You must exist. You must exist within your means. You’re doing your best to minimize the impact. It’s fine. You’re doing good.

Also, increased demand at thrift stores doesn’t increase the supply of thrift from donations and doesn’t increase the consumption of fast fashion. At most it decreases the amount of things the thrift store throws out. So that’s a win too.

As for appearance? 🤷‍♂️ I stopped caring about stranger’s opinions long ago. Not sure how people survive otherwise. I remember it being stressful and exhausting.

So I’m going to come at this from a different perspective because I’ve put a lot of thought in to this topic in other ways. I’m vegan, meaning I do not buy, consume or use any animal products, which obviously includes leather or fur. However since I am not financially supporting those industries by paying for those products and the perpetuation of animal abuse practices, I consider it moral for me to buy those items 2nd hand.

However I do not, for two big reasons:

1. Ew. It’s literally skin. That’s so gross. I don’t want to touch leather, let alone wear it.
2. The perception of those viewing me, I don’t want to be seen as a person that pays for fur and leather. Wearing an item is tacit endorsement of the item to everyone who views you, strangers included.

So to bring it back around, yes you can thrift fast fashion ethically. So long as you understand that anyone who recognize it as fast fashion, will reasonably think you buy fast fashion and support the industry. Up to you if that’s something you are comfortable with it.

no.

Unlike an expensive phone, where the initial purchase may have been made with the expectation to still get a couple hundred after a few years, I see no connection whatsoever between your buying second hand fast fashion and the first buyer’s purchase decision. They would have bought it regardless of whether it would become trash or second hand.

In short: no.

tldr; no, you aren’t.

My friend is a factory liaison who connects all of those factories(avoid “3rd world”, that’s a defunct, demeaning political/economic epithet) with markets around the world: Walmart, Apple, Microsoft, e’erbody, and has explained to me and shown me product orders and shipping manifests regarding the volume and production method of every company of any size in any industry; they are all operating the same way fast fashion does: overproduction and profit margin obscurity.

If you buy anything these days, from nearly any company, you’re technically financially enabling some sort of unsavory labor, but there are several things to keep in mind, primarily that your individual shopping choices do not cause and will not affect modern systems of production.

Fast fashion in particular is going to produce produce produce. It doesn’t matter how much people buy, they will keep producing absurd amounts of clothing because the markets don’t know how truly cheap clothing is to produce; the profit margin is and has been worth massive overproduction for years. The majority of fast fashion products can instantly be thrown away and become mountains of trash and those factories will still be turning an enormous profit.

If you are buying secondhand, you are participating less in that system of production, and that’s really all you can do and it is a laudable choice! Nobody except greed was really responsible for overproduction in the first place.

You literally wouldn’t believe the capacity, production, and near zero cost these factories produce all items in.

Fast fashion is not unique. If you buy an air fryer, or a smartphone, or dishes, blankets, nearly anything from a factory, it’s the same system and method of production.

You probably don’t have the option to buy handmade dishes, blankets, and you definitely don’t have the option to buy handcrafted electronics, and that is not your fault, that is the system that mercantilism leading into industrial capitalism facilitated.

Buying secondhand is the best you can do to not participate in an unhealthy economic system, and that’s a great choice. Factories, however, are operating on such wide margins that they will produce regardless.

I don’t have anything to add to the answers to your question but I would advise to avoid Shein even second hand. Their clothes have been tested to contain dangerous levels of toxins several times. Other fast fashion brands are not more ethical in production but at least they keep the chemicals within the regulations.

I’m extremely enthusiastic about used stuff.

Folks who buy new products will buy them anyway, and it’ll either end up in a landfill or used by someone else. Mind as well use it.

And, think of the opportunity cost. Your fast fashion presumably replaces “budget” new clothes you’d buy instead, which shrinks sweatshop market demand as a whole.

Also:

• If you’re feeling guilty about skipping “sustainable” brands, a lot of those are cons anyway. Some are fine, but there’s a good chance you’d just make some lying jerk richer.

• For heavens sake, if you like fast fashion, enjoy your passion.

Thrift shops that get donated stuff: no

Everything where the person who buys at the bad places gets money: debatable, but still better than letting it get thrown into a landfill

We have a similar discussion in vegan circles. Where we argue against buying second hand leather, down, and wool. The reason is that the second hand market continues to give value to the exploitation of animals. I.e. It normalizes these products. It keeps those products desirable.

The same argument absolutely applies to child labour. Why would you want to keep those products desirable? Is your image, your way of presenting yourself, really more important than child labour? You really do not have to participate in this, nobody who values you as a human will think less of you. In fact, it’s the morally upstanding way to live.

