Norma Oyono flipped through the stuffed clothing rack, her eyes drawn to a sparkling silver-and-black dress. This, she thought, would be great to wear to church.

Nearby, she spotted a beige skirt suit. That one, she could eventually wear to an office job.

Norma moved through the room alongside other Montgomery College students, each in search of a treasure: Something to wear to a job interview, something to ward off the cold, something to make them feel beautiful.

“All of my business stuff is from here,” said 20-year-old Sophia Dizon, a SPIFFY regular. “Who doesn’t love free stuff?”

On the third-floor of Montgomery College’s Student Services building, there are Hermes perfume bottles and Diane von Furstenberg wrap dresses and puffy winter coats. There are shoes and bras and ties.

Everything here is free for students at the community college.

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Those who run the SPIFFY — Smart Professional Intangibles Free for You — Closet want students to feel comfortable accepting these free clothes. They’re keenly aware that Montgomery County’s overall wealth can mask the financial struggles faced by many of the young people enrolled at the college.

Montgomery College enrolled nearly 19,000 students last fall, and about 45% of them received financial aid.

Interim Associate Dean of Student Affairs Vincent Briley has a message for students about the closet: “Treat us like the library or the park. This is for you to enjoy, without any negative stigma associated with it.”

Briley has seen the closet work its magic. Ahead of a recent networking event — in which people were offered free headshots for their LinkedIn pages — students turned to SPIFFY to find suitable professional clothes.

An ‘ecosystem of wellness’

The closet is part of a broad array of services the college provides. It sits next to a discreet space where students can get tested for sexually transmitted infections. A food locker outside its doors connects students with free groceries.

“You have the ecosystem of wellness here,” Briley said.

The closet recently underwent a transition, which rankled some on campus. It first opened in fall 2023 as a project run by students, who distributed of thousands of pieces of clothes, furniture and hygiene products from a cozy space in the computer science building.

This year, the Student Affairs department took over SPIFFY and they moved it into the centralized Student Services center. Some students said this move interrupted operations at a critical time and was carried out without enough consultation with the people who had imagined and championed the closet.

“For the initiative to thrive, MC must do more than preserve its name, it must actively support the people who made it work,” an opinion piece from Montgomery College’s student newspaper reads. “When those voices are sidelined, the integrity of the project is at risk.”

The transition allowed the college to formalize the program, spokesman Marcus Rosano said.

“Bringing SPIFFY under Student Affairs ensured the program could be sustained, expanded, and fully integrated into the college’s holistic student support framework,” he said.

Still, former SPIFFY volunteer Francesca Leonard said the school must do more to capture the original spirit of the clothes closet in its new iteration.

‘Empowering’

Since April, SPIFFY has served roughly 330 students and handed out more than 1,800 items worth about $25,000. The new faculty coordinator, Marvina Keller, has developed a rapport with the crew of regular shoppers, greeting them with shouts of “Sister girl!”

Campus leaders hope to bring SPIFFY offshoots to the other Montgomery College locations in Takoma Park and Germantown.

On a recent Tuesday, staff member Niki Delk wandered into SPIFFY for the first time.

“I’ll see if my dad has any stuff to donate,” Delk said, as she looked at the offerings for male students. All the clothes at SPIFFY are new or lightly used donations that volunteers sanitize before they’re hung up on the racks.

Daniela Ngassiki has worked at SPIFFY all semester, welcoming shoppers, stocking inventory and bagging “purchases.”

She’s benefited from the closet, too. During a communications class, her professor was adamant that students wear professional attire when making formal presentations.

Ngassiki knew she could handle the coursework, but she wasn’t sure where she’d get the blazer she needed.

“Getting it from SPIFFY allowed me to just focus on getting ready for the presentation,” Ngassiki said. “It was very empowering.”