Not Just a Trend: Be a Thoughtful Thrifter in Fort Collins
If you’re looking for a cheap, fun way to enhance your style in a unique way, Fort Collins has a great selection of thrift and consignment stores to choose from, such as Arc, Ragstock, Brand Spanking Used, and many others. Thrifting is a recent trend in style that is cost-effective, good for the environment and continues to increase in popularity.
Thrift shopping has a lot of benefits like reducing the waste of resources from big fast-fashion companies that employ child laborers and have unlivable working conditions. Unfortunately, there are a few downsides to the seemingly faultless trend.
It is important to be mindful when shopping at these local thrift stores. It is a privilege that a lot of us can browse these stores for something unique to add to our closets as a cheaper alternative to other retail stores. However, there are a lot of people who are less fortunate than us and have to shop at these second-hand stores by necessity, not as a fun trend.
The poverty rate in Fort Collins, Colorado is 16.31%, just a bit under the average poverty rate of the 50 biggest U.S. cities, which is 17.4%. Because there are many people with less than I am lucky enough to have, I try to be as mindful as possible when shopping at thrift stores so that I am not taking away from those who do not have the privilege to shop there by choice. It is very important to shop in your size and avoid overconsuming and buying to resell when shopping at thrift stores in Fort Collins.
One of the biggest problems with thrifting are large thrift hauls, where a person will go to thrift stores and buy excessive amounts of clothing for cheap prices. These large hauls promote overconsumption and waste, which is one of the biggest issues with the fast-fashion industry, where people will buy a bunch of clothes at once, wear them a few times, then replace them by purchasing new clothes. Overconsumption of clothes from thrift stores can lead to gentrification and is never beneficial wherever you are shopping, so it’s important not to buy in bulk when thrifting.
Another issue with these large thrift hauls is the reselling of clothes. Resellers will buy large amounts of second-hand clothes, then resell them for way more than what they bought them for on websites like Poshmark or Depop. This practice promotes overconsumption and drastically increases the prices of clothes that should have been sold for much cheaper.
This reselling also causes thrift stores to see that their clothes can be sold for more than what they were originally offered for, which causes them to raise their prices as well. In 2020, Goodwill’s prices were nearly three times the cost of their clothes in 2010, and this harsh inflation of prices makes thrifting much less accessible for those in need.
Another way to be mindful of your thrifting practices is to shop in your size. @lily.xxm is a micro-influencer who focuses on environmentalism. When asked about some of the issues of the rising trend of thrifting, she brought up an interesting point that people will shop in the children’s sections of thrift stores to find “baby tees’’ or mini skirts, or will shop in plus size sections to buy clothes for a baggy or oversized look. She stated that “buying plus size clothing or children’s clothing is bad because sometimes those can be hard to come by. Yes, thrift stores have an abundance of clothing, but try to shop in your size and only buy what you really need.” It is really important that if we are going to shop at thrift stores, we are not taking items away from those who might need them and cannot shop in a different section.
However, thrifting is definitely not a bad thing. I’m a really big advocate for it and it has a lot of great benefits. However, it is really important to do it in moderation, without overconsuming and buying things you don’t need. So, next time you go thrifting, try to be extra mindful about your shopping practices so that we can participate in a unique trend without causing any harm to others.
