herare

Thrift shopping has been all the craze in the mainstream for what feels 

like a decade, even though it’s been around since the end of time. With the quote-on-quote hipsters who originated the movement that makes vintage feel like the new cool, and the now-dated Macklemore song that encourages it, it seems like thrift stores should be dominating the market.

In all actuality, the thrift industry has only grown 1.6% in the past five years, making this slow-growth contrast the narrative that millennials are saving the planet. While millennials are driving up the thrift industry, they are also wasting a lot more clothing. In the era of mass producing cheap clothing, the hunt for trendy vintage clothes still falls short to the massive sales of Forever 21 and H&M. Not only do these stores sell brand new, cheaply manufactured clothing, but cleverly design it in a way to make it look vintage. This way millennials can still sport the hipster chic style of looking poor without actually having to step foot in a Salvation Army.

Now I am certainly not a millennial that is immune to this, as I’ve been known to spend an embarrassingly long time trying to navigate through Forever 21’s monstrous inventory. I’ve always been spiteful by how well the company targets millennials; of course, their stuff looks great, who wouldn’t fall victim to their bright prints or edgy patterns. They also succeed in stocking clothes for just about everyone, no matter how outlandish or plain-jane your taste is. I can almost guarantee that any 17 year old girl can walk into Forever 21 and at least entertain the idea of buying some item of clothing.

I’ve personally always felt some kind of weird shame shopping at stores like Forever 21. How can this much stuff for so cheap be such a good thing? There’s obviously someone that is losing from all of this, but as always, my semi-white guilt is always overshadowed by a deal. Then it occurred to me, where else can I buy such cheap clothing and feel less guilty?

Thus begins my year of shopping only second-hand.

Now mind you, I have already built up a wardrobe over my 22 years that I wasn’t about to waste. Part of me wanted to go all Eat, Pray, Love and throw out everything I own to start new, but that would already be contributing to the problem. I decided that anytime I wanted to go shopping it would be exclusively at second hand stores, and I would try to only buy things that I needed. I was also going to sift through my own wardrobe and donate the pieces I wasn’t wearing anymore.

As I was tossing my own clothes into various giveaway piles, I was stupified by how many clothes I actually owned. My dresser drawers have never seemed so deep, and I was able to reclaim clothes to integrate into my wardrobe. I realized how guilty I was of wearing the same clothes over and over again, without paying attention to everything else I owned. Who could possibly wear that much clothing, and doesn’t have the last name Kardashian? There is a beauty in simplicity, when you understand that it doesn’t take overflowing closet shelves to put together a fine ass wardrobe.

After uncovering old pieces, I didn’t feel the need to buy any new clothes for a while. Friends and colleagues would compliment me on my new items, and I would tell them that the knit sweater I was wearing was actually my Aunt’s 16th birthday present to me. They couldn’t believe something like that would still fit, or that Aunt Mary had such good tastes!

Around a month in I was itching to integrate some new pieces into my ensemble, so on the way home from work one day I took a stop into my local Goodwill. I spent a solid hour browsing through the blouse section, and found the irregularity of each piece to be more fun than browsing cookie cutter designs at big box stores. Not only that, but with the current sale going on, buying two new long-sleeve print blouses only came to $7.25 with tax.

Now as a white privileged young woman living in a city, I can’t not acknowledge some weird feelings from buying secondhand. I didn’t want to contribute to this phenomena of making poverty seem cool, and what essentially feels like some weird form of gentrification. I think it’s dumb that thrift shopping became trendy, but also can’t help but think that it’s the absolute best thing for millenials to be doing. It does feel like taking away clothes for people who actually can’t afford more, but at the same time, some of these prices are on par to what you would be paying during a flash sale at Zara.

These questions don’t go away and I still don’t know how to answer them, but nonetheless, it was still early on in my journey and had a commitment to see through.

When summer hit, I found myself needing more shorts, a task that I always have trouble with at big-box stores. I knew that this wasn’t going to be an easy duty, given that most thrift stores don’t specify the varying sizes in stock. I set aside an entire afternoon for this task, and I’ll be the first to say how gruelling it was. I was constantly hauling stacks of shorts into the fitting rooms, going well over the 6 piece limit. The stock person was flashing me annoyed looks, which soon turned to empathy when she realized how none of the demin shorts I tried on fit.

Finally, I settled on a plain black pair of shorts, that fit enough if I rolled down the waistband a bit. I was feeling a little dejected as I left the Goodwill, but then reminded myself how stupid it is to feel so desolate from a simple pair of shorts. I reminded myself of how good my life must be if I could complain about something like this, then went along my way.

When Halloween came, I wanted to murder everybody. This is the one time of the year where the rest of the country remembers that Salvation Army exists, and that it’s the perfect place to buy their clothes that they’re going to wear once and never use again. Granted, I was that person for such a long part of my life, but now I found it annoying to see the sudden influx of people. Then I remembered that must’ve been what it was like when the hipsters suddenly started shopping here, which stopped that train of thought immediately.

Then it became ugly sweater season, and suddenly every sweater I had my eye on at my local Goodwill disappeared. But the shortage was not long lasting, as old lady sweaters seem to be the most donated item. As a lover of warm tacky sweaters myself, I revelled in my decision to buy second hand for a year. I got to wear my favourite item of clothing without feeling guilty that I paid $40 for it at Target. Actually, sweaters are the biggest bang for your buck at thrift stores. They are large and keep you warm, and usually, don’t run you past $5 each.

By the end of the year, I calculated that I spent an astonishing $188.35 on clothing. This consisted of 4 sweaters, 5 blouses, 3 flannels, 5 t-shirts, 1 pair of miserable shorts, 3 pairs of ill fitting jeans, and the biggest expenditure which was a new winter coat that I indulged in for meager $38.50. Still, I couldn’t believe when I added all the totals and realized I spent under $200 in clothing. For an entire year!

I think a lot of my success came from the mentality that this wasn’t going to be a year for purchasing clothing. That frame of mind came when I realized I really didn’t need anything, as I was able to make due with a lot of items I already owned. The only time I cheated was when I bought a new pair of Adidas from DSW, something I could justify by claiming it didn’t technically fall under the umbrella as clothing, but still does oppose the whole moral lesson I was trying to undergo.

I didn’t tell my friends and colleagues that I was doing this experiment, mostly because I didn’t want to make it seem like I was a social justice warrior saving the world one used an item of clothing at a time, but because I didn’t think it mattered. We live in a privileged society right now where someone wouldn’t think twice if you popped into a Goodwill for some shopping. It doesn’t necessarily reflect your socio-economic status as it did before millennials “made it cool”. Though this all comes from my experience as a white woman, who could walk into Goodwill with her new Adidas shoes.

While I look forward to continue buying second-hand, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a small part of me that ached for retail. I missed clutching a Starbucks misto as I window shopped through the mall, as much as I missed walking around H&M admiring the mannequins and their well-put-together outfits. I yearned to go back to the downtown Macy’s location with my mom, and spend a whole afternoon just browsing. These are comforts that I was brought up on, that I will continue to partake in, but only as a special treat every once and a while. And I have finally said no to Forever 21, which to me is taking the first step.