Most baby clothes can be expensive if bought new. At some swaps, the clothes still have their original price tags. (Image courtesy of Joe Shlabotnik)

Last fall, Alex Gratsas left her local YMCA in Brooklyn with a garbage bag full of outfits for her 17-month-old daughter, Lola. The clothes were in good condition — some with the price tags still attached. The cost: A $20 donation to her YMCA.

Gratsas had attended a clothing swap; to get in she brought a bag of Lola’s old clothes. “The clothes are excellent,” Gratsas said later of the newly acquired threads, from labels such as Land’s End and Guess jeans.

Once more the hallmark of families down on their luck, clothing swaps are gaining new fans and more popularity thanks to the recession and the green movement; social media is fueling the trend.

“The recession makes people more careful with their children’s clothing, especially because they grow out of things so quickly,” said Ruth Mantell, a writer for MarketWatch, the Wall Street Journal’s digital media Web site.

According to Stacie McClintock, a mother of two and contributor to the advice Web site About.com specializing in baby clothes, two of the most popular search terms on Google these days are “cheap baby clothes” and “free baby clothes.”

“The recession has some to do with it,” McClintock said. “Most families don’t have a lot of money to keep spending on expensive baby clothes.”

Swap ads now appear regularly on Craigslist in San Francisco, Seattle, parts of Wyoming and Florida, while eBay has more than 2,500 items of used baby clothing for sale, all for under $50.

“I have definitely had more inquiries about how to hold baby clothing swaps in the past six months, at least once or twice a week as opposed to once a month,” McClintock said.

Megan Trezza, who writes for the trade publication Baby Shop magazine, confirmed swaps are growing in popularity.

“There have been a few indications in the retail side of the market that do suggest moms are looking for products that are used, consigned, for trade or less expensive options.” She points to Web sites like TheMotherList.com, which offers visitors a chance to buy, sell, and trade baby clothes and gear, and BabyPlays.com, where parents can rent toys for their children.

Baby clothes swaps probably have been around for as long as there have been babies, of course. In generations past, though, many were organized by churches or community centers on behalf of less affluent families.  Now, many parents in a variety of income groups are organizing baby clothes swaps, on both a local and national level.

They range from a swap in Honolulu organized by the March of Dimes to a monthly event organized by a group calling itself the Urban Mamas in Portland, Ore., to smaller community swaps in Boston and Orange County.

Asma Manzoor started SwapBabyGoods.com from her home in Kansas City, Mo., in 2005, when her newborn daughter began rapidly growing out of her clothes.

“At that time there weren’t really any venues online for people to swap baby clothes,” Manzoor said. “Every mom I would talk to would complain about having to buy baby clothes.”

Her site has no membership fee, and users create wish lists of what they want to swap, the only cost being shipping fees. Today, the site has 20,000 registered members after steady growth over the past five years, particularly since the recession began.

Since the beginning of last year, Manzoor said the most commonly swapped items on her site are coupons for baby products like formula and toys.

“People are swapping more coupons because, with the recession, every little bit helps,” she said.

In Brooklyn, a group of five mothers who call themselves the Brooklyn Green Team began organizing community swaps last spring.

To their surprise, more than 100 people showed up to their first swap, held at the Park Slope YMCA. So they organized another last fall; attendance was double that of the first. They plan to hold at least two more swaps this year.

“I had all these clothes and nowhere to donate them,” said Johanna Voutounou, a Green Team member and one of the swaps’ organizers. “It just seems right environmentally for people to reuse clothes and toys that kids grow out of after a few months.”

The deals Gratsas got at the Green Team swap are in stark contrast to what parents encounter who prefer designer baby wear.

“The parents who buy designer items, they clearly have a much larger income base than most people in the country,” McClintock said. “There are Burberry jumpers out there and it fills a niche, but that’s not for the average family. It’s a very specific market.” A toddler girl’s Burberry jumper retails for $200, according to Neiman Marcus.

Gratsas is looking forward to another cost-saving opportunity at the Green Team’s next swap in the spring.

“In this time of the economy it’s just hard to buy everything you need,” Gratsas said. “Having kids costs a lot of money and to invest in stuff that you’re only going to use for a couple of months gets expensive. I think being able to swap baby items though, it’s just an incredibly smart idea.”