Ballarat's transgender clothing swap shop triples in size

A new location in Lake Gardens means she now has triple the space to store donations of clothes and accessories.

Ms Johnson said it wasn't something she planned to be doing, but was glad progress in the past year of operations had exceeded her expectations.

Ms Johnson, whose daughter Charlotte is transgender, said they experienced a lot of discrimination and derogatory comments when living in Melbourne and found they would resort to shopping online together.

People in the community floated the idea of a permanent shop and Ms Johnson said she felt like she could take that on.

She started out with the caveat there would be no pop-up stores, but a month later she was running a temporary store at Daylesford's ChillOut festival.

"[From there] it just grew," Ms Johnson said.

The clothing swap, while open to anyone in need, is designed to be a place free of judgement where all people can be comfortable to browse and try clothes on.

"[It's] amazing, we have people from all walks of life," Ms Johnson said.

Aside from gender diverse people there are also single dads with their children or even from Ms Johnson's neighbourhood who come in and look at clothes, but also give donations.

"It's been fantastic and it has been so busy," Ms Johnson said.

She said there were times when she had to put a hold on donations because there were too many.

Ms Johnson said she had high standards and wanted the experience to feel like you were shopping for brand new clothes.

Any items that don't pass her test are sent to big brand stores like H&M and Zara where they are recycled.

Ms Johnson said she hoped to keep expanding the shop into the future.

She said she was looking to apply for funding so she could work at her primary job part-time and spend part-time hours in the store.

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A recent bout of fundraising means they are about to start a binder library.

"We want to make sure that people are binding correctly, because you can really damage yourself," Ms Johnson said.

She said anyone interested in booking an appointment or coming to an open day could reach out on social media.

International Day of Transgender Visibility is March 31.

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