“Your top is so cute, where is it from?”
“It’s thrifted, but I’m selling it on Depop!”
I ask for the username, excitedly go to the account, and then … I find out the top is listed for a whopping $20. And that’s if we ignore the extra fees plus shipping. The original shirt ranged from $3 to $7, only to end up in the resale cycle.
But why is this so common to see nowadays? Thrifting has been around for a long time, with its popularity always reflecting society’s current values and trends. Regardless of this, how we thrift today looks so different from how people thrifted years ago, and it’s worth looking at how we got here.
A look back
To start, let’s focus on the word itself. The word “thrift” originates from 1300s Middle English, which meant “condition of one who thrives.” A thrift could be seen as someone who thrived by being smart with their resources, which is not the first thought modern society has when thrifting is mentioned in a conversation today. Despite trading being prevalent since the 1300s, thrift stores as an actual concept didn’t show up until the mid-to-late 1800s, and still, clothing itself wasn’t even the main aspect.
The Salvation Army, for example, founded in East London in 1865, and started by offering shelter and healthcare until 1897, when second-hand clothes came in to create a family thrift. Within a year, Goodwill launched in Boston, following the same family thrift model.
Both were charities before they were clothing stores, and that “charity” reputation stuck around for a long time, giving thrift shops a negative connotation. If you thrifted in the early 1900s, you faced classism and judgment. These sentiments hung on until the Great Depression and until both World Wars hit, when buying used clothes stopped being a choice for anyone.
After World War II, the economy picked up, and the rise of fast fashion and mass production started. Since new clothing was now affordable, second-hand shops lost their popularity and were stigmatized once again.
But then there was a culture shift. Individuality and rebelling against social norms were “in,” otherwise known as the 1960s-70s hippie movement.
Second-hand clothes started being something to hunt for, and the same racks people used to associate with being “poor” were now cool. By the 2000s, thrifting had made its way into the mainstream: TV, movies, and eventually eBay, which set the stage for the resale apps we use nowadays.
The New Thrift
The same actions can mean very different things as society changes and develops. In the ‘60s, buying someone else’s old clothes was a sign of being laid-back and progressive. Today, it’s harder to pin it down to a single reason. Somewhere between then and now, thrifting stopped being about rebellion or survival and became something else entirely.
It’s never been more popular, and for genuinely good reasons. Over 40% of Gen Z shops second-hand now. In 2024, almost 90% of people had either bought from or donated to a thrift store, which was a 17% jump from just two years earlier. A big part of that comes down to sustainability and climate becoming a priority. It’s astonishing to see people become more aware than ever of how wasteful and toxic fast fashion is to our environment.
Socially, one no longer has to feel embarrassed or less of a person for wearing used clothes because there’s a high chance someone else in the room is wearing a secondhand item from an app like Poshmark.
However, due to its popularity, there are people who try to take advantage of that same accessibility. Resellers have started treating thrift stores less like a place to shop and more like a supply chain. They get to the “trendiest” pieces first, buy them for a few dollars, and list them online for way more. And the prices online aren’t the only issue here.
Since demand has spiked, in-store prices at actual thrift shops have also increased, even though the majority of what they sell was donated for free. The people this actually hurts aren’t the ones scrolling online for a cute top, but the low-income shoppers thrift stores were originally built for.
Right now, thrifting exists in this weird in-between space where it’s doing good for sustainability and normalizing secondhand shopping, but also slowly pricing out the exact people it was created to help in the first place.
Maybe next time I compliment someone’s top, I just won’t ask where it’s from… some mysteries are better left alone.
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