It didn’t die with millennial flannel in Brooklyn: thrifting has been gentrified all over by us
Thrifting is here with a vengeance
As much as I’d like to blame Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” for the price of secondhand clothes, I know that it’s not really Macklemore’s fault. The song’s release in 2012 was a couple of years before the thrifting craze hit its peak and went mainstream. Though there’s still a little part of me that believes that if Mack hadn’t been so adamant about taking my grandpa’s style, I wouldn’t be staring down the barrel of a pair of $69.99 stained Carhartt overalls.
It really hasn’t been that long since the public perception of used clothes was that they were “kinda gross.” At least in Toronto, it’s only been within the past few years that “secondhand” became “vintage,” a process that priced people with lower incomes out of the market. Once that switch was flipped, I and other teenagers swarmed thrift stores on weekends and bought any vintage windbreaker or jersey we could find.
Thrifting was heralded as a sustainable and fresh way to pick up new pieces. Soon, videos of people buying Jordan shoes or Danier jackets for next to nothing were popping up left, right, and center. It seemed like a godsend, stores selling cheap, cool clothes that you couldn’t get by walking into a mall. I know my “Van Morrison 1989 tour” shirt has certainly turned heads from people of a certain age.
But there came a point where I realised that this behaviour was essentially our generation’s way of “going shopping” for recreation, as opposed to practical needs. Instead of heading to the mall and walking out laden with bags from Forever 21 and H&M, we were carrying brown paper sacks from Value Village piled high with flannel button-downs and ironic t-shirts. Overspending is still happening, just on a cleaner conscience. Canadian cultural critic Rayne Fisher-Quann has described this behaviour as “a cheat code” that allows for “constant consumption without the guilt or shame.” This leaves people with less disposable income high and dry, despite being the original clientele of these stores.
I always see the rise of Value Village “Boutiques” as one of the clearest symbols of the shift to this new order; a chain of normal thrift stores started springing up as dolled-up vintage shops with higher prices. The one that opened at the corner of Brunswick Avenue and Bloor Street is, in my opinion, the worst offender. While nowadays it’s home to many teenage and student thrifters, the Boutique was once known as the Brunswick House, a University of Toronto student bar famous for serving cheap booze and burritos, and not IDing patrons. The Boutique still keeps up old graduation photos, reminding us of good times past before the upcycled denim moved in.
Even before that, the Brunny was a hotel, a jazz club, and an occasional wedding venue. Now, it resells H&M skirts for $21.99. While it’s not necessarily Value Village’s fault that a place like that went out of business, it was a shame to see a decades-old student hangout be gentrified. In an age when money just doesn’t stretch as far as it once did, it’s no surprise that thrifting is so popular in Toronto.
When the god of thrift shopping, Macklemore, put on that mink jacket a few years after the Great Recession, even he couldn’t have predicted the current state of the secondhand market. However, I keep hoping that if he puts out “Thrift Shop 2,” somehow, in some way, everything will work out.
