Navigating the 'golden era of secondhand shopping'
An interview with a former fast fashion buyer on the fashion industry and secondhand shopping.
Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local & state climate action.
I’m Taylor Kate Brown and this newsletter grows by word-of-mouth. Someone share or forward this edition with you? Sign up here. You can also read and share this edition online.
This month I'll be sharing an audio version of my recent story in Grist for paid supporters of this newsletter. If you'd like to hear my dulcet tones, become a member here.
(A collage of recent posts from Clotheshorse Podcast's Instagram page)
On a freezing afternoon not long ago, I gingerly stepped down some icy stairs into a classic DC english basement apartment. Carrying an overstuffed tote bag full of clothing, I said hello my friend, who had invited me to her friend’s quarterly clothing swap.
It was the second time I’d participated in a swap. Within an hour, a mound of mostly-women’s clothing had formed on a low couch, with more than a half-dozen people talking and trying on clothes. Everyone, including me, had grabbed multiple items, but the pile remained towering (Everything not taken was donated).
Both times I’ve been involved in a swap, it’s felt both an outstanding success and a reminder of how much stuff, especially clothing, exists in the world. Swaps are fun, but they are only one part filling the logistical gap of matching people who want to reuse with the right secondhand items. That gap remains wide open for the category of clothing, even with a long and developed history of consignment, thrift, hand-me-downs and other strategies. As in previous editions, where I visited Urban Ore in Berkeley and interviewed the founder of a pop-up repair shop, part of the issue is how much is being produced in the first place. That’s certainly also the case for clothing, but why, and how?
So I finally emailed someone who I’d wanted to speak to for a while. Amanda Lee McCarty runs Clotheshorse, a podcast about the fashion industry, fast-fashion, what’s driving production and consumption of clothing. She also shares resources for shopping smarter when it comes to sustainable brands, secondhand and frankly, just buying way less. (Clotheshorse also has a delightful social media presence featuring vintage illustrations of cute cats)
McCarty speaks from experience. Before she went out on her own as a consultant and making Clotheshorse, she worked as a buyer for several millennial-targeted fashion brands, including ModCloth, and the companies under URBN (Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters, Free People, etc). As a buyer, she decided on what and how much these companies would sell. I wanted to ask her why she decided to make this podcast and her thoughts about taking on the trickier parts of shopping secondhand.
The Q&A has been slightly edited and condensed. Towards the end I’ll be sharing the secondhand challenge I’m thinking through:
You used to work as a buyer for large fashion companies. Why did you decide to start a podcast about slow fashion and reuse?
In 2020, my life changed in many huge ways, just like everyone else. We had just moved to Philadelphia, PA in late 2018 where I was the first buyer hired to work on a not-yet-launched Nuuly, URBN’s rental platform. That job was not the right fit for me in a lot of ways, but I stuck it out in order to support my family. One thing that was good about the experience was that I had a chance to gain an even clearer view of how much the fashion industry had changed since the rise of fast fashion. I was spending more and more time thinking about how out of control fashion had become.
And then the pandemic began. I was furloughed at the beginning of April. That felt like a relief in some ways because for the previous two weeks I had been canceling every order we had placed that year…even if the order was already produced or being made by a small designer/brand. I spent hours on the phone with vendors and sales reps as we kinda cried and panicked together. I know that when orders are canceled like that, people lose their jobs and their businesses. Workers don’t get paid. And the most vulnerable people along that supply chain–the factory workers–are thrust into precarious financial circumstances that can make them the target of abuse and violence. It felt so wrong, knowing that my employer had the money to pay for these orders. I wondered, “Can I continue to work within this industry?”
I had all of this knowledge that might change how others felt about clothing and shopping. So I began to outline episodes and reach out to guests. I knew that starting Clotheshorse would mean the end of my career in fashion. Who would hire me after I began exposing these truths? And then I was laid off, given two weeks of severance, and lost my health insurance in the middle of a global pandemic. One week later, my employer posted a “surprise” profit of $34 million for that quarter. That profit was comprised of the lost wages and canceled orders. This motivated me to get really serious and throw all of myself into Clotheshorse. (NB: In a press release about that quarter, URBN cited an increase in digital sales, but also “lean inventories”. )
What do you think most people don't understand about the impact of the fashion industry on the environment, beyond clothes ending up in a landfill?
I think we tend to forget the resources involved in making clothing, especially water and energy. Or that synthetic fabrics are made of fossil fuels (and also require a lot of energy to create). They are the same fibers used to make plastic water bottles, because polyester and other synthetic fabrics are literally plastic. This means they shed microplastics every time we wash and wear them. Some fabrics–like faux fur–shed a particularly egregious amount of microplastics just by existing, finding their way into the air, soil, water, and our food supply. The fashion industry is a big contributor to the global plastic pollution crisis.
