Hello lovely readers! Welcome back to this segment on Thrifting!
To recap, thrifting is largely attractive to youth due to the cheap prices of clothes which allows for more pieces to be bought. With the rise of the eco-friendly movement, more people are incentivised to purchase their clothes from thrift stores instead of succumbing to consumerism by purchasing brand new pieces. Thrifting lowers the demand for fast fashion. That’s a good thing… right?
The problem with thrifting suddenly becoming trendy is now the concept of “curation”. People are reselling their thrifted finds at a much higher price for reasons such as: its brand, its trendiness, or its rarity. These resellers can be found on platforms like Depop, Etsy and Instagram.
“Thrift Goals”, a curated thrift store on Depop (Source)
The main reason for the higher price is the cost of “curation” that is the time taken to comb through many stores to find good trendy pieces, and the good taste of the reseller themselves. Reselling these pieces takes away from the “philosophy” of thrifting itself, that is for clothes to be affordable, especially for those from lower income households. Reselling thrifted pieces is essentially gentrifying thrift shopping. In the US, it was found that lower to middle income households are typically found participating in thrift shopping or yard sales. Gentrified thrift stores price out the lower income in their neighbourhoods, changing the demographics of the city. The greater demand for thrifted clothing gives owners an incentive to raise prices and cater to the more affluent.
Perhaps some stores do decide to maintain their prices. While reselling is not exactly reducing the volume of clothes the underprivileged can choose from, taking away trending pieces is depriving them of “nice” clothes from one of their main shopping sources. Being considerate of others’ feelings is arguably not that important in the grand scheme of things (global warming), but I believe that this is an ethical concern. On the other hand, for resellers to spend hours searching for these “special” pieces as well as photograph, sell, and ship these items, it makes sense that they would want to be rightly compensated. Are we placing too much blame on the consumer and not enough on corporations?
Shopping is much more complex than it seems, isn’t it? I’ll leave you with this video as some food for thought 🙂
♡, Qystina
Sources:
Abdellatif, M. H., Ahmed, R. F., Barry, M. C., Curran, R. N., Yazdani, R. M., Kaushal, A., Infante, S. G., & Saha, D. (Eds.). (2020). Across the Spectrum of Socioeconomics. The Finxerunt Movement Journal, 1(1).
Vanicore, L. (2019). Vintage Fashion: An Example of Circular Economy as a sustainable alternative to the Fast Fashion. LUISS Department of Economics and Finance.
Vehmas, K., Raudaskoski, A., Heikkilä, P., Harlin, A., & Mensonen, A. (2018). Consumer attitudes and communication in circular fashion. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal.