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In honor of National Secondhand Wardrobe Day, which is celebrated annually on August 25, we collected our best tips on how to shop for secondhand vegan clothes.
In this blog post, we dove into the details on how to veganize your wardrobe, including what materials are vegan-friendly and what materials are not. Overall, vegan-friendly materials are not derived from animals. Instead, they are plant-based or man-made.
Many sellers, local and online, will specifically say that they only sell vegan items. This may be apparent on their website or profile, or listed with each specific item.
If you get the vibe that a shop may lean toward vegan products, just ask the owner or seller if they only sell vegan items. However they respond, read each product’s label to be safe.
Whether you’re shopping at a physical store or online, reading the product label is the best way to determine whether the item has animal-derived materials or not. Reading labels can be time-consuming, but it’s worth it, especially when you’re saving money.
The easiest way to spot a vegan clothing item is to look for the “PETA-Approved Vegan” logo on the label. This logo can only be placed on tags and labels that are made with all-vegan materials.
If a secondhand item you are interested in does not have a label attached to it or listed online, then you will have to dig into some research. First, ask the shop owner or seller if they know the materials used to make the item. They may know based on general knowledge or because they know who previously owned the item.
If the owner or seller does not know, it’s time to take your research online (if you’re not there already). Most previously-loved items still have the brand name listed somewhere on the item even if the tag or label was removed. Look up that brand name and see if you can find that exact item (if it’s recent) to review the product label or the brand’s mission (if the item is older) to see if they aim to create vegan-friendly clothing. If the brand has the “PETA-Approved Vegan” logo on their website, then they only sell vegan items.
If you frequent the same consignment shops, thrift shops, or resale shops, locally or online, you may want to develop a relationship with your favorite sellers. When you get to know a seller, you can ask them to notify you of vegan-friendly items when they are added to the store’s stock whenever you visit that shop. This not only benefits you, but it benefits the seller, too, because you will become a valued customer to them, so they will be more willing to go out of their way to better serve you as a customer.
This may be the hardest part of buying secondhand. You will likely have to choose whether you will wear secondhand animal-derived clothing or not.
If you have ever felt this writer’s moral dilemma between choosing secondhand animal-based clothing versus new vegan-friendly (but perhaps not eco-friendly) clothing, then it may be time to decide.
The truth is that there is no right or wrong decision for this dilemma. Just like you chose a vegan lifestyle, you get to choose how you create that lifestyle along with many other factors, including sustainability.
Personally and professionally, our team at Go Vegan Revolution prefers new vegan clothing over wearing secondhand animal-derived clothing items. But that doesn’t mean you can’t. We encourage you to kindly join the conversation on this topic in the comments below.
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© 2024 Go Vegan Revolution.
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