By Sarah Nye
31 March 2024
In recent years, reselling has become a topic of conversation and one of great scepticism despite it being a practice that dates back to the middle ages.
Now why is it suddenly under scrutiny?
I would like to blame the increase of platforms like Depop that make it easy for anyone to participate. It lowers the barrier of entry, which is amazing as it allows anyone to use this sustainable practice as a way to provide an income, but it also makes it easier for people who don’t have ethics at the forefront of their business to infiltrate the community. It has created a stigma around vintage sellers; that all sellers use unethical methods of sourcing and selling. Meanwhile, we should be celebrating how common second hand clothing businesses are becoming considering it helps us reduce our carbon footprint and cut carbon emissions by an average 25%! The more we adopt second hand clothing the more it helps us decrease our carbon footprint.
And the more this industry grows, the more it helps slow down the production of new clothes:
However, the discourse around reselling clothes has created a scapegoat for the fashion industry. The people trying to reintroduce already produced clothes back into the fashion rotation, making money while doing it, are not the enemy. While this topic is essential to ensure that vintage resellers adhere to a specific ethical code, it's also distracting from the issues of fast fashion and overconsumption.
So — let's start addressing the myths with the fact that overconsumption is still possible when purchasing second-hand clothing. In fact, it's quite common.
Myth: All consumption of vintage/second hand is sustainable
Truth: Over consumption is common in second hand buyers
Combating Overconsumption
We often hear overconsumption hand-in-hand with fast fashion brands like Shein or Zara, but it's become an epidemic in the secondhand community. Participating in the sustainable fashion movement means combating fast fashion with slow fashion — buying with intent.
Buying something, even vintage, wearing it once, and then never again, contributes to the fast-paced trends that lead to products being sent to landfills and fast-fashion brands overproducing. Even with the increase in the second hand market, the number of times that an article of clothing is worn has decreased by an estimated 36% in the last 15 years. This highlights the unnecessary clothing purchases that are becoming the norm.
Secondhand is one of the easiest ways to justify overconsumption — it's going to the landfills anyway, right? It's often cheaper, leading to more purchases, needing a closet purge, and the clothes ending up right back to the landfill. With trends changing more rapidly than ever, try to imagine yourself wearing the piece you're deciding on three, five, or even ten years before buying.
Ethical Selling
Reselling vintage clothing means more than ethical sourcing; it means ethical selling. It means encouraging our customers to not over-consume. We love doing pop-up events to have real conversations with people shopping for our clothes. We often get people who are debating purchasing a piece. It might not be the best for business but we ask them, "Do you have anything like it at home?" or "Do you think you'll really wear it a lot?" - wait a day to buy and come back if you can't stop thinking about it if it has sold we call it divine intervention.
The video below is how you should feel after buying a new piece of clothing — our customer had just run a marathon and loved this dress so much she had to leave wearing it!
Myth: Vintage clothing is overpriced
Truth: Well sometimes, but fast fashion has given us unrealistic price expectations
It's A Service
While this can vary from shop to shop, and we often agree prices can be too high, people usually don’t consider the effort that goes into reselling vintage clothing — especially for those who don’t source from thrift stores. Extensive amounts of time go into the sourcing; scouring estate sales, warehouses, and building connections with vintage collectors - the cleaning, repairing, up-cycling, ironing, photographing, editing, measuring, researching, writing descriptions, packing/shipping, I’ll stop there, but we could keep going. They provide a service, the convenience of curated vintage pieces that are ready to wear rather than the individual needing to spend time sourcing. Thrift shops are so much cheaper because they simply don't provide this service.
Ethics & Wages
A big point of reselling is participating in an ethical and sustainable way of selling. Being paid a living wage is a part of that. In the same way that when you purchase from a store, you want to know the employees are being paid a living wage; shouldn’t that apply to your vintage purchases?
That said, the price still needs to reflect the price it was purchased at and its condition, so you’re right that a $100 shirt from the 40s that is barely being held together by a thread is overpriced.
More importantly, anyone can do this if they have the time!
Explore these sources to help you find estate sales near you
Myth: That’s too new to sell as vintage
Truth: Yes and No
We hate to break it to you, but Y2K fashion is considered vintage if it was produced before 2004 (aka anything produced over twenty years ago). It makes us feel old, too!
