I'm a vintage dealer and from my perspective the huge change in the last five years or so has been the rise of consumer-to-consumer second hand selling. This has led to oversaturation of the second hand market. More and more second hand is sold via apps with a fast fashion mentality, where huge amounts of clothes are being bought and sold, at a fast pace, for very cheap, by individuals who often lack expertise. I sometimes wonder how sustainable any of this really is.
It’s actually a very good point you make there especially when we are talking about reselling second hand fast fashion garments, for which the circle of life is already very short and maybe the ecological footprint of shipping is bigger than even buying something new from the shop directly. I haven’t researched that though and I’m not sure if it’s indeed true in actual numbers.
But even on designer consumer to consumer reselling, saturation is a problem because the point of taking care of your garments make them last longer etc is lost because you can find something so cheap that you don’t appreciate it as much.
This was really interesting, thank you!
I'm a vintage dealer and from my perspective the huge change in the last five years or so has been the rise of consumer-to-consumer second hand selling. This has led to oversaturation of the second hand market. More and more second hand is sold via apps with a fast fashion mentality, where huge amounts of clothes are being bought and sold, at a fast pace, for very cheap, by individuals who often lack expertise. I sometimes wonder how sustainable any of this really is.
I’m happy you found it interesting Tiia!
It’s actually a very good point you make there especially when we are talking about reselling second hand fast fashion garments, for which the circle of life is already very short and maybe the ecological footprint of shipping is bigger than even buying something new from the shop directly. I haven’t researched that though and I’m not sure if it’s indeed true in actual numbers.
But even on designer consumer to consumer reselling, saturation is a problem because the point of taking care of your garments make them last longer etc is lost because you can find something so cheap that you don’t appreciate it as much.