On Thrifting and Trends: The Perpetual Inaccessibility of “Vintage” Fashion
Introduction
Thrifting has solidified its place as an ethical, accessible means to tastefully unique clothing. In a necessarily climate-conscious age, we have turned to thrifting as an alternative to the ever-increasing prevalence of fast fashion and hyper-consumerist waste. By offering affordable finds and an opportunity to recycle clothing within the accelerating trend cycle, thrifting allows us to balance personalized style, the moral woes of capitalist consumption, and the checkbook.
However, emerging criticism of the (seemingly) new secondhand clothing market claims that thrift stores are being gentrified. They specifically point out the practice of affluent young people buying pieces from thrift stores and reselling them at marked-up prices on digital peer-to-peer marketplaces — namely, Depop. Such practices, critics argue, raise thrift store prices to meet the increasing demand for secondhand clothing and prevent low-income shoppers from accessing clothing, especially pieces deemed as “trendy.” And, to a certain extent, it's true: in recent experiences, my friends and I have found that thrift stores are now filled with fast fashion brands more than clothing that defined thrifting’s place as a way to find unique, longer-lasting pieces. At the same time, thrift store prices have increased.
In “The Complicated Reality of Thrift Store ‘Gentrification,’” Hazel Cills contends that thrift store gentrification is more nuanced than current arguments suggest. She unpacks the history of the sale of secondhand clothing, thrift stores, and secondhand clothing trends, highlighting that the popularity of and criticism against secondhand shopping culture are not unique to today. She argues that deeming certain pieces of secondhand clothing as more valuable and reselling them at a higher price reflects issues within fashion and consumption more broadly: “But are Depop sellers reselling thrifted clothing items for higher prices unethical? The answer might be that it’s only as unethical as the existence of vintage itself.”
Entering the conversation about trends and ethical consumption, I reiterate and expand Cills’ argument that “vintage,” in itself, is unethical. I highlight the history of the secondhand clothing industry throughout the 20th century to show that thrifting culture is not a perfect solution to the ills of the fashion industry. I conclude by offering my own thoughts on how we might move on from “vintage” trends and trends in general.
Industrial America and the Thrift Store Origin Story
I
n the wake of the invention of the spinning jenny and cotton gin in the 18th century, 19th-century clothing production and consumption boomed. Textiles started being produced at an unprecedented rate. Retailers recognized the emerging fashion market and started hosting fashion shows to entice middle-class shoppers to buy new clothing each season, even before current clothing was worn out. Clothing became disposable as it became more accessible, and seasonal trends started to take hold among America’s growing middle class.
At the same time — at the end of Gilded Age America during the late 19th century — urban populations grew as a new wave of European immigrants came to America. During a high time of government corruption and American capitalism, Increasingly dense urban centers remained neglected. In response, Progressive Era reform took hold during the early 20th century; middle-class Americans — particularly women — organized social support programs in urban centers to address severe urban poverty, including impoverished immigrants.
Motivated by the need to find funding for outreach programs, thrift stores such as Salvation Army (established in 1897) and Goodwill (established in 1902) emerged as part of Progressive Era reform efforts. Run by Christian ministries, these stores offered housing, food, and wages to poor immigrants and disabled people in exchange for collecting and mending used clothes. Thrift stores targeted immigrants as owners believed that teaching immigrants to shop with secondhand clothing would aid their integration into American — consumer — life. And, especially as thrift stores allowed middle-class Americans to donate clothing at a time when charitable giving was increasingly popular, thrift stores became a moral necessity against poverty and mass production – themes familiar today. These changes in clothing resale — handled by Christian organizations and framed as part of social reform — shed the previous stigma among middle-class shoppers who deemed secondhand clothes “dirty” because of their association with poverty.
During World War I (1914 to 1918), when Americans spent less and saved more, thrift stores sought to capitalize on the desire to save by making their stores more enticing for middle-class shoppers. Adding clothing racks and hanging clothes (where before, thrift stores presented clothes in bins), creating window displays, and opening around higher-traffic middle-class areas, thrift stores emerged as legitimate competitors to department and clothing retail stores. This pattern of thrift stores, as businesses, competing against other types of clothing stores and attempting to optimize sales by orienting toward middle-class shoppers would emerge throughout thrift stores’ history.
