‘It’s become a nepo baby sport’: how secondhand fashion got so expensive
Thanks to gen Z resellers and platforms like Depop, thrifting has lost its subcultural roots - and ballooned into a $350bn business Vintage boutique owner
Thanks to gen Z resellers and platforms like Depop, thrifting has lost its subcultural roots - and ballooned into a $350bn business Vintage boutique owner Janelle Best has been rummaging in thrift shop bins since the 90s. When she started, she says, there was a stigma about it. “It was either you were a freak, or you were poor – and I was a freak.” At first, she did it to source stage outfits while playing in psych-rock bands.
Then, in 2005, she started “casually reselling” on eBay. Ten years later she was trading as Desert Stars Vintage at street markets, and by 2023 she had opened a showroom specializing in upmarket silk dresses in her Williamsburg apartment. Even just a few years ago, she says, she still put in the hours at places like Goodwill.
The bins, she says, “were a field day. There were so many fucking bangers.” And then, thrifting became a social media craze, she says, “and the hell gates of high school students flooded
in. Twelve people to each bin. Everyone fighting. Suddenly everyone’s a reseller, and instead of these kids intuitively knowing what’s good, they’re on their phones trying to figure out if it’s valuable.” Continue reading...
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