Is the era of fast fashion over? Spending on second-hand clothes has caught up
Investment goods decay so slowly that, if scarce, their value may increase. Durable ones have utility and thus value for many years, but tend to depreciate while you own them.
All the more so in an era of just-in-time supply chains and social-media influencers. People now spend a lower share of their income on clothing than ever before, but the number of items purchased each year has ballooned. Many items are worn a few times before being discarded; 95% of the clothes Americans send to landfills are in good enough nick to be reused or resold. This is wasteful and environmentally troubling.
Now it has moved to goods in the middle of the investment-consumption spectrum. A decade ago you would have struggled to offload second-hand clothing, let alone get paid for it. Emptying your closet meant a trip to a charity shop. A few high-value items could be resold, says Julie Wainwright, the founder of The RealReal, an online second-hand-clothing site, but largely in “pawn shops or local consignment stores, where the experience and the payouts were not good”.
In 2021 resold clothing fetched around $15bn, up from less than $1bn in 2013. A further $21bn was spent on garments from charity and thrift shops. The total spent on second -hand garb, some $36bn, is slightly bigger than the $30bn spent on “fast fashion” in shops such as Zara or. By 2025, according to GlobalData, a research firm, the value of resold and thrifted clothing will climb to $77bn as resale revenues triple to $47bn annually and charity-shop revenues climb to $30bn.
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