The responsibility of wearing and using a product doesn’t start and end at the first purchase. It continues and changes over time. Fur coats are now generally frowned upon. And who feels comfortable wearing crocodile leather, or ivory beads. These things are out of fashion, for a reason.

And I understand the ecological argument, that it’s a waste of resources. I really do sympathise with this argument. But in the end it’s just saying no to buying something you never really needed in the first place. It’s never an actual decision. Your life doesn’t depends on a piece of designer clothing, or whatever product. And if it does, none of these arguments matter.

So, no it’s a choice and in the end the ethical choice is the one that’s most closely related to being a human being in this world.

If we want to be dead honest about it - yes. It’s like second-hand guilt. You’re buying it off from someone who, whether they care or not, bought it first hand that it was made through child labor in 3rd world country. They donated it, they didn’t want it and you went to get it. You’re in possession of said item with the knowledge of how it was made.

Just because you weren’t the first who bought it, doesn’t cancel out just buying it altogether.

A few thoughts:

• Depends how much money you are spending to buy those clothes. If it’s almost the same as the price as new, it makes it easier for the people who buy the clothes new to keep buying more and more stuff.
• If you aren’t spending a lot of money, this is like the opposite of fast fashion. You are making the life cycle of those clothes longer by buying them.

PS. I don’t think we should individualize things like this. A significant chunk of the clothes we buy – and other things as well – are made under miserable conditions and/or by children, and it’s very difficult to avoid all of that. It’s a systemic issue that needs to be solved on a systemic level.

Unpopular opinion: yes, you do. 2nd-hand markets contribute to the value of the original item even for things like clothing. When you buy a 2-year old car with intention to sell at 4 years, the price you are willing to pay includes the resale value you expect to get later. Which in turn influences the price of the new car that the original buyer is willing to pay. Another commenter mentioned cell phones having a chain of resales too.

But even for cheaper items that are donated instead of resold, the 2nd-hand use of the item has a non-zero effect on the original production and sale of it, because the act of donation itself is a notable event. You give away an item for free instead of throwing it in the trash because you think the item still has some value and you want someone else to enjoy that value. This works whether you give it directly for free to a person, or donate to a charity shop that then resells it. A charity donation is also recorded as tax-deductible.

The act of donation frees you from guilt/responsibility for throwing the item away without using up its full value. You are then free to buy more of the same item new. Faster than you would have otherwise, had the charity shop not existed. You also value it more, knowing that someone else can use it after you.

So here is a practical scenario for how this effect works. Imagine what would happen if instead of buying problematic child-labor fast fashion clothing from a 2nd-hand charity shop, you refuse! You keep wearing the clothing you have, or buy some non-problematic boring 2nd-hand clothing instead. And I do too. And every other charity store shopper stops buying them as well. Then the charity shop will refuse to take donations of those fast-fashion clothing, right? Just as they would refuse if you brought them a box of VHS tapes today. When the people would bring boxes of their mildly-used fast-fashion clothing for donation, they would be turned away - “nobody wants to buy those!”

Those people might not believe in their responsibility to eliminate child labor, but they still thought of themselves as good people, because they wanted to donate the remaining value for free, but now they can’t. They have to either keep wearing those clothes themselves, or throw them in the trash without feeling good about it. They end up buying fast-fashion clothes less frequently, or buying other clothes instead. Either way, the value of new fast-fashion clothes goes down and less of them are produced, and fewer children are employed to make them. All because of 2nd-hand.

IMO, the only way to consume the remaining value of a 2nd-hand item without having an influence on its original production, is to literally pull it out of the trash. And you have to do it in a way that the original owner isn’t aware of it. Because if they knew, they might feel good about it. Like a baker who makes extra bread knowing that most of it will be unsold and go in the trash at the end of the day, because they have seen people rummaging in the trash bin for food at night (not saying that’s bad, just pointing out the chain of influence).

It depends if you’re popular or not. People might copy your style and purchase the fast fashion directly because of you, even if you got it second hand. Say for example you’re Taylor Swift, and you literally steal the fast fashion cloths directly from the factory to wear in public. You are still indirectly financially enabling child labor and probably boosting the business.

Yes.

It depends on what you would have bought otherwise—you presumably buy a limited amount of clothing, so what purchase is it replacing?

It’s also possible that a subsequent shopper who was set on buying Shein but was checking thrift stores first will now buy new items instead—but I can’t say how likely that might be.