Nostalgia, the Internet, and the Rise of Sustainability Chic

I know you’ve seen them. On Twitter, screenshots float around of Depop listings where Abercrombie and Fitch skirts obviously worth $40 are resold for $150. And what makes this so, so much worse is the pastiche of keywords accompanying the listing, completely unrecognisable to the non-chronically online: #fairycore #twilightcore #y2k #acubi #juicy couture #whimsigoth #indie sleaze #office siren #ed hardy #dark academic #garden goth #gyaru #goblincore #balletcore #true religion #affliction #blokette.

This is infuriating in many ways: the brazen scalping, the incoherent world salad that would leave Noam Chomsky scratching his head—all of it. Yet, this is the natural outcome of what I call “sustainability chic”: a phenomenon whereby Gen Z attributes cultural prestige to those who engage in sustainable practices, most notably secondhand, or “thrift” shopping. During the years of the pandemic, secondhand shopping took the spotlight with its meteoric rise in popularity and, unlike other short-lived cultural trends, it doesn’t seem to be going away.

The colossal and seemingly arbitrary rise in secondhand shopping owes its origin in large part to Y2K nostalgia. Sure, Gen Z grew up in the aughts, but we were still too young to actually participate in that cultural landscape. It seemed back then everywhere was blooming with revolution: the New York music scene, Britney shaving her head, even 9/11… we re-consume all these relics like famished mice. There is a sense of frustration among Gen Z about having been there yet missing it all: the party scene, the flip phones, American Pie, the last moments of unselfconscious existence before social media came along and our every experience had to become worthy of documentation.

The 2020s are far from a good time to be young. In between climate anxieties and an increasingly warped political landscape, all this generation craves is escape. We want to reclaim a youth that is carefree, wild, incandescent—the way the movies taught us.

This craving, this crying out, then became sublimated into a taste for 2000s fashion (for is there a better way to express a spiritual longing than through consumption?). The style of clothing, with its low-slung jeans, bejewelled jackets, and chunky belts had ceased to be produced by dominant garment brands in the 2020s, driving Gen Z to buy secondhand. But the nostalgia for a half-remembered time is just part of it.

The shift in tastes towards secondhand shopping itself can also largely be attributed to its perceived sustainability. With data showing that concern about the climate is higher among younger age groups, it is no surprise that Gen Z consumers are conscious of the effects their habits have on the environment. Instead of throwing old clothes away, we are more likely to resell them online. Similarly, when shopping for new pieces, websites like Depop and Vinted come first to mind rather than fast fashion brands. For those who prefer doing their thrifting in person, charity shops have also adapted to orient themselves towards the Gen Z crowd.

Objectively speaking, this is a good thing for the climate. Consuming secondhand means less demand for new goods and fewer goods being sent to the landfill, and the mitigating effects of those actions cannot be overstated. In the era of climate crisis (we’re in our climate crisis era!), any action that helps the planet must be sustained.

But there is also undoubtedly an aesthetic, taste-based component to this behaviour. It’s not just that we’ve all started thrifting because of unadulterated concern for the planet—in fact, I wish it were the case. It is that the old and the used has become hip and desirable, and been awarded a level of cultural prestige. There is now status afforded to those sporting the trendiest thrifted clothing, whose vintage belts have just a tasteful amount of rust. Sustainability itself is in fashion.

So, what might have grown from a concern for the planet and a desire to find cute clothes has become a sprawling empire. Influencers on Instagram post weekly “unbox with me” videos where they open ten packages from Vinted at a time, cooing at the pieces that turn out to be a hit and promising to resell those that don’t quite cut it to their eager audience. On the weekends, flea markets specifically targeted at young people fill convention centres, replete with live DJs and afterparties. Curated thrift shops have appeared across major cities, shops which essentially buy pre-sorted landfill clothes in bulk and resell them at a moderate markup. Secondhand shopping has moved from being an economic necessity to a trendy cultural pastime.

However, embedded within this explosion are rising ethical concerns. It is well known that the used clothing supply chain is shrouded in mystery, and troublingly so, given that the movement of said clothing between the global North and South may contribute to economic imperialism. Within metropolises, when the affluent class turns to shopping secondhand, thrift stores become gentrified, alienating their traditionally working-class clientele. On the Internet, influencers with ample disposable income order dozens of packages from secondhand sites a day, peddling ravenous overconsumption sublimated through “thrift girlie” personas. The aesthetics of sustainability are used, in these circumstances, to mask unethical practices and shield their purveyors from criticism. The secondhand market, like so many others, belies a deepening of the existing economic hegemony and its accompanying inequities—yet it is absolved thanks to a fetishised notion of “sustainability”.