Thrifting’s Emergence as Countercultural: 1900 to 1970
In response to increasing commercialization around World War I, visual artists began repurposing secondhand objects from flea markets and thrift stores as an act of defiance. This movement would become the Dada movement from 1916 to the mid-1920s, where Dada artists considered “the aesthetic of their work . . . [as] secondary to the ideas it conveyed.” One of the most iconic pieces to come out of the movement was Marcel Duchamp’s readymade sculpture “Fountain” in 1917, where Duchamp took a urinal as is, placed it on its back, and signed it “R. Mutt.” He described the purpose of “Fountain” to reflect that “An ordinary object [could be] elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.” This sentiment would evolve alongside and into Surrealism, a more expressive and less explicitly political anti-art movement from 1924 to 1966.
“The Fountain” from Artsy’s “How Duchamp’s Urinal Changed Art Forever”
The Dada and Surrealism movements’ ideology would extend into fashion and secondhand shopping. In his semi-autobiographical surrealist novel “Nadja,” father of Surrealism André Breton describes discarded objects as revealing “flashes of light that would make you see, really see.” After being exiled from France in 1941 for his political ideologies, Breton moved to New York and “sought to inspire other artists and writers [to secondhand shop] by taking them to Lower Manhattan thrift stores and flea markets.”
At the same time that Surrealism took hold, the fashion landscape changed in post-World War II America. America’s middle class emerged with a demand for colorful, patterned leisurewear that reflected “the rise of middle-class leisure time and tourism that accompanied the institution of the 40-hour workweek.” It was at this time that synthetic fabrics like nylon and polyester were invented and became popular, replacing natural fabrics from which dye washed out quickly. Middle-class fashion was increasingly uniform as these synthetic fabrics “emphasized comfort and uniformity in retail” while “Magazine editors and distribution chains pushed fashion seasons, rapidly increasing the amount of clothes Americans were expected to buy.”
With this, secondhand clothing grew popular among young, white, middle-class people to distinguish themselves from middle-class political and fashion uniforms. With a wave of increasing class and political consciousness during the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, and Second-wave Feminism in mid-20th century America, young people expressed their growing consciousness through secondhand dress. Subcultures, including “hippies, bohemians, and beatniks,” emerged with politically aware, easily identifiable styles using secondhand clothing, imbuing such clothing with symbolic countercultural meaning into the 1960s and 1970s.
In an interview with Jezebel for Cills’ article, historian and author of From Goodwill to Grunge: A History of Secondhand Styles and Alternative Economies Jennifer Le Zotte states, “The postwar period, and perhaps ever since that, was marked by a popular rejection of middle-class status. Sometimes this is in cultural appropriation, wanting to look like or act like a minority group, or with the Beats, it’s wanting to slum it with the working class or like you can’t afford good clothing. And sometimes it’s wanting to show I can afford to buy old vintage clothing that takes more care and expertise and that’s kind of exhibiting higher than middle-class status.”
Beatniks from Wikipedia
Queering Secondhand Shopping
Queer folks also took up secondhand shopping during this time.
The Lavender Scare from the late 1940s through the 1960s would incite a surge of queerphobic sentiment among the general public. Reminiscent of the first Red Scare after World War I, in which the U.S. government persecuted people deemed political radicals (e.g., leftists, anarchists, Eastern European immigrants, labor union leaders) and overlapping with a later revival of the Red Scare starting in 1949, the Lavender Scare generated homophobic policies and reports, including the systematic removal of queer employees from the federal workforce as a result of associations between communism and queerness and the belief that queerness was a mental illness.
This upheaval extended into retail stores. Retailers fired queer employees and called the police on cross-dressing customers. As Le Zotte writes in her essay “Before Target, There Were Thrift Stores: How Postwar Secondhand Commerce Supported LGBTQ Rights,” queer people turned to secondhand clothing stores; even though these stores “did not issue public responses of solidarity with non-normative dressers,” they extended “a sort of benevolent neglect to all customers.” Thrift stores became safe havens against animosity at traditional retailers as drag performers, queer theater companies, and queer musicians shopped at secondhand stores for clothing and costumes.
