> It preys on and fuels women’s insecurities to sell them throwaway products made by borderline-enslaved Cambodians.
It sounds like you've never used Depop or learned about it before writing this comment. Depop is the exact opposite. It's a solution to what you're framing as a problem. Depop is a way to recycle clothing rather than throwing it out and buying more - it is actually a reaction to the exact fast fashion you're complaining about.
Perhaps, but I think it can be argued that it encourages more consumerism. The market for second-hand selling may encourage those sellers to buy more new.
Fundamentally the idea of an everchanging fashion is problematic, not just environmentally but also otherwise.
What’s really fun is throwing all anything plastic including wrappers, #5, #7, any metal, any paper basically anything but food into the blue recycling tub that someone comes to pick up and then I can smuggly look down on people that “don’t even care about the planet”, I’m doing my part by blankly assuming all my “recycling” isn’t going into a landfill!
... I wish I would still count the number of people that think that, but it’s too many.
I try to “not buy shit”, and Im pretty sure it’s a lot harder than wishcycling.
Unfortunately that's not necessarily the case. People run full on dropshipping businesses on Depop under the guise of handmade/second hand clothing. There is also widespread "thrift hauls" on Depop where 20 something rich people ransack thrift stores which are staples in low-income communities and sell on Depop for 10x. Depop doesn't do anything to counter the hypercapitalist and wasteful fashion industry - its just another component to it.
This comment is pretty reactionary and maybe doesn't deserve a reply but I've seen variations on this criticism before and as someone that's worked in this space it doesn't make any sense:
> There is also widespread "thrift hauls" on Depop where 20 something rich people ransack thrift stores which are staples in low-income communities
This complaint seems to be based on a profound delusion, which is that the social mission of thrift stores is to provide cheap clothing for people who don't have much money.
The charity aspect of thrift stores, at least historically, has been the money that you give them when you buy stuff there.
So in fact the whole point of the enterprise is to have people who have stuff they don't need donate it to a worthy cause, who sell it to people with money who want it, and then they take the money that they make this way and give it to people who need money or use it to provide needed services etc.
Nobody is "ransacking" a charity by doing the exact thing the charity is hoping people will do, which is giving the charity money that can be used to further charitable activities.
> The charity aspect of thrift stores, at least historically, has been the money that you give them when you buy stuff there.
That's actually completely backwards. The public good that a thrift store provides is to make cheap, essential things accessible to people who can't afford anything else. Goodwill is a nonprofit because there is no profit in making cheap, essential things accessible to people who can't afford to anything else.
I don't know anything about Goodwill, but in the UK there are several charities that run shops and their purpose is as the parent describes - the shops generate revenue for the charity to carry out its work.
The first sentence on the wikipedia page on Charity shop [1] (and "Thrift shop" redirects to the same page) says:
> A charity shop (UK), thrift shop or thrift store (USA) or opportunity shop (others) is a retail establishment run by a charitable organization to raise money.
The Goodwill.org page About Us > Our Vision for Transformation [2] has a section "HOW LOCAL GOODWILLS DELIVER IMPACT" the third item of which starts:
So, it's possible these things are dual-purpose and intended to meet both goals, or that some thrift stores have the goal of raising revenue and some have the goal of making recycled items available cheaply. But certainly parent's point is not backward - at least many thrift stores explicitly operate in order to generate revenue as a form of funding for charitable ventures. People with money buying things from charity shops helps the charities. It's what they want.
The difference between Thrift store prices and new garments in many cases is less than it used to be. Look at uncool stores, JC Penny, Walmart, and a few others, and you can get clothing for very little.
Your whole original comment just seems pretty anachronistic in 2021. Especially as Pride month kicks off, I’d caution you against holding on to antiquated views that the fashion industry is only something for women or has to do primarily with their insecurities.
Whatever else it is, fashion to me is about both aspiration and inspiration. It is something that is creative not just for designers, but also their fans and customers. It is fundamentally about encouraging people to imagine themselves in new ways.
It is emphatically not just some one-way broadcast aimed at a certain, supposedly more impressionable, gender.
It sounds like you've never used Depop or learned about it before writing this comment. Depop is the exact opposite. It's a solution to what you're framing as a problem. Depop is a way to recycle clothing rather than throwing it out and buying more - it is actually a reaction to the exact fast fashion you're complaining about.