Fashion

“Circular Fashion” Is the Industry’s Future—So Why Is There So Much Resale Controversy?

GleeCluster1 September 2023

In fashion, something practically everybody can agree on is that fast fashion needs to decrease– and lately, it’s starting to appear like it is. With a little aid from Gen Z, customer practices are moving from the conventional linear acquiring model to something a bit more circular. Depop, a peer-to-peer social e-commerce business based out of London, whose website is meant to help users easily purchase and resell carefully used clothing, defines circular style as efforts to extend “the life-span of existing garments” by “developing out waste and contamination, keeping items and materials in use, and restoring natural systems.”

What Is Circular Fashion?

Definitions of circular fashion might vary, however it’s clear the pattern towards acquiring designs that prioritize existing garments and products is here to remain. From Angelina Jolie’s just recently revealed style brand, Atelier Jolie, that makes use of already readily available “high-quality vintage product and deadstock material” to the TikTok resellers whose second-hand hauls are upending remark areas with disputes about what it indicates to thrift morally, “reduce, reuse, resale” might also be the market’s informal rallying cry.

Erin Wallace, VP of incorporated marketing at the online consignment company thredUP, tells Byrdie in an e-mail that even a years earlier, “The idea of buying utilized clothes online was still brand-new and even taboo to many. Quick forward to today, and consumers are thrifting with pride.”

Released in 2009, thredUP became an alternative to in-person thrift shopping, and an easy– and often profitable– method to clear out one’s closet. Instead of carrying undesirable items to brick-and-mortar facilities like Plato’s Closet for judgment (and seemingly approximate rejection), thredUP sends out patrons closet clean-out bags into which they can transfer all of their old pieces. These products are then forwarded to thredUP’s warehouse where a team by hand checks the garments and identifies which items are suitable for noting as part of the company’s online thrift store. Consumers receive a payment for accepted items, which can either be squandered or applied to future thredUP purchases.

ThredUP’s business model was a struck with customers, leading the way for other reselling websites like Poshmark and Depop (both of which were established in 2011). However just recently, thredUP has broadened its service model to consist of resale partnerships with brands, and it’s through initiatives like these that we can catch a glimpse of where the future of resale– and sustainable style– appears to be headed.

Major Brands Are Joining the Resale Movement

When the pandemic hit, eCommerce took center stage, and the emphasis on and development of online shopping continues today. Brands have actually started to recognize and harness the power of secondhand, which is why while scrolling on websites like Djerf Avenue, you might discover a resale tab that allows consumers to go shopping or offer utilized pieces from the brand straight on the brand name’s website, rather than using a third-party service.

According to stats released in thredUP’s Recommerce 100, there are presently 143 brands with active resale shops. Some of them run individually (like Djerf Avenue, Tea Collection, Lululemon, and Levi’s), and some have actually partnered with thredUP as part of their Resale-as-a-Service program.

Using the exact same innovation that powers their consignment marketplace, thredUP’s RaaS program produces tailored resale shops for individual brand names. These stores are connected to each brand name’s site, but the work in maintaining them is performed by thredUP’s team, permitting brands the freedom to welcome resale without needing to construct or execute additional systems.

Since the end of 2022, thredUP’s RaaS program serves 42 customers (including brand names like Tommy Hilfiger, Madewell, and Athleta), with additional significant brand names (including J. Crew, H&M, American Eagle, SoulCycle, and Kate Spade) having signed up with the program thus far in 2023.

Wallace tells Byrdie that the company is committed to helping consumers adopt a ‘previously owned very first’ mindset, writing, “If every consumer changed their behavior just somewhat, we would see ripple effects across the market … As customers continue to think previously owned first, we believe retailers will ultimately produce less to change for this growing need.”

Is All Resale Ethical?

For Gen Z, reselling represents not just a fiscally hassle-free and sustainable method to supplement their closets– research suggests that two out of every five products because generation’s closet are acquired pre-owned– however likewise a versatile and autonomous way to make a living during a time of high inflation and economic unpredictability. Professional resellers, much of them girls, seek out thrift stores and second-hand stores, burrowing deep through Goodwill bins in search of classic treasures that they can then resell on websites like thredUP, Depop, and Poshmark, or straight to their TikTok followers.

Their work is time and energy intensive, and indisputably valuable– research study from Depop in 2022 recommends that 9 in 10 purchases made on the site aid prevent the purchase of a new item elsewhere. Evaluating by the TikTok comments left on these sellers’ accounts, one would believe their efforts amounted to war criminal offenses.

The crux of the controversy is rooted in the belief that by prices these items in conjunction with the time, effort, and costs required to obtain, picture, and list them, these resellers are dedicating ethical violations and lowering the number of offered, cost effective pieces at the cost of the people who need them one of the most. This view represents a basic misunderstanding of the quantity of clothing already in flow and the number of pieces being produced yearly.

There are practically 8 billion people on the planet, however the fashion business produces more than 100 billion brand-new garments every year. These are the numbers that explain why reselling and second-hand purchasing– no matter whether these actions are performed on a specific, brand, or market level– are so crucial to reforming the industry. Until we’re able to lower this level of overproduction, there will continue to be a huge surplus of available garments, and we will continue to suffer the environment impacts of the work required to create and keep these products.

Second-Hand Shopping Has a Bright Future

The good news is initiatives currently in movement within the market indicate we are headed in the ideal direction. According to thredUP’s 2023 Resale Report, the international previously owned market is anticipated to almost double by 2027, reaching $350 billion; in 2022, resale grew 5 times as much as the broader retail clothes sector. More than one-third of merchants say if resale efforts show to be effective, they’ll cut production on brand-new products– and according to the current displacement development rates if brand names produced even one less item for every garment consumers acquired secondhand, by 2027, we might suppress production by almost 8%.

As thredUP CEO James Reinhart composes, “We are still in the earliest days of inventing how resale can minimize the ongoing production excess in the fashion industry.” Thanks to circular style and resale, all that’s old is brand-new again.