The Ethics of Thrifting and Reselling

By Haylee Lake, Anna Keune and Emma Kaase

While reselling thrifted clothes in itself is completely normal and legal, there are circumstances where the morality of reselling is brought into question.

Thrifting has risen in popularity over the last few years due to social media sites such as TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as online shopping sites like Depop. Many individual resellers have recently been criticized by the public for their overpricing of thrifted clothes and how they are taking opportunities away from people with lower incomes. There are some instances where selling secondhand clothing for much higher than the original price is reasonable (the clothing was tailored, sewn, or altered in any way), but many of the clothing items being resold have not been changed, and they are still being sold for over three times the original price. This is not only exploitative, but unsustainable.

Depop, a popular thrifting site, is the most popular victim of this exploitation. In the early 2010’s, Depop was a popular site to find secondhand clothing one might not be able to find at their local thrift shop, and can more easily find affordable clothing, but now it’s hard to find anything there that is not under $30. Depop was an accessible place for people with lower incomes to find nice clothing for prices they can afford, but if the prices are only getting higher, it can force people to turn to fast fashion, a controversial marketing method that solely focuses on rapidly producing high volumes of clothing.

We plan on making a podcast piece to discuss the ethics of thrifting and reselling, as well as looking at different points of view and our opinions of each side of the argument.