Author’s Disclaimer: As with any behavior, there is always a way to take something too far. This article is written to provide an alternative take on the notion that thrifting for resale is always an act of greed, from the perspective of a sustainable reseller.
I started Depop reselling in high school. Admittedly, at the time, I was shopping to cope. I was obsessed with my own personal style (and getting out of the house), so I spent every weekend perusing thrifts for hours, looking for gold. I’d often find cute pieces that didn’t fit my body, but that I saw potential in. Reselling was a way to take the pressure off of the disappointment of finding a beautiful item in a size XS as a plus-size woman, and sharing that joy for a small upcharge with someone else. I’d buy the items, swamped in pounds, and pounds, and pounds, of other clothes, and list them for under $15. Milking the waves of Bella Swan core, fairycore, and coconut girls, I made 100 sales in the summer of 2022.
It makes me feel proud to imagine the new life that an item has once it makes its way to the customer, rather than being lost to a hoard of thrown-out clothing. My bio boasts only two words: “SUSTAINABLE + AFFORDABLE.” I do this for fun and to share my love of hard-to-find, unique clothing — not to commit highway robbery.
Back when I was living in Houston, the thrift stores were massive, well-stocked, and easy to come by. In other words, there is a ton of viable clothing accessible to the populations relying on thrift stores for their necessary goods. The way I see it — these folks are not hurting for an authentic y2k baby tee, or impractically cute bedazzled jeans. And if they are, as any real thrifter knows, you learn the stocking patterns of your favorite thrifts and come prepared to hunt for gems on stocking day!
I have to ask myself…who are the people outspokenly opposed to thrift resale, or even those who just have a bad taste in their mouth about it? Is it hard working people just trying to meet their needs at the thrift? Or is it the young people of social media, finding a proximal villain on which to blame the degradation of the clothing quality on their fun iced coffee and thrift trips to the Goodwill bins?
Hot take, but the reason you aren’t finding good items at the thrift store isn’t because of pesky, poaching resellers, or poor luck — it’s because the quality of clothing in the thrift cycle is decreasing rapidly as the fast fashion industry has taken hold. Clothes are made and sold at a frightening rate, they’re then used and quickly disposed of by consumers due to their low quality, filling up the stock of thrift stores and pushing high-quality vintage finds to the margin.
In addition to decreasing quality and desirability of clothing options in the thrift cycle, prices have been rising — but not due to the popularity of resale. Broader public interest in thrifting made mainstream through social media hauls and content alike has certainly contributed to stores getting savvier with item pricing, but there’s more troubling issues at bay. Rising prices are happening in part because of the sheer volume of donations that thrift stores have been receiving in recent years, making the effort and overhead of running a secondhand store that much higher, in addition to pressures of inflation and economic uncertainty since the pandemic. This suggests that the overconsumption of fast fashion isn’t just impacting us as consumers at the thrift store, it’s primarily the stores and owners themselves who are now struggling to sort and sell the loads of fast fashion donations they receive.
So, all things considered, and my bias disclosed, it seems to me that there’s not a whole lot to critique about thrift resale. Nowadays, it really does take a lot of patience and time to strike gold at the thrift, and people are happy to pay a small fee not to have to do the digging themselves. It keeps durable, valuable garments in circulation and provides an affordable alternative to shopping with harmful fast fashion retailers. Depop girlies — keep doing your thing. As long as your prices are within reason and your hauls aren’t gratuitously large, there’s nothing shady about thrift resale.