MOLLY ROSE MCGRANE
Buying Second Hand: Vintage, not Tacky
Sites where you can resell clothes are rapidly growing in popularity. These include Depop, Poshmark, Mercari, Curtsy, and traditional sites like E-bay and Facebook Marketplace. Additionally, more and more people are opening up their own vintage shops on Instagram and other social media apps.
With so many options, how can you stay up to date on where to shop and what to buy? Here are some helpful tips.
Namebrand and Expensive Clothing: TheRealReal and Poshmark
If you’re looking for quality name-brand clothing for cheaper than retail price, shop on TheRealReal. They have an impressive selection and a great quality assurance policy, but their prices are set. If you’re ready to bargain for better deals, Poshmark also has a lot of name-brand and expensive clothing from individual sellers that you can make offers to. You can also filter out clothes that are “new with tags” for deals on clothes that have never been worn.
Poshmark also has good customer support, but make sure you look at pictures closely to avoid getting stuck with something you don’t want.
Trendy and Vintage Clothing: Depop and Curtsy
If you’re looking for trendy and affordable clothing Depop and Curtsy are great options. Depop gets a lot more traffic than Curtsy (twenty-seven million vs. several hundred thousand users), but because Curtsy is up and coming in the second-hand fashion world, it also has great clothes that other people haven’t found yet.
Other options: E-bay and Facebook Marketplace
There is a beautiful vintage clothing store called Sororite, but their prices were high before Billie Eilish and Gigi Hadid were spotted wearing some of their products. Most of what they feature is out of my budget. When they drop new items, I will look for brands or specific words accompanying vintage pieces that I like, and then I will make an e-bay search alert for that brand or product. That way, when someone lists something specific that I’m looking for, I can find it. This is my preferred way to use E-bay and Facebook marketplace because they are huge platforms that are easy to get lost in, especially if you have an ADHD brain like me. You can usually save searches on most of these sites for specific products, and then they will notify you when these products are listed.
Ultimately there are many places you can go to find whatever you’re looking for. Remember to look for measurements when available since sizes (especially women’s) fluctuate so much. Try to bargain with and message sellers on apps that allow it, like Poshmark and Depop. You never know how great of a deal you can get if you never ask. If you’re looking for affordability, stay away from ‘Boutique’ items on Poshmark and stick to what looks like regular people selling their regular closets. And if you’re looking to buy more expensive items, ALWAYS screenshot what you’re interested in and run the screenshot through an image search site like google images. This will pull up where the piece is available on other sites, and you might be able to find it much cheaper.
Ultimately, try to know what you’re looking for when you go to these sites. They are vast, and plenty of people are reselling clothes to make quick money (sometimes you can still get a great deal from them). Happy hunting!
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