Thrifting has emerged as a highly-praised form of shopping. The allure of thrifting used to be that you could find unique pieces at an affordable price to stock your closet. Thrifting was a painstakingly long process of mulling through hundreds of racks to find a hidden gem. Now, thrifting is not so tedious.
Advertisements of thrifting apps flood the feeds of Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, to name a few. The message? Thrifting as a means for turning your unfavorable tops into cash. Thrifting as a means for paying for the $9 iced coffee you want.
Once the first alternative to the pollutive nature of fast fashion, thrifting is now advertised as a way to send your high school prom dress back into the fashion ecosystem. With such a heavy push in marketing across multiple resale apps, it begs the question: What need are these marketing campaigns responding to? How has thrifting morphed in the current cultural zeitgeist?
Thrifting has unsurprisingly been swept up by Generation Z, as it seems the weight of all humanitarian practices are placed on us. Not only as an affordable and sustainable method of shopping, but as an avenue of self-expression. Approval of thrifting as a form of shopping has grown immensely due to young consumers giving patronage to places like Goodwill and their local thrift stores.
In a time where inflation is rising to unsuitable levels and “fast-fashion” is a growing sustainability concern, Gen Z is changing retail by making second hand shopping their default. Older online resellers like eBay and Etsy find a great demographic to push their marketing, and newer players in the game like Depop, Vinted and Poshmark have emerged.
In the past couple of months, those three apps have done major marketing ad campaigns, especially Depop. You have probably seen the recent Zara Larsson collaboration, and various onslaught of ads that promise “extra money in your closet” from selling and, in Larsson’s case, buying clothes for cheaper than retail.
It targets Gen Z in an oddly specific way. It displays us being broke (in a Poshmark ad, a woman wants to get an iced coffee but needs to save money, so her friend suggests she sells her clothes), it displays us as lazy (Zara Larsson doesn’t want to do her laundry so she sells it on Depop) and materialistic.
The advertising campaigns certainly are not all bad. Perhaps from a seller standpoint, this gives promises of a return on our previous investments.
A way to sell the clothes that sit on our floors, that once stood on a rack. But for someone aiming to thrift? There’s now endless pieces that may be the exact thing to avoid: expensive, fast fashion clothing.
Many veteran thrifters complain now that the market is too oversaturated, and people tend to sell things at an exceedingly high price regardless of their actual worth. Additionally, people may begin to sell poorly made items from SHEIN or Cider, which defeats the purpose of going to look for a good brand.
What was the goal with this?
Certainly there was an altruistic mission to get people to shop sustainably, and simultaneously get people to become sellers as well. That is the only way a resale market can function, is with both the roles of buyer and seller being fulfilled.
But seeing economically that the cost of living is rising, and these campaigns are aiming to give people a route to make “money on the side,” it gives necessity rather than a choice to thrift or sell your clothing. Unfortunately, speed-cycling through buying clothes, hating them, then selling them back into the world is not sustainable for the self.
It’s a shopping addiction, babe.
Thrifting, at its base level, is not a problematic sport. It is a step up from a bartering system where we trade cows for beans. But seeing how these resale apps, and even social media, tend to portray a thrifting and seller lifestyle, it can feel a little too capitalistic.
The same marketing that makes secondhand shopping accessible can also turn it into another form of overconsumption. These campaigns bring about a sour language to resale, and the strong push being towards Gen Z shows who these companies hope to bring to these apps.