Americans in greater numbers are buying used clothing.
Fans call it vintage clothing. They believe that buying old and used clothes can save money. They also consider it good for the environment and Elegant. Vintage stores sell clothing from earlier times. The stores often carry famous brands and sell them at low prices.
Vintage clothing has been on the rise for about 10 years. It is largely driven by a new generation of people concerned with sustainable ways of living. That means they want to waste less and use natural resources carefully.
In 2018, the United Nations said that the Fashion The industry causes “about 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.” The UN said the industry uses more energy than the aircraft and shipping industries combined.
Jen Mason is the owner of Underground Vintage in Lewes, Delaware, a town on the Atlantic coast. She said that the clothes in the store that are not sold are provided to local people. They use the material for different purposes, such as making blankets. Clothes that don’t sell never go to waste, Mason said.
“We are a coastal community. So we are always thinking about how to be sustainable. And we also live on a peninsula, so, you know, it takes a lot of resources to get stuff out and back here. So we’re thinking a lot about how to give something a new life.”
Large fashion companies are beginning to join the used clothing movement. Levis Secondhand is a new program from Levi Strauss & Co., the maker of blue jeans. The program buys back used jeans to reuse and resell them.
Delorean 88 in Washington, DC. The store primarily sells t-shirts from the 1990s and 2000s. (Dan Novak/VOA)
The Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action is a UN agreement to reduce greenhouse gases. The organizations that sign the agreement promise to generate less gases linked to climate change. But many people who buy clothes hope to help the environment by looking back.
A recent report in Utah’s Deseret News notes that 20th-century fashion is currently the most popular in Utah’s used clothing market.
Delorean 88 is a vintage store in Washington, DC. Much of the store’s clothing is from the 1990s and early 2000s. The store primarily sells T-shirts, many with bands. logos and sports teams. One jersey features the faces of every member of the 1996 Chicago Bulls, including Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, the stars of the team. Another t-shirt is of rap music performer Eminem after his first album released in 1999.
Michael Diaz works at the store. He said customers walked in and noticed the shirts his parents might have had.
“A store like this is just— it’s nostalgia for a lot of people… They prefer to have this, like a shirt… that has, like, 10 years of history, 20 years of history, they prefer to wear that over a new shirt.”
Underground harvesting in Lewes, Delaware. The store does not separate clothing for men and women. (Dan Novak/VOA)
Underground Vintage’s Mason believes that part of the popularity of vintage shopping among young people has to do with the time before the widespread use of computers. Young people can disconnect from the internet and visit a physical store to try on clothes from another era. And the store doesn’t separate men’s and women’s clothing.
“So that’s… another way that I think vintage shopping really fits well with that generation: It’s sustainable, it fits with the goals of obviously having a planet to live on, but also having some pieces that mean something. .. You know, like we say on the sign… wear whatever you want.”
I’m Dan Novak.
Dan Novak wrote this story for VOA Learning English, with additional reporting from the Deseret News.
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words in this story
Elegant – adj. follow a popular way of dressing or presenting yourself
brand — n. a category of products that are all made by a particular company and all have a particular name
Fashion — n. the business of creating and selling new clothes
logo — n. a symbol or sign used to identify a company and its products
nostalgia — n. the pleasure and sadness caused by remembering something from the past
Source: learningenglish.voanews.com