In recent years, the trend of resurrecting the clothing our parents wore in their youth has grown. More people are being drawn to the world of secondhand clothing and there are many great reasons to be.
LSU’s “Your Friend’s Closet” event Sunday in the 4-H Mini Barn was a prime example of this trend making its way onto campus. Baton Rouge locals donated used designer and vintage clothing to sell and raise money for the LSU Textile and Costume museum.
Among my finds were a cute 1970s striped mini dress, a sweater vest and a pair of Doc Martin shoes all for only $16.
When you buy new clothes from department stores, there’s a good chance your money is helping oil the giant machine of an industry that involves underage and underpaid workers in foreign countries. Some big name brands with unethical labor practices include Abercrombie & Fitch, Converse, GAP, Walmart and Nike.
Every time you buy a
secondhand garment, you help push the demand for new clothing
production down. This is good for many reasons, the biggest one being that clothing production is very taxing on the environment. Producing synthetic materials takes a lot of energy and uses petroleum, which has by-products of toxic gas and chemicals.
Even once the clothes are made, they must travel halfway across the world to get to their intended buyers. Factor in transportation-related pollution, and these clothes are racking up quite a
carbon footprint.
The clothes you buy in thrift stores were once in this circulation, but by the time you buy them in their used condition, you are no longer paying into the corrupt industry that created them. The only negative effect to factor in is the transportation-related pollution from the original owner bringing them to the thrift store.
In the grand scheme of everything, this is insignificant.
This isn’t an attack on people who shop retail. I do it when I need to. It’s more a reminder of the current state of the clothing business.
When it comes to secondhand shops, whether they’re local vintage stores or organizations like Goodwill and The Salvation Army, you can sleep easy knowing exactly where your money is going. Even if you’re buying a Ralph Lauren shirt, the money you spend on it goes directly to the store, not the company that unethically produced the piece of clothing.
Both Goodwill and The Salvation Army’s business models alone are a great reason to support the secondhand business. They provide work to the homeless, unemployed and disabled. Plus, secondhand clothing would go to landfills if these mediums didn’t exist, adding to the piles of food, paper, plastics and other non-recyclable items.
One of the biggest positive impacts thrifting directly has on the shoppers, especially poor college students, is the low cost. At Goodwill, blouses are around $3.99 each. At the local thrift store The Purple Cow, I found a high-quality winter coat for less than $10.
If you compare these prices to their retail counterparts, you’ll find that retail is exponentially more pricey. A shirt at Urban Outfitters can range anywhere from $20 to $50 and you’re paying for clothing of lower quality than most of what you’d find in a thrift store.
The biggest reason for me is thrift stores are the perfect places to find the funkiest and most
comfortable clothing.
These clothes have most likely been washed hundreds of time so there’s no need to worry about itchiness, shrinking or bleeding colors. They come from all eras of time, and they’re cheap so you can cut them up and sew them and never feel guilty about it.
I encourage anyone who hasn’t dove head first into the world of affordable and fun thrifting to take the plunge.
The moment you spend $20 on seven cool and unique articles of clothing, I promise you won’t look back.
Mariel Gates is a 20-year-old mass communications sophomore from Baton Rouge.