CCC volunteers Helene Van Beuren, Wendy McDevitt, event chair Anne Hamilton and Kimberly Palmer take a break from hanging and tagging at the old Gap building on Lancaster Ave. in Wayne.
If history holds, about 100 women will stand outside the old Gap building this Friday morning, $30 in hand, itching for the doors to open at 11. Out-of-staters and locals know to arrive as early as 6 a.m. Some will tote lawn chairs, others coffee. Who needs sleep when there are bargains to be had?
Friday is the first and most pivotal day of the Community Clothes Charity’s now biennial sale. Thirty dollars gives first-day shoppers first dibs.
Women in line outside CCC’s 2022 sale, also held at the Gap building in Wayne. People come from near and far. A shopper once flew in from Paris.
A vaunted Main Line tradition, this is a sale like no other.
During a presale tour, we spied new Manolos for $220 and a timeless St. John jacket for $120. We noted Chloe, Louis Vuitton and Prada in the handbag section; Valentino, Chanel, Oscar and, or course, Lily on the racks.
The sale’s ever-growing “Boutique” section includes gifts, holiday decor and housewares from Wayne’s Little House Shop and Valley Forge Flowers, among others. Sweet little smocked dresses from the Little Children’s Shop were a steal at $24. All new, all priced at 75-percent off or thereabouts.
“If I’ve had 50, I’ve had 200 women tell me they put money aside each week for the CCC sale,” longtime chair Anne Hamilton tells SAVVY.
Jewelry, hats, shoes, wraps and scarves at the 2022 sale.
Everything for sale is donated: castoffs and never-worns from the closets of generous, civic-minded women, excess merch from fashion boutiques, gift shops and home and garden stores.
Much of it is new, tags still dangling. The rest is gently used – very gently. Hawk-eyed volunteers reject items with stains, snags, flaws along with fashions not deemed “current.”
The money that comes in over the three-day sale – more than $7.5 million since the first CCC sale in 1957 – is donated to that year’s carefully chosen and vetted charities – all are local; all help women, children and veterans.
“We’re serving small nonprofits in the community that have a hard time getting funds,” explains longtime CCC chair Anne Hamilton.
The beneficiaries of this year’s CCC Sale:
*Peter’s Place in Wayne, where grieving children will receive book bags.
*Bridge Way School, Philadelphia’s no-tuition school for teens in recovery from substance abuse and co-occurring mental health disorders.
*Smith Memorial Playground & Playhouse in Fairmount Park, a safe haven for Philly families, for maintenance and painting.
*B Inspired Philadelphia, for its Outward-bound style summer camps for the city’s most under-resourced middle schools.
*The Radnor Township War Memorial on S. Wayne Ave (below). CCC’s donation will pay for bronze plaques for 911 and War on Terror victims and veterans and three new flagpoles.
After the sale ends on Sunday, contacts to local churches in underserved areas are invited to come and fill trash bags for their congregations. “Everything finds a home,” Hamilton enthuses.
Community Clothes Charity is a 501(c)3 – donations are tax deductible – and a 100-percent volunteer effort. Hamilton once gathered donations at her Bryn Mawr home. CCC now leases storage space.
For decades, Hamilton’s mother-in-law, the late Wayne philanthropist Dodo Hamilton, ran the sale out of Village Hall at Eagle Village Shops, the upscale Wayne shopping center she built.
More recently, Anne has played maestro, moving the sale to vacant buildings whose owners will give CCC free occupancy for the three weeks it takes to set up and stage the sale.
After Village Hall was demolished for Valley Forge Flowers’ expansion, the sale has hopscotched around: to the old Waterloo Gardens before it was bulldozed for Devon Yard, to the old Anthropologie building before it was gutted for Boyds, and most recently, to the Gap building.
Where will the 2026 sale be held? Well, it won’t be the Gap building. It’s getting a new tenant. Keep an eye on this week’s SAVVY for the latest on the retailer that will soon move in and our rundown of other longtime Wayne vacancies about to be filled. Yay!
2024 Community Clothes Charity Sale, 132 E. Lancaster Ave., Wayne (the old Gap building), will be held Friday, Nov. 1, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. ($30 donation at the door); Saturday, Nov. 2, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. ($10 donation at the door); and Sunday, Nov. 3, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (free entry on “bargain day”). Parking is limited. Carpooling, rideshares and public transit encouraged.
