Do not think down about second-hand: Russians were seduced by worn rags by weight

Our secondhand stores are far from Aladdin’s cave

In the spring and summer of 2022, the interest of Russians in second-hand stores and other second-hand shops increased sharply. Indications vary: some sources claim that the demand for used items has increased by more than 2.5 times, others say a modest 20%. By the way, official second-hand shops are just the tip of the iceberg, and after all, the sale of used items is also actively going on from hand to hand on the Internet … In a word, the statistics and the accompanying news instantly scattered across social networks. And they were supplemented with lamentations: what have we lived to, about the Russians? What do we see? What are we doing? We buy used rags!

What is the problem?! It would seem that this is no longer a shame. Even vice versa. The characters in Sex and the City long ago taught us how to boldly combine $300 sandals from a Manhattan boutique with a $3 thrift dress. Fashion influencers now and then brag about the unique English tea dresses, bought for next to nothing at flea markets somewhere under the bridge. Moscow stylists tell how vintage jeans outperform modern ones.

Yes, and environmental activists are on the alert, everyone is calling for less buying of new things in order to reduce the carbon footprint and not encourage the consumer society … And only stupid Masha from the Novokosino region, with tears in her eyes, tells her friend that she had to go to a second-hand shop for an autumn raincoat. hand. Completely stupid! Old fashioned. And he does not understand his happiness. I would look at fashion bloggers: they buy things in second-hand stores and are not shy … not shy to go out in front of people at the same time in a used jacket from the 90s and in trendy boots …

Stop. Therein lies the solution. Those who call to appreciate vintage and not shy away from second-hand things usually mean ANOTHER second-hand. More precisely, another scenario of his visit. It is the one in which you can miraculously find something like a Dior dress of 1947, miraculously lost among rags, and then tell your girlfriends tales about the miraculous find of the “princess dress”. Which you successfully integrate into your already good wardrobe and, sensitively following the advice of a stylist, you will choose combinations with modern clothing items. It’s hard to call such a place second-hand, it’s some kind of wonder-filled cave of fashionable Aladdin…

However, for the average Russian buyer, things are a little different. For him, second-hand is a dull place where you go to buy clothes in bulk, because you have no choice: jeans are worn out, and there is no money for new (unused!) ones. Really not, not at all. And the “buy less new” option, along with calls to save the environment, will be irrelevant: if you don’t buy second-hand, you won’t buy anything at all, so the environment will not suffer.

The difference is visible to the naked eye. So do not pass off need as a virtue – and confuse tourism with emigration. And to talk about the popularity and trendiness of second-hand to those who have visited there is clearly not from a good life. Second second strife.

There is also a traditional Russian problem – we again hurried. It does not matter, due to external circumstances or on their own initiative, but they hurried. That’s just people are not amused, rather the opposite. So in 10-15 years, the ideology of second-hand stores and other conscious consumption could play with a bang. By that time, perhaps, those who remember too well the meaning of the verb “to get” and the noun “deficit” would have left the economically active age, who remember the practice of endless wearing of things by the younger after the elders, and indeed the popular option “Look, Aunt Sveta after giving birth, she got fat and handed you a whole bag of things, so we won’t buy anything new ”… in a word, those who have a pattern fixed in their brain: worn means for the poor.

The problem is not in clothes and not even in poverty, or rather, not only in it. The problem is in our recent past: in the language of psychologists, in the conditions of cultivation. For the same reason, the idea of ​​persuading Russians to consciously, of their own free will, give up cars is failing, and it is obviously useless to set the Americans, Italians or Japanese as an example here. Because it is extremely difficult to convince those who, just 25-30 years ago, had the opportunity to simply buy a car for money, and not stand in line to receive it, to “deliberately refuse” it. Those who fully appreciated the phrase “A car is not a luxury, but a means of transportation.” Grandchildren, perhaps, would have managed, but we hurried.

The same with the idea of ​​using reusable cups, going for milk with your own bottle in the name of ecology, or, excuse me, ditching pads and tampons in favor of very comfortable rags that are so easy to wash. It could work out, but in 15 years, when the target audience, so to speak, would be left by women who remember other rags too well. Those that existed not in the name of ecology, but because of the lack of alternatives.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28853 dated August 24, 2022

Newspaper headline:
Don’t think about second-hands