"A dark brown jacket she tries on is "absolutely perfect" at $7. A light brown jacket with special cuffs "might be my favorite jacket I've ever found," she says. But that jacket gets mere seconds of airtime before it is on to the next jacket, blue, featuring whimsical stitchings of houses, a garment she describes as reminiscent of something you'd find at Anthropologie."
"Every week, I scroll through dozens of videos of influencers piling their carts high with secondhand clothes surely destined for closets stuffed to the gills. Many such influencers and the people who follow them align themselves with the idea of sustainable fashion. Which seems as if it should make sense: Isn't it good to minimize the environmental harm of the fashion industry, which has been identified by the World Economic Forum as Earth's third-largest polluter?"
Influencer-driven 'hauls' promote bulk buying of inexpensive secondhand clothing, encouraging rapid turnover and mass consumption. High-volume reselling and curated thrift shopping normalize purchasing dozens of used garments quickly, often for trend-driven reasons rather than longevity. Professionalization and commercialization of resale platforms can increase sorting, shipping, and restoration activities, prompting new production to meet demand. Increased logistics and returns can raise emissions and textile waste. Secondhand markets may therefore amplify fashion's environmental footprint, potentially recreating the resource use and pollution patterns associated with fast fashion rather than reducing them.
Read at Slate Magazine
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