By the end of the 1960s, creatives, young people, and queer folks had taken up secondhand shopping as a means of alternative expression.
Stagflation and Changes in the Secondhand Clothing Industry: the 1970s
Stagflation throughout the 1970s thrust thrifting into the mainstream fashion industry as middle-class Americans faced new financial strain. A New York Times article from 1975 entitled “Thrift Shops Rise as Economy Falls'' discusses the increasing popularity of thrifting: “Once the preserve of the poor who had to hunt for bargains to survive, these outlets, usually run by charitable organizations, have become a mecca for the middle class trying to make ends meet.” The article highlights the consequences of increased foot traffic for secondhand clothing stores; with increasing profits, these stores could pay their workers (previously, clerks in secondhand stores were volunteers), sell more expensive things in “boutique” sections, and update the store to include department store-like setups with organized sections, mirrors, and mannequins.
Department stores recognized the popularity of secondhand clothing and began dedicating entire sections to secondhand clothing. The 1978 New York Times article “Rags to Riches” describes how new competition between department stores and thrift stores for secondhand clothing resulted in substantial price increases. The article also centers on thrift stores’ response, quoting Raymond Howell, the manager of Salvation Army’s collection program in the New York City area at the time: “We will do more piggybacking. Whatever they [department stores] promote into fashion, we will set up special racks for and raise our prices to get in on the fashion action.”
Familiar Criticism on Thrifting Culture
Cills highlights how, during the ‘70s, “critics expressed similar sentiments about thrifting privilege and co-option that critics of Depop do today.” She cites two sources from Nancy L. Fischer’s study “Vintage, the First 40 Years: The Emergence and Persistence of Vintage Style in the United States.” The first is “Rags to Riches” (from above), which expresses distaste for increasing competition between thrift stores and department stores in response to the growing popularity of secondhand clothing. Cills pulls a quote from the article that echoes modern criticism of thrifting: “The spiraling prices of used garments have disconcerted those traditional buyers of secondhand clothing, the poor.”
The second source is from an article by Los Angeles Times columnist Sandra Haggerty in her column “On Being Black.” In Cills’ quotes, Haggerty describes “young people shopping in a local second hand clothing store . . . to dress themselves as unlike the Establishment as possible,” where Haggerty and a close friend shopped at second hand clothing stores to be “like the Establishment.” Haggerty writes, “Being the only black and Chicano [students] in a white upper-middle-class school, we needed nothing more to make us ‘unlike’ our classmates.” She goes on to criticize affluent shoppers for causing price increases in thrift stores.
Reagan, Cobain, and Urban Outfitters: Secondhand in the ‘80s and ‘90s
In the ‘80s, the revolutionary moment of mid-century politics faced a growing wave of American conservatism. In the age of Reagan, the American middle class shrunk as social support infrastructure was replaced by pro-business policy. Increasingly popular sentiment against politically radical decades would also urge young people away from previous subcultures, though middle-class Americans would continue to be dependent on thrifting as seen in the ‘70s. Secondhand fashion started to lose its subversive subtext as more Americans depended on secondhand shopping for clothing and home goods.
Moving into the ‘90s, “hippie” devolved into “hipster,” “bohemian” devolved into “boho,” and emergent countercultural movements that reinspired more politically aware secondhand-style trends would begin to be fronted by punk and grunge rock musicians in the age of MTV. Punk and post-punk icons like Patti Smith, Cyndi Lauper, the B-52, and Kurt Cobain emerged on stage and television with secondhand getups characterized by gender-role subversion, eclectic expression, creative layering, upcycled pieces, “dressing down,” and irony, continuing previous traditions of thrifting as “anti-establishment.”
