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Channel: Jess Cartner-Morley | The Guardian
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How to look modern in vintage

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Can you shop the trends without buying new clothes? We trawl the secondhand shops for inspiration so you can look now without buying new

I don’t want to look retro. I think victory rolls are twee and I would not be seen dead in a nylon petticoat. I will go for a bare leg over a seamed stocking every time. Right now I want a cardigan that I can tuck into a midi skirt, but I want it sleek and neutral like the ones on the Chanel autumn/winter catwalk, not in a fuzzy pastel with embroidered flowers. So today, Mel Wilkinson, the Guardian’s stylist – a vision of contemporary chic in understated neutrals – and I have set ourselves a challenge. We are going secondhand shopping, but for this season’s looks. Can we find now clothes, without buying new clothes?

Buying clothes secondhand is, after all, very fashionable. This is sustainable retail therapy, a feelgood fashion fix that doesn’t add to the environmental problem of clothing overproduction. In the US, the resale market has grown 21 times faster than the retail market in the past three years, with a ThredUp report this year predicting that the secondhand market could overtake fast fashion within a decade. In the UK, the younger generation of shoppers are returning to a taste for secondhand that their parents’ generation, raised on a ready-made diet of fast fashion, never cultivated. Eighty per cent of 16-21 year olds are happy to buy secondhand clothes – second only in their enthusiasm to the over-60s, of whom 90% are comfortable buying used garments – while less than a third of shoppers in their 30s and 40s are on board, according to a survey by Business Waste, a waste management agency.

If you want to find clothes that look current, don’t look at the labels – zoom in on colours

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