white fiber fill was coming out in white cotton." She also found bags filled with "sturdy plastic hangers." She took some of the bags, hoping to find someone who could repair the clothes, and kept the hangers for herself.

"A girl can never have enough hangers," says Cynthia. She’s also written a letter to H & M’s head of corporate responsibility, Ingrid Schullstorm, volunteering "to help H & M connect with a charity that could put the unsold items to better use than simply tossing them in the trash." As it happens, there’s a "big collection point for New York Cares, which conducts an annual coat drive" just around the corner from the H & M store. Within a couple of days, H & M agreed to donate discarded clothes to charity.