The Mistrust in Resellers
Unfortunately, we understand the mistrust in vintage sellers is mainly due to the popularity of platforms like Depop. Often, sellers don't take the time to properly determine the year something was made or use vintage to appear in more people's searches, so they don't clarify that the piece isn't vintage. 90% of users on Depop are under the age of 26, with over 1.8 million sellers, and inevitably it lead to uneducated sellers who might not be able to determine the difference between "vintage," "retro," and "antique" and how to date each individual decade. Dating pieces is a skill many study for years to correctly determine the year something was made.
Determining The Decade
I've spent hours researching a single item that stumped me when it came to its origin, comparing trends and brand tags throughout decades. I've seen someone post something on Depop as from the '40s, but in reality, it's really "80s does 40s". And hey, we aren't perfect; sometimes we sell clothes that we can't quite date before that vintage cut, but it's too good to not offer in the shop, so we won't claim it to be vintage!
Check out our other blog post to determine the decade of your piece:
Myth: There isn't enough at thrift shops to go around, and resellers are gentrifiers
Truth: I'm unsure if I can clear this myth but I hope to shed light on it
A common assumption is that all resellers purchase from thrift stores, which is not true. We (and most of the resellers I've spoken to) use other means to source exclusively, mainly because of this ethical dilemma. However, reselling from thrift stores is still a common practice and has led to a heated debate in the vintage community, with people even saying things like, "I hate scalpers and resellers more than some criminals."
Thrift Shops & Landfills
Let's start with the myth that there are not enough clothes in thrift shops to go around. Even when donating clothes, 84% of clothing still ends up in landfills. The argument is people reselling these clothes at least allows them to be put back into the fashion cycle rather than going to waste.
So the truth is: There are PLENTY clothes to wear around.
But does this make it okay for sellers to take clothes from thrift stores, increase their prices, and resell them?
People with lower incomes rely on these stores to afford clothes, and the increase of people buying and selling clothes with a large markup causes thrift stores to increase their prices. This creates the gentrification of these establishments, making them less accessible to those needing them. Sustainability isn't just about the environment; at this rate, it will soon no longer be sustainable for lower-income
individuals to shop there.
What Else Should We Consider?
Other things to consider regarding the increase in pricing at thrift stores are that it's easy to blame this increase on one thing. But we must consider inflation; everything's more expensive nowadays - look at your grocery bill! Thrift stores are seeing an increase in second-hand buying - not just from resellers, and they're adjusting their prices to reflect this. However, resellers have made a significant contribution to this price change.
Resellers need to be held accountable for making reselling more ethical and sustainable but maybe we should hold thrift stores accountable too - stop the price increases so we can save as many clothes from landfills as possible and keep prices accessible for lower-income shoppers.
Want to be the first to read?
Sign up for our newsletter to have our latest blog posts sent right to your email!
Stay up to date with the shop!
Follow to know when we are doing pop-ups and when our latest drops are!
Sources: Cartwright, M. (2019) Trade in medieval europe, World History Encyclopedia. Available at: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1301/trade-in-medieval-europe/ (Accessed: 20 March 2024).
Depop buyers and sellers 2021 (2022) Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1337136/depop-registered-users-buyers-and-sellers/ (Accessed: 21 March 2024).
Igini, M. (2023) 10 concerning fast fashion waste statistics, Earth.Org. Available at: https://earth.org/statistics-about-fast-fashion-waste/ (Accessed: 20 March 2024).
Is second-hand shopping a cover up for overconsumption? (2023) Varsity Online. Available at: https://www.varsity.co.uk/fashion/25358 (Accessed: 20 March 2024).
Murray, K. (2019) ‘Vintage, retro or antique?’, National Appraisal Consultants, LLC, 12 October. Available at: https://nacvalue.com/vintage-retro-or-antique/ (Accessed: 21 March 2024).
Nguyen, T. (2021) The debate over Depop and the gentrification of thrift stores, Vox. Available at: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22396051/thrift-store-hauls-ethics-depop (Accessed: 21 March 2024).
Romano, H.R., Kristine (2020) Is depop gentrifying secondhand shopping? Available at: https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/depop-secondhand-gentrification (Accessed: 20 March 2024).
ThredUp (2023) ThredUp Resale Report. Available at: https://cf-assets-tup.thredup.com/resale_report/2023/thredUP_2023_Resale_Report_FINAL.pdf.
Twenty20, N.G. via (2020) ‘This is what really happens to your used clothing donations’, Reader’s Digest, 26 February. Available at: https://www.rd.com/article/what-happens-used-clothing-donations/ (Accessed: 21 March 2024).