It is important to remember that there is a lot of transportation involved in making clothing. The cotton may be grown in the United States. It will be shipped to Bangladesh where it will be processed and dyed before being turned into fabric. The actual garments might be sewn in Bangladesh, or the fabric might be sent off to another country to be sewn into a finished product. A study by German environmental consultancy Systain determined that the production of a simple shirt could require about 35,000 km of transportation, equivalent to a trip around the world. We do not talk about this enough.
The fashion industry likes to sell us the idea of unlimited shopping without repercussion via “conscious” collections and “eco-friendly” fabrics, but the reality is we cannot continue to overconsume clothing the way we have been for the last decade without a major negative impact on the planet and its people.
There are a lot more options today to buy secondhand, whether it's big online stores like Thredup, individual sellers on DePop, etc, or local consignment or thrift stores. What are some of the pros and cons of each kind of secondhand shopping?
I like to shop local and IRL whenever possible. For one, I can try something on! That’s a big deal. But I can also feel the fabric and the quality of an item. Furthermore, by shopping locally, I am not adding the environmental impact of packaging and shipping into the mix. However, it is a lot more difficult to find exactly what I want IRL and it often takes a much longer time.
If I do not have that time, I go online. Last year, the sole of one of my sneakers cracked in half a week before I was leaving for a trip in Japan, where I would be walking many miles every day. Meaning: I needed sneakers ASAP! I found a secondhand pair of the exact shoes I wanted on Poshmark and they arrived the day before I left.
We live in a golden era of secondhand shopping, where no matter your aesthetic, size, or location, you can find what you want online. The biggest con of shopping online for secondhand clothing? Fit! You can increase the odds that something will fit you by knowing your measurements. Or even better, measuring a few garments that you love. If a product listing does not contain measurements, I reach out to ask for them. I have learned that hard way that this is not a step to skip! I am a bit wary of platforms like ThredUp and The Real Real because they frequently have inaccurate measurements/sizes listed.
Are there any items you avoid or haven't had success with buying secondhand?
Just when I say something like “Oh, I’ve never bought tights secondhand,” then I find several unopened packages at my local thrift store and I buy them. To be honest, I have never bought bras and underwear secondhand, but I am not opposed to it. I just haven’t found ones that were right for me. I probably just grossed out so many people by saying that, but hey, I have a washer and dryer! Over the past few years, I have been able to find just about everything else secondhand: pajamas (I have a great vintage sleeping wardrobe at this point), shoes (I often buy these online because I have big feet), socks, and clothing.
About five years ago my husband and I made a decision that we would shift fully #SecondhandFirst in terms of home goods, furniture, and electronics. My computer monitor is secondhand, just about every piece of furniture in our house, and most of our kitchenware. A few weeks ago I thrifted a barely used Cuisinart food processor with all of the attachments for $15 and I’m still giddy about it. Every once in a while we do have to buy something new because we just can’t find it secondhand, but Facebook Marketplace has made it really easy to find all kinds of things.
One of the biggest issues I've had is not being able to find a specific thing secondhand at the time I need it — what tips do you have for planning ahead for secondhand shopping? Ultimately the point of slow fashion is in its name…”slow.” And that’s a really important word because we have to slow down our shopping and consumption. Yes, you CAN overconsume secondhand stuff.
So I think we should always be giving ourselves the time to find the right thing, while skipping the impulse shopping. I always recommend keeping a running list of the things you need or anticipate needing soon. Last year I knew I wanted to finally invest in a raincoat. I wanted something that would last for a long time and work with a lot of my floofy dresses. I did research, found a brand and style that I wanted, and then I began to watch the online platforms for one. It took three months, but I found exactly what I needed. And I get kind of excited when it is raining, because I get to wear this raincoat that I love!
Thanks to Amanda for answering my questions. Clotheshorse’s instagram is a great follow. Another recent listen that was really helpful to me in understanding the huge shift in clothing production within the past 10-15 years is this episode of the Culture Study podcast: Why Do Clothes Suck Now? . There was a big turning point I had no idea about.
I’m already heavily inclined towards buying secondhand, but I wondered if I could learn anything by making a challenge for myself. So in March, I’ll be taking a page from Washington Post’s climate coach and trying to buy entirely used. (Not including consumables like food, household cleaning products, etc). I have no illusions about a 100% success rate, but I’ll bring what happened back to this newsletter.
More local climate action stories
- After a referendum, Paris is set to triple parking fees for SUV drivers (Citylab/Bloomberg Green, gift link)
- When you elec-tri-fy a big pizza pie... that’s amore (Colorado Sun)
- Adding second homes to properties were banned in Chicago for almost 70 years. This woman just built one of the first (Dwell)
- The latest in "put a solar panel on it": snow fences (Minnesota Public Radio)
- Ignoring Indigenous rights is making the green transition more expensive (Grist). Related: How solar geoengineering is clouding issues of tribal consent (High Country News)
- Local governments are banning green energy siting faster than they’re building it. (USA Today)
- Utah taxpayers could end up buying a coal plant instead of it closing (Salt Lake Tribune)
- It's the beginning of the end of natural gas in Massachusetts - but there's a lot more questions about how. (Energy News Network)