What Makes Vintage Fashion the Superior Sustainable Alternative?
Nan Zhang
(Seamster Vintage. Image Credit: Nan Zhang)
Vintage fashion is making waves all over the world and Glasgow is a treasure trove of this shopping explosion.
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According to new research by online auction marketplace Jog It On, Glasgow is the top city for second hand shopping across the UK. The hashtag “#VintageGlasgow” has been used in 14,795 posts on Instagram.
“I’d say most of the vintage shops in Glasgow are quite different from each other. And people like to buy second-hand because they have to go in and look through, so it almost becomes a hobby,” says Steven Penman, founder of Seamster Vintage.
Seamster Vintage is a quality retro clothing store located in the Southside of Glasgow which specialises in vintage daily wear and is run by husband-and-wife team, Steven Penman and Debbie Ruzzak.
Debbie is an experienced professional knitwear designer and Steven has a background in local independent small business. The couple want to encourage people to express themselves with sustainable and affordable clothing options.
(Debbie and Steven. Image Credit: Sourced)
Steven tells Blether, “Vintage clothing has already become “part of the region” and “what people do on their day off.”
Vintage shops in Glasgow are shaping the fashion culture here, and the global vintage fashion industry is growing at an unstoppable pace. According to a recent ThredUp’s report, the global second-hand market is expected to grow to 350 billion dollars (around 278.53 billion pounds) by 2028.
What makes vintage fashion so popular? People’s need for “a one-of-a-kind look” may be the first reason.
As Steven and perhaps many of us have noticed, the styles of different decades are quite cyclical. They always come back around. “Like the 70s is never far from being in and it is the 90s quite recently. But you see people like to kind of match them together more now or lots of different styles,” says Steven.
A good example of this is “dopamine dressing.” Bright vibrant colours appear in young people's clothes. By mixing vintage pieces with modern pieces from their wardrobes, young people are expressing themselves through what they wear in a way that is more fun than ever.
(Mr Ben is one of the longest established retro vintage shops in Scotland. Image credit: Nan Zhang)
Another great benefit of vintage fashion is sustainability, especially when compared to fast fashion, another industry that sees young people as a major consumer group.
It is not news that there are so many concerns about sustainability in the fast fashion industry. On 24 April 2013, the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed, a disaster in which 1,134 garment workers were killed and thousands more injured. This tragedy became a tipping point in marketing within the fashion industry. People are increasingly aware of the ethical concerns about the fast-fashion industry and there have been several global movements campaigning for a safe, clean, fair, and transparent fashion industry.
However, people do not always align their spending to their moral principles, even in the case of Gen Z, which is often referred to as the “climate change generation”. We are still witnessing the boom of one fast fashion brand after another - it used to be Zara or H&M, now it could be Shein or Temu.
A recent study found that a vast majority of Gen Z and Millennial consumers in the UK are unable to shop sustainably because of the high cost of living.
In addition to awareness as a key element which keeps people supporting sustainable fashion, so are accessibility and affordability. Steven adds, “People aren't just going to buy stuff because you have called it sustainable. It has to be good quality and it has to be a competitive kind of price point as well.”
The shop washes, grades and, if needed, repairs, and reworks all the clothing but tries to keep things as straightforward as possible. As Steven showed to me, “For example, we've got this kind of work wear jackets. The ones on the bottom rail are like old workers’ jackets that have been lined with flannel shirts, cotton shirts to make them warmer.”
Vintage shops in Glasgow like Seamster are uniting to support sustainable fashion. Last month, the area’s first “fair fashion” festival was organised by Fair Fashion Collective, a group of seven small businesses, Apparel Xchange, BAM Glasgow, BAWN Textiles, Merry-Go-Round, Rags to Riches, Seamster Vintage and Second Cashmere.
To find out more about these shops on social media, simply click on their names above.