Day two of my self-imposed spending ban, I caught myself clicking on the Vinted icon out of reflex. The moment I realised my mistake, it was too late.
Day two of my self-imposed spending ban, I caught myself clicking on the Vinted icon out of reflex. The moment I realised my mistake, it was too late. Like a bull fixed on the red flag, I was captivated, almost salivating at the sight of an Ann Demeulemeester top, only for seventy pounds! This Pavlovian slip made me realise I, indeed, have a problem.
Like most Gen Z women online, I know the emptiness that settles in after the thrill of the chase — when the parcel you’ve tracked for days ends up in the pile on your chair. The excitement dissolves into clutter. Each night, we fall asleep to thrift hauls, the hum of consumption buzzing in our ears.
The 2020s have witnessed the meteoric rise of thrifting. Once a niche pursuit for the frugal, it’s now a badge of taste — embraced for sustainability but also for the gratification of feeling unique. Yet even if my clothes aren’t made in sweatshops, doesn’t the sheer amount pose a concern? Is thrifting really a tool to fight overconsumption, or just a coping mechanism that helps us feel better?
According to The BOF report, resale is expected to account for 10% of global fashion sales by year's end, reaching $350 billion by 2028. On TikTok, #thrifthaul videos rack up millions of views, showing people combing through Goodwill racks or unboxing “rare archive finds.” Platforms like Depop, Vinted, and Vestiaire Collective turned what was once a slow, local ritual into a global marketplace. Vinted alone reported a 36% revenue increase to last year, becoming France’s top clothing retailer. Second-hand shopping isn’t a subculture anymore — it’s the new mainstream.
This shift says as much about society as it does about style. With rising inequality and shrinking purchasing power, thrifting offers an affordable entry into a world that feels unreachable. Yet if price was the only factor, fast fashion would still dominate. The appeal runs deeper: for Gen Z, it’s about identity — the satisfaction of owning something no one else has, unless you count someone’s aunt who wore Apple Bottoms long before you had teeth to bite an apple.
In an age where algorithms flatten individuality, second-hand fashion promises authenticity. A Tom Ford-era Gucci belt or a perfectly faded Y2K cami feels like proof of taste — a relic of better times. Much of Gen Z’s thrifting habit is tangled with nostalgia for eras we barely lived through. During COVID, it was Y2K and Juicy tracksuits; now, the grit of the 2010s has returned under the banner of indie sleaze. As Fake Mink raps, “2025, yea my jeans still Hedi.” These recycled aesthetics aren’t just trends; they’re proof of a generation trying to anchor itself in an era that constantly resets.
Vintage isn’t just old fabric; it’s memory — a link to times before uniformity. Many shoppers imagine the lives of those who wore these clothes before them, constructing micro-narratives from each piece. Yohji Yamamoto sought “the unconscious beauty of the only piece of clothing someone owns, patched up, exposed to the sun and rain, and tattered in daily use.” That imperfection — that soul — is precisely what modern fashion feels starved for.
But authenticity is a tricky currency. The more we chase it, the more it becomes something to be performed and resold. Even sustainability can be commodified. Before digitilization, thrifting was slow: you wandered into a charity shop, crossed your fingers and rummaged through mildew-scented piles. Now, every scroll offers the possibility of a “rare” find to turn you into the coolest version of yourself. NSS Magazine called Vinted “a cartography of fashion, where scrolling feels like a modern treasure hunt.”
It’s not even the search that hooks you — it’s the anticipation. I’ve bought countless pieces convinced they’d transform my wardrobe, maybe even my personality. Yet when the parcels arrived, the void remained. Studies show dopamine isn’t released when we get a reward, but when we expect one. Each time Depop refresh, triggers the same dopamine hit as a slot machine. The chase becomes habit; habit becomes compulsion — then, inevitably, an overdraft.
Days split between the monotony of a 9 to 5 and the horror of wars and genocides, thrifting gives back the thrill of discovery. Maybe that’s why we care so much about finding the perfect going-out top, it’s one of the few surprises left that doesn’t come from the news.
And the hunt doesn’t end when the parcel arrives — it just moves to TikTok. #ThriftHaul has over a million posts, many showing women tipping piles onto their beds with the same greed as Shein hauls. As Vogue Arabia observed in their 2025 article, “haul culture has infected the last supposedly slow corners of fashion.” Resale apps mimic fast fashion’s adrenaline with “new-in” tabs and algorithms promising rarity. What began as a rejection of overconsumption has become another arena for it — an ethical mirror of the system it sought to dismantle.
On Depop, where nearly 90% of users are under 26, sellers are often students guessing what counts as “archive.” Many buyers pay inflated prices for common pieces. Absurd listings — a “vintage” H&M skirt for £80, a “Y2K” tank from 2017 — are mocked online, yet they sell. The market, it seems, always finds a buyer.
This is the paradox: a generation more conscious than any before, yet also the most compulsive consumers. Surveys show 75% of young shoppers buy second-hand to reduce waste, but nearly half admit they do it to be trendy. Sustainability has become aesthetic yet individual change feels futile when the system depends on our inability to stop scrolling. As Vox put it, “the psychic burden laid upon shoppers and sellers to operate ethically under a flawed system can be overwhelming.”
Maybe that’s the real trap — the industry doesn’t need to trick us anymore, because we’ve learned to trick ourselves. Thrifting lets us play both rebel and consumer. We tell ourselves we’re saving the planet, but we’re just buying the same fantasy of status and visibility, dressed in Galliano.