But, like in the ‘70s, the fashion industry capitalized on the popularity of secondhand trends. Youth-targeted retailers like H&M and Urban Outfitters began incorporating “vintage” styles into designs and advertisements. Other changes in the retail world also shifted middle-class youth away from secondhand stores; the emergence of off-price stores, such as Marshalls and TJ Maxx, and outlet malls made secondhand clothing’s bargain prices obsolete. Especially as such stores carried clothing inspired by the secondhand trends at the time, these stores became popular and practical for the average middle-class consumer.
Faster and Faster Fashion: The 2000s and early 2010s
With America’s sustained inflation continuing into the 2000s, young people turned to “buy, sell, trade” stores like Buffalo Exchange and Crossroads to make some cash from clothing that would have otherwise been donated or discarded. These stores grew immensely during this time, but affordable clothing and home goods from off-price retailers, emerging fast fashion brands, and dollar stores eclipsed secondhand shopping’s previous popularity among middle-class shoppers. Further, online secondhand clothes shopping became popular as shoppers started buying and selling clothing on eBay. As people donated less and sold more through in-person and online secondhand clothing markets, thrift stores faced substantial decreases in donations. Especially as the Great Recession hit in 2008, Americans shopped and donated less to save more. In attempts to maintain business and encourage shoppers to both shop and donate, thrift store chains started to campaign aggressively, creating advertisements reminding Americans that money from sold donations funded social support and drug rehabilitation programs.
At the same time, the fast fashion business model became a necessity for clothing producers because of the recession. Reduced spending during the recession led retailers to discount inventory to encourage people to shop. But even with reduced prices, people didn’t spend; retailers had to cut operating costs, laying off workers and closing stores in low-traffic areas.
When the recession did not lighten up, fast fashion retailers like Forever 21, Zara, and H&M emerged with never-before-seen clothing so cheap and prices so low. Other retailers followed suit by using cheaper, synthetic fabrics while putting everything on sale (and keeping the price on the price tag the same), optimizing profitability with illusory sales and cheaper production costs to keep up with fast fashion competitors’ growing popularity. Online shopping also became increasingly popular at this time; fast fashion companies expanded their websites as the creation of Amazon made online shopping a norm.
And, like in previous decades, off-price stores and fast fashion brands began to create clothing of the more vague “vintage aesthetic” popular at the time. Because retailers had the resources and bandwidth to cash in on all emerging trends — both secondhand and haute couture — with a fast fashion business model, thrifting became obsolete and remained unpopular in the early 2010s.
Thrifting’s Revival: The Last 6 Years
Things changed in 2018.
In 2018, nostalgia was the most searched fashion theme on Google, where the top four fashion searches were 1980s fashion, grunge, 1990s fashion, and 2000s fashion. In an interview with Luisaviaroma, Sarah Rose Cavanaugh, director of the Laboratory for Cognitive and Affective Science at Assumption College, addresses the growing nostalgia trend during this time: “Could it be that more than usual, we feel ourselves pulled backward to a time of our lives when things felt simpler, more connected, less divided?”
With the popularization of social media throughout the 2010s, young people had an environment to engage with an amalgam of microtrends characterized by a modern reimagining and mixing of trends from previous decades. The rise of social media influencers debased celebrities’ previous place as fashion icons and trendsetters. Especially with the release of TikTok in 2016, social media and the age of influencers inspired highly individualized fashion and rapid engagement with trends as people had more agency over where they could turn for fashion inspiration. And with all of these vintage-inspired trends emerging, thrifting’s popularity took off moving into the 2020s.
With the financial strain caused by the pandemic, thrifting, like in previous eras of economic instability, became popular. Online secondhand shops, like Depop, also became widely used at this time and remain popular today. As monocultural trends would lose power in the age of social media, thrifting became necessary to obtain unique clothing in the age of sartorial self-expression.
Thrifting’s post-lockdown popularity comes from new awareness about the consequences of pollution and the unethical labor practices of fast fashion in combination with a growing movement of self-expression through fashion. For the first time in its history, thrifting’s primary focus has been on sustainable fashion and ethical consumption, where we find that, in a sense, modern thrifters maintain thrifting’s countercultural tradition.
So What?
In her article, Cills suggests that thrifting culture and thrift stores are neither resistant to nor solutions for capitalist overproduction and hyperconsumption.
