loving pre-loved clothes…
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Reselling is very much in vogue – as covered in Vogue:
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What Does Kering’s Deal With Vestiaire Collective Mean For Secondhand Fashion & The Entire Industry?
It wasn’t long ago that a luxury house wouldn’t even comment on the secondhand, resale, or consignment trend. Some had concerns over authenticity and quality, while others disliked having zero control over price, seasonality, or presentation. Despite the market’s rapid growth, the general sense for years was that firsthand and secondhand fashion were separate entities, separate conversations, separate customers.
What a difference a few years – and a pandemic – can make. Last week, Kering, the owner of Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, and other luxury houses, acquired a five per cent stake in French consignment e-tailer Vestiaire Collective. In a year of shrinking revenues and closed businesses, Vestiaire grew by more than 100 per cent, buoyed by our heightened climate-change awareness…
“What we are fighting against is really fast fashion,” Moizant says. “Firsthand [luxury] fashion is not the devil here – it’s quality product that can have several lives. We love fashion, and we’re here to celebrate the creativity and craftsmanship of it. But what we hate is the ‘take, make, waste’ mentality, where a whole part of the industry is producing clothes for people who will wear it once or twice and discard it immediately. That has to stop.”
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The whole industry has been shaken up:
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Why ‘Durable Goods’ Are Crucial for Fashion Resale
The pandemic has been a lot of things. But to the fashion resale market, it’s been a windfall. There’s nothing like being stuck in the house for a year to prompt many Americans to realize they have a lot of clothes. Of course, tenacious stress eating (no judgment) is relegating a fair amount of said clothes to the null and void pile. And for consumers who saw their incomes shrink, it only makes sense to sell some items. This has led to a significant increase in sales for second-hand sites.
Why ‘Durable Goods’ Are Crucial for Fashion Resale Market – Sourcing Journal
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Every section of the clothing industry seems to be jumping in:
Boohoo eyes ‘sustainable’ materials and resale | Fashion & Retail News | News
Why luxury brands need to embrace circularity for a sustainable future | harpersbazaar.com
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Although the trends were there before the pandemic made us rethink our wardrobes:
How the Rise of the Conscious Consumer is Fueling Resale’s Rapid Growth – Retail TouchPoints
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Everywhere, the ‘thrift shop’ is thriving:
Thrift shops and sustainable fashion outlets thrive during the pandemic – Phoenix Business Journal
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Including Sidmouth:
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‘Ingenuity’ of Sidmouth charity shop coach tours celebrated
Day trippers come from across the country to support a good a cause and bag a bargain – and there are reports some tour operators are even handing out printed guides of where to find the stores.
That ‘ingenuity’ has been celebrated by Sidmouth’s tourism champion, who said the visitors undoubtedly also boost the town’s shops, pubs and cafes.
‘Ingenuity’ of Sidmouth charity shop coach tours celebrated | Sidmouth Herald
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And Sidmouth has been debating the benefits of second-hand shops for some time:
Futures Forum: Do charity shops benefit the local economy?
Futures Forum: Sidmouth: a town of charity shops and coffee shops?
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Sidmouth also has a couple of ‘pre-loved’ clothing shops:
The Steps Dress Agency | Facebook
The Steps Dress Agency – Dress Store
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It’s part of the drive to stop wasting so much stuff:
Reduce, re-use, repair and recycle your clothing! – Vision Group for Sidmouth
Sarah Allen of Exmouth suggests… we reuse stuff! – Vision Group for Sidmouth
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It’s part of a new aesthetic:
Solarpunk: a Sidmouth aesthetic – Vision Group for Sidmouth
Solarpunk is alive and well in the Sid Valley! – Vision Group for Sidmouth
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It’s also part of the go-slow movement:
Slowing down… – Vision Group for Sidmouth
Slowfood and Cittaslow and keeping things slow… – Vision Group for Sidmouth
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And this minimalism is even penetrating the hippest of places:
Life in the Slow Lane – Palm Beach Illustrated
What is Slow Fashion? | Clothing Minimalism | Slow Living LDN.
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Perhaps, though, these are all just emperor’s clothes, as suggested in a piece from this week:
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Sustainable fashion is nothing but corporate greenwashing
For all their assertions about sourcing materials sustainably, recycling and upcycling, these fast fashion and premium fashion brands have precious little to show.
In a clothes obsessed world, fuelled ironically by these very brands pledging to change the way they produce garments and accessories, such solutions are far from being viable and scalable. Wanting to rake in profits by outsmarting their competitors in a crowded marketplace, these brands launch new collections every few months, offer heavy discounts and advertise aggressively.
The resultant insatiable demand only serves to exacerbate the problem: clothes are tossed out of the wardrobe no sooner than they are bought. And with almost 80 billion items being produced annually, it’s almost near impossible to recycle everything. Correction: it’s near impossible to recycle even a small fraction of it!
Surveys show that about 87 percent of the material used for clothing go to waste – in a developed nation like the US, one truck full of clothing is landfilled or burned every second. Excess inventory is offloaded overseas (read developing countries) too, to be sold or simply dumped in their landfills.
Clothe waste, however, is just one part of the problem. The bigger threat of course is the whole production process that is straining our natural resources and polluting our air, water and land at an unprecedented rate. It is said that the fashion industry is responsible for 10 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions every year, accounts for one fifth of the industrial water pollution and uses around 1.5 trillion liters of water annually.
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