When it comes to finding your personal style, recommence is a great place to start.
As a young twenty-something in Los Angeles, I developed a bad habit. I was interning (for free) after college and working retail on the side, and I had no money…like, none. But since I was pursuing a career in the fashion industry, I needed to keep my wardrobe full of options: classics like black pumps and leather handbags, trendier items like runway-inspired pieces and statement jewelry, and run-of-the-mill everyday wear like jeans. So, naturally, I turned to fast fashion. Weekend trips to Forever 21, H&M, and Zara turned up bags that looked just like leather and jackets that looked just like the runway! But quickly, the magic wore off.
Within a week, the cheap faux-leather on my new Celine look-alike handbag would be peeling, or the zipper on my faux-fur bomber would break. A few months into my fast fashion addiction, I realized I had thrown away all my precious spending money on items that were essentially useless after a few wears.
I did the math: I spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on cheaply-made clothing and accessories and had nothing to show for it.
These days, there’s no reason for that—because there’s resale. Granted, resale prices are not fast fashion prices, but the newly-booming industry offers customers a way to buy well-made, long-lasting, authentic designer items at accessible prices. I click through the pages of FASHIONPHILE now, and I wish I had known about it in my post-college days. I would’ve happily traded in a month’s worth of Forever 21 trips for a single leather bag that would still be mine 10 years down the road.
Of course, that’s not the only reason the fashion-forward folks shop fast fashion. Even those with a healthy amount of disposable income will often flip through the racks of Zara in order to test-drive new trends they’re not quite sure about or try out a new silhouette that may or may not work for their body type. But again, resale offers a better alternative.
Think about it: why “test drive” trends—like, say, a statement belt or screen-printed graphics—with a knocked-off or watered-down version of a luxury piece? Recommerce gives you the opportunity to try the real thing and, best of all, see a return on your investment if it doesn’t work out (we have a BuyBack policy where we’ll take back items you decide against for 70% of the original sale price). That’s something you just won’t get through fast fashion (just try reselling that Zara bag on eBay and see what you get for it).
Through shopping secondhand and reselling the pieces that don’t feel quite right, the fashion-minded among us can now play with designer items to discover our personal style—no peeling faux leather or knock-off Balenciaga bags necessary.