Throughout thrifting’s history, thrift stores have adjusted their approach to marketing and sales, upgrading their stores to appeal to middle-class shoppers and, like Depop resellers, curating more desirable clothing and selling them at higher prices (e.g., Goodwill’s boutique stores). Higher prices in thrift stores and for “vintage” pieces reflect that certain pieces of secondhand clothing do sell at substantially higher prices because certain people can and will buy “vintage” clothing at these prices. And again, as thrift stores have orientated toward middle-class shoppers who can afford these prices, it is only correct from a market point of view to increase prices. The demand for vintage clothing is the root of the problem of thrift store gentrification, and the practice of marked-up resale only reflects this.
Further, though thrift stores themselves don’t produce any clothing, they depend on overconsumption to supply their stores with goods to sell; people certainly feel better about donating their unwanted clothes — including fast fashion pieces — more than throwing them away, especially with the belief that their clothes and the money made from them are going to the “needy.” However, most thrift stores’ donations aren’t bought and are instead resold internationally, where most donations don’t meaningfully serve the local community. And, as Cills puts it, “buying secondhand clothes is still buying more clothes, and donating old clothes and then replacing them with new ones reinforces modern ideas about clothing’s obsolescence, which is exactly what the fashion industry wants.” In other words, the construction of certain clothing as fashionably obsolete (or, conversely, more valuable) creates the motivation to consume within trends. But as fast fashion companies produce clothing that becomes functionally obsolete, we find ourselves in trend cycles and a production cycle that will continue to drive consumption unless something changes.
Looking Forward: Reflections on “Vintage”
Cills asserts, “the transformation of second-hand clothing or anachronistic dress into admired ‘vintage’ is often a process defined by class and privilege, just like so much of luxury fashion. The secondhand clothing acceptably deemed or celebrated as stylishly ‘vintage’ on the body of a person well celebrated by the fashion industry (thin, white, affluent) won’t necessarily receive the same treatment when worn on those existing in the margins.” And it’s true; celebrities, high fashion models, and social media influencers deemed icons of style are, for the most part, of bodies well-celebrated and backgrounds well-resourced. Appropriation, again, is certainly a part of this conversation.
Thrifting and thrift stores are parts of the fashion industry, and the fashion industry exists as an axis through which systems of power — namely white supremacy, capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy — function. The social and cultural capital that allows someone to become a “vintage” icon and drive “vintage” trends exists along intersecting hierarchies of proximity to masculinity, skinniness, whiteness, and wealth. Although posited as a more ethical option, thrifting does not exist in a vacuum free from fashion’s elitism.
In addressing the issue that is the evil of “vintage,” we must deconstruct fashion elitism that deems “vintage” clothing “fashionable” (and, for that matter, we can deconstruct the idea that only certain types of clothing are “fashionable” at all). It is this hierarchical judgment of dress that, as Cills points out, drives the trend cycle and the fashion industry.
Fashion, to me, is art. The rules of trends and normative understandings of fashion have always destroyed the integrity of fashion as a form of expression. Of course, this isn’t to say that someone who does adhere to trends cannot be artful; there are non-random reasons why trends (re)emerge and are deemed tasteful (though again, it is precisely the initial inaccessibility and non-popularity of clothing newly and collectively identified as tasteful that creates the lack that leads to a trend).
Our understanding of secondhand clothing can change — as it has throughout its history — from “vintage” as valuable to something that is necessarily more radical. We can consciously and actively make room for individual expression through unique dress, disregarding what might constitute “trendy” or “vintage.” Secondhand clothes do offer more language to express through dress and remain popular outside of identification with “vintage” trends for that reason. And, in a more grounded sense, thrifting certainly will not go away because we (middle-class and upper-middle-class college students who have the resources to engage with fashion and thrifting as it exists today) — as core customers of secondhand clothing — do remain climate-conscious. But, in shedding “vintage” and “trend” value, secondhand shopping might more meaningfully fulfill its anti-capitalist goals toward sustainability.
In Surrealist tradition, fashion can transcend its well-worn place as a status symbol determined by trends to become something more.