Have you ever walked into a store that seemed almost empty?
Maybe the storefront has a title of something along the lines of ‘____ Vintage’. There are a couple of racks dawning old shirts, sweaters, hoodies, and pants, some even with holes and tears. When you flip the tag on one of the shirts you find it costs upwards of a hundred dollars.
These – sometimes called ‘curated vintage’ – stores have had a huge boom in recent years. So what brought about the prevalence of these stores and what impact do they have on fashion as a whole?
The earliest thing you may learn as a person interested in fashion is the dangers of so-called ‘fast-fashion’. Fast fashion is a term used to describe clothing made and sold for short-term wear. Made cheaply, often in sweatshops, the clothes break down fast and will most likely end up only being worn a couple of times and then tossed into a landfill. There has always been an interest in counteracting this kind of fashion, especially with its presence now in the modern day.
The direct counter to fast-fashion was to buy clothing that had been previously worn and donated to thrift stores. ‘Thrifting’ subculture was born from this counter. The subculture grew and grew, aiding existing mainstream fashion trends, like wearing baggy clothes. Thrifting culture seemed to come to a head during the advent of TikTok, where people could post their own videos detailing their purchases.
These ‘haul’ videos – which you still probably see in your feed all the time – are not just fun style videos, but also often treat the clothing bought as prizes to be sought. Brand names and ‘vintage’ (90’s and backwards) clothing are hunted from unsuspecting thrift stores. Sometimes this is done purely because these clothes can be of higher quality, but now it is often done so that these clothes can be resold for a much higher price.
This sensibility has existed in fashion for a long time and has survived through these curated vintage stores. The only difference is that the brands have changed. When once it was an obsession with owning a Supreme hoodie, now it is an obsession with owning a Carhartt jacket. Thus, a cycle is formed of ‘vintage’ sellers, selling each other the same items for higher and higher prices, while thrift stores jack up their prices to compensate for the oversaturated market.
This causes huge problems for people who rely on thrift stores for affordable clothing. Many have already pointed out this issue, but it has done little to quench the consumerist appetite.
But it is not all bad. There is certainly an interesting culture that comes from this. The trend of thrifting has changed the fashion world in ways that I personally think are very positive and provide easier access for people who are interested in fashion and self-expression to get involved. I also think that keeping older cultures and ideas alive through their clothing is important – not to mention how it encourages upcycling. However, the caveat to this is that it seems to still promote the rabid consumerism that brought about the very trend. Instead of hoarding cheaply and cruelly made clothes from a place like Shein, you are hoarding old clothes that you excitedly found or ‘curated’ on Depop, which then sit in your closet for months on end.
The original idea with buying anything really is that it had a purpose. Few people have the will not to buy everything that sparks their fancy (I am no exception), but building a wall of stuff around you is not creating a personality. It is just creating a dent in your wallet and a dependence on physical objects that will ultimately hurt your relationships with the world around you. I do not expect anyone to burn everything they own and live naked on a mountain. What I ask is that you pay attention to what you are buying and how long you will actually use what you are buying.
Love your clothes, use them until there are holes in them and the stitches are falling off, appreciate the world of effort that went into them, and then maybe consider what the greater impact of that effort is.
1 Hardy, A., “Everything You Need to Know About Fast Fashion”. Vogue (2025, Feb 3). https://www.vogue.com/article/what-is-fast-fashion
2 Bell, H., “The Ethics of Thrift Store Reselling” . The Link Newspaper (2023, April 5). https://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/the-ethics-of-thrift-store-reselling
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