This brings us, finally, to the Depop sellers: embodiments of sustainability chic brought to a pathological absurdity. To be fair, the act of curating second-hand goods to sell at a premium is nothing new (see flea markets) and allows consumers willing to spend more to bypass the search and choose directly from a crop of high-quality goods. The difference is that while flea market resellers typically obtain their goods from established suppliers and possess a discerning eye for value, online resellers are teens operating out of their bedrooms. And this is why you see Depop listings that read: “#fairycore #grunge #y2k #coquette tank top” and it’s a camisole with a SHEIN tag that’s being priced at $55. Bonus points if the accompanying image is of the piece laid flat with its waist egregiously cinched, to give the impression that with the top you’ll achieve that matcha girl snatched waist (or something).

For experienced online thrift shoppers, the profound number of listings like these are an eyesore. But aggravating as they are, they are no more than a result of our culture’s newfound valuation of all things secondhand. Fashion has always been an objectified form of cultural capital, and this is amplified by how we see clothing now, where the mere origin of a piece warrants esteem.

Depop resellers neatly illustrate this social shift through the economic medium. These young adults operate on a simple understanding that a secondhand piece has inherent embodied capital, and the rarer or trendier a piece, the greater the capital, and the more they are incentivised to convert it into its economic form. This is sustainability chic: the idea that buying a secondhand piece that slots neatly into the fashion trend du jour—even if it is just overpriced fast fashion slop ready-made for landfill—is inherently more desirable. After all, there is a lot more prestige in telling your friends that your leather jacket was thrifted, even if it is just one more degree of separation away from the same factory.

Another reason for the Depop phenomenon is the fact that thrifting, being itself a cultural trend (albeit a long-lasting one), means that many engage with it on a purely superficial level. There is much less of a change in the way we view consumption and the life cycle of a product. Our bestial urge to consume remains, but the focus is shifted away from new goods to used ones. We exist in the same trend cycles, purchasing just as much as we want, yet we still want to claim the prestige of sustainability. Which is why these micro-labels: “clean girl”, “mob wife”, “rockstar girlfriend” exist. We slot clothing into neat little categories, each embodying a certain type of character, a pre-packaged identity ready to wear. In the ultimate emblem of commodity fetishism we become what we consume—only now we can afford the luxury of consuming overpriced secondhand items in a mutant fusion of sustainability and capitalism.

So, where do we go from here? In the era of short-form, bite-sized content, which—let’s face it—plays a major role in how Gen Z interfaces with reality, the appropriation of sustainability chic and the distillation of the self into what one consumes seems likely to continue. Nevertheless, even if it is an aesthetic performance, sustainability is still sustainability. Poor decision-making aside, I would much rather someone (not me though) buy a Hollister tank top above the retail price on Depop than new from the store. Yet, claiming to be sustainable and environmentally-conscious is futile if we continue to approach secondhand shopping through a lens of consumerism.

If we actually want to be sustainable, we need to cultivate a radically different relationship to our possessions. How exactly this would look is somewhat difficult to articulate, but a good start would be a shift in the way we think about consumption. When we grow tired of an article of clothing, instead of trying to discard it the ethical way by running to Vinted and selling it for 10 euros more than it’s worth, we can modify it to suit our new sensibilities. Our brains may be hard-wired by years of socialisation in capitalist society to release dopamine when we make a purchase, but we can train them to do this through other means: like making our own jewellery, or painting an old pair of jeans, or sewing an ill-fitting top into a silhouette that’s actually flattering. Ultimately what is most beneficial in the long run is to develop a sense of personal style that will not grow old, that will not be rendered ineffectual by passing trends.

In the long term, slowing down consumption for the sake of our planet would require an overhaul in the way we relate to the things we own. There is this ever-present idea that possessions must be an exact reflection of the self and act as a physical, digestible extension of our personalities. But because we ourselves are constantly changing, and even the way we are told to be is constantly changing, the link between ourselves and our possessions is tenuous and fluctuating. So we cycle through them.

Perhaps just changing the method of consumption is not enough. To properly exorcise the devil of consumption, one must let go of the idea that possessions are a necessary companion to the fragile self.