Resellers are Ruining Fashion

We are in a terrible era where resellers are everywhere, from exorbitantly priced concert tickets to the baja blast pie. But one industry that has especially encroached on is the fashion industry. Previously we have seen resellers buying high luxury items and selling them for a high price due to demand. For  us “commoners” that wasn’t really a problem, the thing we have seen in more recent years is old clothes being resold for higher than market value.

Thrifting had seen brief surgences in the 80s and 90s but its’ true rise in popularity occurred in the 21st century around 2018. Thrifting began to be seen as something cool and exciting rather than only used clothing. As thrifting became trendy and the demand became larger the market became more expensive. We saw an influx of “vintage” stores with exorbitant prices and reselling sites like depop and poshmark rising to popularity.

People started to realize they could go to these very cheap secondhand shops and buy all the cute stuff and then resell it for much higher prices. And people would buy it; it was easier and cleaner than heading to secondhand shops. But these items were sold a lot of times for higher prices than their original selling prices. In a chain reaction, regular thrift stores rose their prices as well, as they started to realize they could make more money from this trend surge. Now we’ve reached a point where the market is entirely over-saturated and people have begun to make jobs out of highly pricing these clothing items on resale websites.

So it comes to the point where we ask how exactly is this ruining shopping as a whole? Well, due to inflation and clothing shops being priced higher in general, so many are turning to secondhand shops as a means of cheaper options. But when finding that most of the thrift shops have crazy high prices or little to no cute clothing many turn to regular shopping. People had become accustomed to the low prices present previously while thrifting, and see clothes sold at market value as too expensive, so fast fashion websites became the next answer. The clothing fast fashion produces is cheap and poorly made, the excessive buying and throwing away of the pieces only contributes to clothing waste more. While trying to promote a more circular cycle of clothing we have only increased the amount of clothing landfill. 

XOXO, The Fashion Stock Market