Second Hand Clothing Resurgence Under Financial Crisis

The large-scale pactions of secondhand clothing originated from the Renaissance.

At that time, the second-hand clothing store (rigattiere) of Florence had seen a lot of scale, and had made many huge merchants. However, it never heard that a certain ancestor of Gucci could manage a small shop by means of a small workshop.

Compared with the new shop of family workshops, second-hand clothing stores can be regarded as the earliest clothing retail formats in the history of mankind.

In the past 700 years, with the development of the fashion industry and the integration of the global economy, its significance has long been written off, and new metaphors have sprout up.

The climax of weathering life is that medieval Europe is an extravagant society.

Edward, a German scholar, describes in his masterpiece the history of European weathering: "from the king to the humble servant, everyone wants to be extraordinary and he wants to overpower others in this regard.

In that era, to achieve this goal, we could only rely on the luxury of clothes and constantly changing clothes.

The only way to maintain this universal luxury is the second-hand clothing market.

If modern fashion is centered on ready-made clothes, the fashion of medieval Europe is entirely dependent on the second-hand clothing market.

Before the industrial revolution completely changed the world, secondhand clothing was an important way of life for all sectors of society. Even aristocrats generally used new clothes and old clothes to reduce the economic pressure caused by high extravagance expenses.

They habitually take care of the new clothes that they have just bought so as to sell them in the second-hand clothing market so that they can continuously upgrade their luxurious outfits.

And civilians can share the best luxury in the secondary clothing market.

A girl from the countryside who came to the city can quickly learn all the silly fashionable things of aristocrats by using the second-hand clothing market.

Edward Faulk J concluded: "the unrestrained luxury of fashion in the era of autocratic rule is one of the typical evidence that the whole life was built on flesh."

The situation of secondhand clothing in China further confirms that it is indeed the fuel of consumerism in medieval Europe.

The Chinese society with a strong belief in Confucianism has made it difficult to carry out "fashion" because of its desire to eliminate sex, coupled with a strict hierarchy of dress systems. The second-hand clothing market has never been able to develop.

In the folk songs of Han Yuefu, there were "white rabbit" and "walking east".

Clothes are not new, people are not the same.

Secondhand clothing itself is a metaphor for poverty. It even reminds people of the unclean association that has been removed from the dead.

Luxury clothing is rarely shared by the secondary clothing market, but Guangzhou's "clothes Street" is an exception.

300 years ago, as Westerners gathered in the thirteen generation, the business of "second-hand clothes", which was exclusively used for second-hand silk brocade, and the old things in the palace, grew bigger and bigger, but it was also limited to the life circle of foreigners.

The exchange of values, compared with China's less active secondhand clothing trade, has even changed the look of European art.

In the late nineteenth Century, the second-hand kimono shops in Kyoto were flooded with foreigners.

From Paris to London, they are deeply attracted by this exotic silk dress.

Monet has a famous painting "Japanese woman". With his wife Camille as a model, he depicts a Western lady dressed in a dazzling Japanese kimono and imitating the fashionable life of Kabuki performers.

Monet himself is a regular customer of second-hand kimono shop.

With the establishment of the modern fashion industry system, Europe and the United States have increasingly become the standard makers of global fashion.

Fashion is desire, and its content is not just the desire for Carnival in medieval times.

The old ships, shipped from Africa to Latin America, were sewn with the famous logo, the envy of the whole world.

Take Zambia, Africa as an example, the size of second-hand clothing market is almost the same as that of developed countries, especially those brand clothes, which is the most popular hot item.

Zambia people can't wait to change their money into European and American noble life.

The westerners who put clothes into the secondary market no longer aim at the circulation of assets, and charitable donations have become the mainstream.

They regard the people in less developed areas of the world as "poor relatives" of their families, and give them assistance.

Through charities, countless old clothes were gathered to the wharf, and the worst of these clothes was shipped to Africa, and the better quality was shipped to Latin America.

A TommyHilfiger T-shirt worn by middle-class children in America is likely to appear on an African child in a few years.

Whether they are the first world countries or the third world countries, they have exchanged their values through the second-hand clothing market, but the first world countries have gained the "exotic sentiment", while the third world countries have further weakened their political ideals through consumption.

How can you expect a Africans wearing a TommyHilfiger T-shirt to say no to Americans?

Such a thing can only be done by Afghan terrorists who insist on wearing traditional costumes.

The revival of second-hand clothing and the rich Westerners have not forgotten second-hand clothing.

They have added many new metaphors to secondhand clothing, both moral appeals and a universal social psychology.

Environmental protection consumption concept has increasingly become the mainstream of the west, which makes second-hand clothing popular again.

To know a common garment, starting from mechanical cotton cultivation, chemical fertilizer application, mechanical harvesting, and clothing printing and dyeing, each step consumes a lot of energy.

Even by charitable donations to Africa, it will increase carbon emissions in pit.

Therefore, second-hand clothing greatly relieves Westerners' anxiety about environmental damage.

Through the process of changing hands between clothes, people share the happiness of morality.

The wider application is social psychological.

Take Hongkong as an example, because of the tradition that Chinese do not buy second-hand clothing, its second-hand clothing market unexpectedly developed quietly on the eve of the 97 return.

Part of the reason is, of course, to conform to the trend of international retro. Sociologist HazelClark argues that "Hongkong people choose to buy old clothes to maintain their ties with the past in the face of the future to be erased."

Of course, this is a bit of an exaggerate, but Asse Hill, ArthurHill, has a similar description. "There are always several clothes in every era for posterity to trace back to past events and times.

These clothes coagulate the past, and they are also fragments of memory.

The traces of time keep alive on them. "

This retro tune is the anxiety of the whole society to the future in the millennium.

Global integration has also led to the anxiety of personal identity in the social psychological aspect.

Ordinary fashions are far from meeting the needs of those independent young people. From the Mandy street in New York to the senior clubs in Bangkok, the same fashion can no longer distinguish them from each other.

Outdated old clothes are full of "unpredictability" in today's fashion society.

An antique fashion dealer said, "on the same party, why do you wear the same new Dior suit with the other 6 women?

You can buy a late designer's work, and no one will crash with you! "

Yang Jing: editor in charge