The Ethics of Thrift Culture and Death of Affordable Fashion
Today, if you ask a girl where she got her pants, there's about a 50% chance she’ll tell you that she thrifted them. This seems an absolute cultural 180, as thrift shopping has historically been stigmatized as a sign of economic hardship–even seen as unhygienic or dirty–but is now probably the most on-trend way to add to your closet.
While it’s true that the 2018 era of checkered Vans and Thrasher seriously lacked the emphasis on individuality that we now can’t seem to escape, the devotion to super niche brands and vintage everything has created a new wave of hyper-thrifters that are thriving in the realms of both aesthetics and sustainability. Though shopping second-hand is quite an effective remedy for the garment waste problem in the U.S., if you’ve gone thrifting recently you’d notice that the rise in thrift shopping has caused major price surges. And obviously, this will have huge implications for those who cannot afford to shop firsthand.
This sudden hyper fixation on thrifting seems to have proliferated throughout the fashion world out of nowhere. I can’t, off the top of my head, pinpoint when exactly fashionheads decided that thrifting was in, but it has a lot to do with the trend cycle moving at an increasingly fast pace and the emergence of categorized aesthetics. As TikTok keeps churning out new aesthetics and every “____core” under the sun. we feel pressure to consume, to whittle away at our style preferences until they fit a categorized and already-established aesthetic (usually pretty trendy ones). Who knows when this phenomenon kicked off, but we’ve seen it in full force as cropped sweater vests and patchwork pants fell from the heights of closet staples to items of social ridicule faster than we could say “Shein.” By 2021, microtrends had essentially become very close analogs of one another, to the point that their overarching pattern was easy to recognize: the pinks and greens, satins and laces, low-waisted pants and everything butterfly all had the essence of Y2k style, just manifested through the cheap quality and ridiculously low prices of fast fashion. And as rising social and environmental justice sentiments brought attention to fast fashion’s exacerbation of the climate crisis and exploitative labor practices, people began to look to thrift stores for the answer. Thrift stores are at the cross-section of sustainable, affordable, and unique. They have better vintage Y2k finds than any trendy website could ever dream up while also avoiding the prices of sustainable sites like Reformation and the environmental costs of shopping fast fashion. What could be better?
It is truly hard to find many blatant cons of shopping at the thrift. The fashion industry is responsible for around 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions and 20% of global wastewater. When you thrift, you’re reducing the amount of clothing in circulation, which is key to seeing any sort of reduction in the impact that the industry has on the environment. And although only around 10% of donated clothing actually makes it into thrift stores (the other 90 winds up in a landfill), thrifting is the most effective way to reduce the 92 million tons of clothing waste that is produced every year.
Though very outwardly fast fashion brands like Shein have faced a significant decline in popularity in recent years, at times we fail to recognize that sites like Edikted and stores like Zara are better by (maybe) a fractional margin. Fast fashion and our hyper-consumerist tendencies are still alive and well; the atmospheric carbon content is rising while the number of times a garment is worn is falling. And to top it all off, America is notorious for selling waste overseas to developing countries to incinerate, which has an enormous impact on human health in the Global South. Any prevention of these symptoms makes thrifting more than desirable, and as the climate crisis begins to creep up on us, it becomes increasingly important to think and act sustainably in everything we do. But it is also important to ask ourselvesif the high prices due to thrifting’s popularity is us stealing from the poor….
I don’t mean literally stealing from the poor, but it has become quite evident that thrift stores are facing surge pricing. As the law of demand says: as demand increases, so do prices, but as stores marketed to the low-income, rising thrift prices seem counterintuitive. The pervasive neoliberalist idea that the market mechanism should be left untouched only exacerbates the wealth gap as low-income families are becoming increasingly unable to clothe their children. The 2020 Goodwill flat rates of $4.00 for shirts and $6.00 for jeans and shoes have increased to up to $12.00 for shirts, $21.00 for jeans, and $9.00 for shoes. (And this doesn’t include surge prices for big brand names). This may not seem very consequential to the average, relatively affluent thrift girly, but for those who rely on second-hand shopping to meet their needs, these price discrepancies might make the difference between a professional-looking blazer for a job interview, or not. This phenomenon cannot just be attested to the thrift frequenters looking for a cute mini skirt, but also the online resellers who turn their local Salvation Army inside out to find every piece of vintage and sell it for six times the price. This has also left thrift stores essentially gutted; as of late 2023, I stopped going to the thrift because every time I went, there genuinely was not one piece I had the urge to buy. So not only has the cultural shift in thrifting attitudes directly caused rising prices, but has also left the stores with little options.
So, to thrift or not to thrift? I genuinely have no idea. It’s near impossible to choose between environmental degradation or making the poor poorer. There are pros and cons so great that even after writing this article I have no clear inclination towards one or the other. For now, though, I feel as though all I can do is slow my consumption–I have more clothes than God knows what to do with, and the requisite for a cool outfit is creativity, not material. American consumerist culture truly has us all by the throats, so shop with caution: identify micro and transient trends, evaluate the necessity of the purchase, and start with staples and basics. Secondhand curated stores are also a great option! There’s about a billion on Telegraph–places like Second Street, Anastasia’s, and flea markets may be slightly more expensive, but you get the benefit of not contributing to surge prices while also keeping new clothing out of circulation. Regardless, it's crucial to recognize that the dilemma we face is everything but a personal one; it’s rooted in the dynamics of a deregulated market and a society where profit is always valued higher than social welfare. But I don't know, I guess that's what my Environmental Econ degree is for.
