‘They have good intentions, but resale apps like Depop make it easier
for us to keep buying new clothes’
Ellen Coyne
There are a lot of positives to buying pre-owned clothes. First of all,
you get more value for money from dresses you’re likely to only wear
once for formal events like weddings. I have twice resold dresses and
outfits that I originally bought second hand for weddings or hen
parties, reducing the cost per wear for me and also giving the outfit
the chance to be worn and appreciated by someone else.
In Ireland, reselling apps have reached the critical mass that actually
makes it more reliable and possibly faster to buy an outfit second hand
than to order it online. No delivery company can match the efficiency of
a girlie who knows you need a dress by the weekend. More than once,
outfits I’ve bought on Depop have been delivered to me the next day.
Despite being founded on a good intention, clothing resale apps may make
it easier for some to keep buying new clothes and wear them only once
But it’s this critical mass, and the scale of the reselling market in
Ireland, that makes me question if we might be greenwashing our own
unhealthy consumption habits through pre-loved shopping.
I have found that, more often than not, if and when I see a dress I like
on the high street or on a popular online store like ASOS I can almost
always find the same one for sale, second hand, on Depop. If you’re
within a certain size range, it’s very likely that you can find someone
else who is selling the exact thing you’re looking for at a lower price
than you would pay for it new.
But what does that mean? To me, it seems to indicate that a rise in
pre-loved shopping in Ireland is probably having little effect on the
rate at which we consume clothes. Apps like Depop are awash with dresses
that have only just hit the rails on the high street. So rather than
loving, using and caring for a garment for a long time, before passing
it on to someone else, it seems that we are still buying clothes at the
same rate.
Despite being founded on the good intention to try to slow down our
environmentally disastrous shopping habits, I think clothing resale apps
may actually just make it easier for some to keep buying new clothes
with a view to wearing them only once. Then, they’re resold and the
money you make from selling them makes it easier to buy more. I’m
conscious that this trend is also coming at a time where almost every
single major online clothing store offers buy now pay later
arrangements, which have also gone mainstream in Ireland through popular
finance apps like Revolut.
The issue I think is that the modern solutions we’ve concocted to try to
manage our shopping habits all orientate around finding more morally
comfortable ways to buy more clothes. Dress rentals and pre-loved
shopping, while clearly better than buying new clothes that we treat as
disposable, still indulge the idea that we need a new outfit for every
occasion. That underlying idea needs to be challenged before we can
really challenge the trend of disposable clothes.
Irish Independent
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