Second Hand September

September signals a fresh start; back to school, turning leaves and now, a chance to fight fast fashion. This month marks the second year of Oxfam’s “Second Hand September”. 

Launched at Download festival in 2019, Second Hand September involves a pledge to shop only second hand for 30 or more days. The hashtag #SecondHandSeptember has been used by celebrities and everyday Instagrammers over 70,000 times. This year, British actress and writer Michaela Coel is the face of the movement. 

According to Oxfam, every week 13 million items of clothing ends up in UK landfill. Fast fashion has tragic environmental and humanitarian ramifications as Reaction reported back in July.

Though fast fashion has undeniably reached top speed (last year Boohoo.com sold a £1 bikini) second-hand buying has found an unexpected wave in popularity, mainly through eco-conscious Gen-Z. The secondhand fashion market is now a £1.5bn industry and according to the retail platform ThredUp, is expected to double in the next five years. Almost 50% of 25-to-34-year-olds are also said to have sold old clothes in the last year. 

From charity shops to Depop, welcome to second-wave second-hand. 

The Charity Shop

Emerald UK defines the charity shop as serving four purposes; “they offer a social service, enable the recycling of goods, help raise awareness of the charity and provide a fundraising medium.” 

Charity shops reduce textile landfill and carbon emissions by recycling products, stabilise high streets by occupying empty buildings and offer paid and voluntary employment. 

The shops largely rely on donations and volunteers; they are excluded from corporation tax with zero VAT rating and tax relief on giving. After costs such as rent, mortgages, cleaning and maintenance are fulfilled all remaining sales income is used in accord with the organization’s charitable purpose.

Many charity shops offer social mobility schemes. Asylum seekers can volunteer on the tills to quickly learn English, and in 2006, Sue Ryder launched their Prison and Community Justice programme (PCJP). The programme helps rehabilitate low-risk offenders reaching the end of their sentence. Prisoners learn new skills through placements in stores and care centres. Sue Ryder reported 94% of volunteers received full-time employment offers following their placements. 

Known as thrift shops in the US, Op-Shops in Australia or charity shops in the UK, these stores are accessible and open to everyone. A research paper by DEMOS for the Charity Retail association found; “Women are 1.6 times more likely to shop in charity shops than men, but no other demographic category (age, social class, ethnicity, religion or geographical region) is a statistically significant predictor of use.”

A history

Anyone with a big family will be used to hand-me-downs but it was not until the Second World War that the charity shop became a widespread phenomenon. In 1937, Edinburgh University Settlement opened a “Thrift Shop for Everyone” and four years later the Red Cross opened its first charity shop at 17 Bond Street in London. 

The model for the charity shops we know today was created in 1947. Oxfam put out an appeal for clothes and blankets to send to the then famine-struck Greece. The generous response left them with a significant surplus, so they decided to sell them as a way of raising additional funds for their work. On 17 Broad Street in Oxford, the first Oxfam charity shop was opened. 

In the 1950s Sue Ryder opened its stores and later in 1993, The Salvation Army did the same. 

At the start of the 1960s, incomes were at a post-war high. Disposable incomes, a revolution for women’s rights and great social change created the perfect space for the advent of “throwaway fashion”. Trends became more daring and fashion more important, especially to young people. Charity shops experienced a second-hand boom from this newfound expression of individuality.

In recent years English retail consultant and broadcaster Mary Portas set out to change the face of charity shops with Mary’s Living and Giving boutiques, a collaboration with Save The Children to create boutique charity shops that predominantly deal with designer clothing. There are 25 Mary’s Living and Giving boutiques in the UK, predominantly based in upmarket areas of London such as Stoke Newington and Wimbledon.

But the true change for second-hand culture has come through the shift to online shopping.

Second-hand goes digital

In 2020 our shopping has largely moved online, and second hand is no exception. In 1995 eBay was invented, a home for flogging old bits and bobs and clothing, this was followed by Gumtree in 2000; designer and vintage reseller Vestiaire Collective in 2009, Depop in 2011 and Facebook marketplace in 2016. 

The advent of online marketplaces for second hand has in many ways improved the options; wrestling with clothes rails and stacks of unorganised clothes in charity shops is not for the impatient. But second-hand has become synonymous with vintage in the fashion world, leading to price hikes.

Depop dominates the market with 21 million users, approximately 90% of which are under 26. They have rebranded recycling clothes for the younger generation; clothes are no longer “second hand” but “pre-loved”. 

On the surface, Depop is a modern take on second hand, a continuing effort to reduce the carbon emissions of the retail industry, but recently the app has come under fire for reselling charity shop merchandise at a higher price. Known as “upselling” sellers ransack local charity shops for products that will appeal to target audiences (#Y2K aka clothing from the 2000s is a popular search term). Labelled the “gentrification of Depop” the lack of regulation on the online market means charity shops are robbed of profit through a lack of understanding of the true worth of their items and robbed of their original function by taking affordable clothing out of the shops. 

The point of a charity shop is not to operate at a price point which allows us to buy even more clothes but to provide clothing for those who cannot always afford high street prices. Pushing the prices on second-hand sites up means the cheapest option is often fast fashion sites like Boohoo.com, therefore invalidating one of the key selling points of charity shops; ethical consumption.