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How Will Second-Hand Shopping Change Post-Pandemic?
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“It’s chic to repeat,” Cameron Silver tells CR. The owner of Decades, perhaps L.A.’s most beloved vintage store, is right. There is something intrinsically alluring about clothing with a life of its own. Anyone with enough money can buy and even duplicate exact runway looks, but combining pieces from different time periods requires an innate sense of style. Preowned clothing offers a unique form of escape: I can’t go dancing with my friends, but I can daydream about the cool club kid who maybe once wore my cowl neck crop top.
As stores reopen, second-hand retailers and buyers find themselves facing a unique set of questions. We are living through a period where reusable coffee cups have been deemed a health risk, and consumers may feel a spike of anxiety with the term “pre-worn.” In reality, second-hand stores clean clothing before selling it, so shopping for vintage clothing online or in person is not actually any riskier than buying new items. But fear is a powerful thing, and many shoppers won’t commit to purchasing preowned–especially investment pieces–without trying it on for size or looking at its condition before buying. So, what does that mean for second-hand shopping going forward? And will it return to what it once was?
Even before stores could reopen at all, the second-hand market was thriving online. The Real Real, a pre-worn luxury marketplace with four retail stores in the U.S., has always primarily operated through e-commerce. Throughout quarantine, A Current Affair, a vintage market with over 150 independent retailers, maintained online sales, auctioned pieces for Black Lives Matter, and held Instagram Lives with popular boutiques and curators, including New York City’s cult-favorite James Veloria.
“During quarantine, when we couldn’t have the store open, we brought as much stock as possible home with us and then I did stories in our living room and sold on Instagram that way,” James Veloria Co-Founder Brandon Giordano shares with CR. During isolation, Instagram sales became a full-time job. “I’d get up in the morning, I’d style my looks for the stories in the evening, I’d pick a playlist, it was a whole thing.” Pairing the fashion with wigs and clever captions, Instagram sales allowed Giordano and Co-Founder Collin Weber to not just continue business—though sales remained at about the same level as pre-quarantine—but to also connect with fans at home.
Though Giordano is excited to be back in James Veloria’s Chinatown shop, the fun and play of quarantine’s Instagram stories have perhaps transformed the store and what it means to customers. New faces have come in since the store reopened, drawn to see the vintage selection in person after following its posts on social media. “It’s like I have these pen pals and we’re meeting in person for the first time,” Giordano says.
While some shops have welcomed the public back with social distancing and masks required, others are opting to keep shopping more intimate. The Lower East Side’s Edith Machinist, a favorite of Hollywood costume designers and It girls alike, is open to customers through private appointments. To shop in-store one can book a free hour-long time slot online. “We have always held private appointments at the shop with industry people, like TV/movie costume designers and fashion design teams, so expanding the private appointments to our retail customers seemed like a natural step,” owner Edie Machinist says to CR. “Being isolated these past months, I think people have missed the chance to explore and interact with pieces in an immersive environment, which is the essence of the brick and mortar experience.” Machinist will also be taking extra precautions by steaming and sanitizing any clothes that customers try on.
Across the country, states are returning to business at different rates, and many retailers have used their own discretion when it comes to reopening. Though Texas governor Greg Abbott’s stay-at-home order expired on April 30, Cella Blue and Marsha Laine, the owners of Flashback Vintage in Austin, Texas, reopened their brick-and-mortar store on July 1. They kept sales up with an Etsy store throughout quarantine and are currently working to ensure that they can safely offer an in-person vintage shopping experience. Customers must wear masks to enter the store, and the two owners are capping the number of customers allowed indoors in order to maintain social distancing protocols. They also share with CR that they, like Machinist, are taking measures to make sure that people can try on clothes without endangering each other. “We quarantine any try-on clothes for 48 hours and we steam them,” they explain.
Potential hazards have not just shifted buyer’s preferences, but are also shaping sourcing practices. Stores that work with individuals have for the most part either stopped new purchases or implemented strict requirements for consignors. Lately, Giordano explains, James Veloria has only accepted items from trusted sellers, often friends of the store who can confirm they are not carrying the virus.
Los Angeles’ Decades is also continuing cautious sourcing. “House calls have to be done extremely sensitively, all the proper protocols have to be maintained,” Silver says. Virtual calls and drop-offs are vital to decreasing unnecessary contact he explains. The warmth and immersive experience of a vintage store is hard to replicate online, but he thinks that even in the event of a re-shutting of stores, there will always be people “wanting to get something new that’s actually old.”
In addition to the sheer thrill of curating outfits with meaningful, unique pieces, second-hand shopping is more environmentally friendly than creating a new garment, something on many consumer’s minds as the pandemic roils on. “People are turning to vintage these days as they learn more about the effects of fast fashion on the environment. People are becoming more aware as they reflect on what is important,” Blue and Laine say.
Clothing does not come from thin air. Every garment represents not just a designer’s artistic vision but also processes of physical labor from artisans and materials that have been extracted from places across the globe. Currently, the fashion industry accounts for about 8.1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. After agriculture, textile dyeing is, according to a Journal of Natural Science report, the “no. 1 polluter of clean water.”
Over the past few months the fashion industry has reckoned with both its exclusion and its environmental impacts. The #RewiringFashion Petition demanded shifts in the fashion calendar for more deliberate design, and the Council of Fashion Designers in America and the British Fashion Council asked designers to practice intentionality and focus on only two collections per year. Gucci relaunched its humanitarian and sustainability initiative. Burberry released a ReBurberry edit and Miu Miu began #MiuMe, both of which revisited old looks, encouraging people to reconsider what had already been made. When we wear pre-loved items we are not simply repurposing, but instead adding new meanings to old pieces and making powerful statements about different periods of time–part of why celebrities have adopted vintage and archival clothing as a red carpet trend in recent years.
The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly rocked the second-hand world, but vintage enthusiasts have nothing to worry about. Between the desire for unique pieces and the growing concern for the environment, it has never been more chic to repeat.
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createdAt:Wed, 08 Jul 2020 15:07:07 +0000
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