It’s no secret: shopping second hand is one of the most accessible ways to make your life a little bit more sustainable. If anything, this club often sets out to promote just that. But almost anyone familiar with shopping secondhand is no stranger to the dilemmas that come with it; the financial aspect of this whole thing. Because while we can genuinely try to be as sustainable as possible, we sometimes toe the line of gentrification and overconsumption – and most of the time, we don’t even know it.
There was a time when you could walk into Talize, find a Danier leather jacket, buy it, and leave without spending more than $15 – those days are long gone. Like almost everything on this planet, thrifting and second hand shopping has too become subject to gentrification. Whether on online platforms like Depop or through the curation of your neighbourhood vintage store, resellers have been inclined to upsell most things they can get their hands on. This is perfectly fine – it’s pretty unfair to point fingers at anyone just trying to run a small business. The issue arises, however, when we look at how this feeds into a gentrification cycle. The process has turned into taking items that were once affordable to the economically-marginalized public and upselling them with an unattainable price tag. There is an outflow of clothing being indirectly taken from lower income individuals and redistributed among the wealthier.
What could possibly make this worse? Enter, the glamorization of overconsumption. Now I could write an essay on this subject, but I’ll be concise – it sucks. At the root of the issue is the vast majority of YouTubers and TikTok users posting videos 3 or 4 times a week of themselves thrifting and going shopping. By posting and sharing such videos, there’s an inadvertent promotion of overconsumption – going shopping 5 times a week to buy more and more and more. People become more inclined to follow suit, to go buy things they may not need. The sustainability world is partially responsible for this, too: promoting thrifting over other sustainable practices (such as mending clothes, making clothes, or using hand-me-downs) leads consumers to believe they’re still doing good by thrifting 5 times a week.
There’s really no way we could ever get back to the days of finding a $7 Danier jacket or vintage Levi’s for $10. But there are some ways we can curb overconsumption and gentrification while still indulging in shopping. For starters, we can donate to thrift stores more. I know some of us will clean out our closets and find some hidden gems we could totally make a profit off of on Depop, and most of the time it's okay to do that. But when you can, try to put some clothes aside to donate – this could help increase the availability of clothing in thrift stores so that the less fortunate have more to pick from.
We can also recognize that there are other ways to have clothes and be sustainable without necessarily shopping; mending clothes, knitting a hat, or borrowing your mom’s scarf can all add to your closet. Sustainability advocates in particular need to promote that a bit more, and QFSF definitely aligns itself with trying to promote recycling clothing.
Lastly, break out of that “haul” mentality. I know it’s fun to go home and film a video for your friends showing them all the stuff you bought, but how often do you wear all 30 of those things? Thrifting is fun, but it’s important to lean away from buying stuff for the sake of buying, and shopping more for things you need – this will prevent those 10 items from that thrift haul from sitting in the corner of your room, untouched for 8 months.
All things considered, there’s many more avenues to the financial implications of secondhand shopping – I’ve barely touched any bases here. But the important takeaway is that there’s ways to be better – say, optimize your sustainability – even when undertaking sustainable practices like thrifting. With every sustainable tip employed, we can maybe inch a bit closer to a future of $7 Danier jackets.
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