The paradox of vintage fashion hauls

The term ‘haul’ is often associated with fast fashion giants like Shein or Zara. On TikTok alone, the hashtag has over 17.6million posts, most of which feature influencers frantically unpacking bags and bags of clothing – most of which they intend to return.

In the UK, customers return £7bn of online purchases each year. This phenomenon has led many retailers to enforce fees for returns, or block customer accounts with a a high returns-rate. We assume that the pieces we send back are resold to the next person. But in reality, if an item is not in perfect condition, there’s a delay in the shipping or processing, or you keep it for a while before returning, it’s likely never resold.

According to one logistics firm, the carbon dioxide cost of returns in the US is the ‘equivalent to the output of 3m cars.’

Vintage clothing is meant to be an antidote to this problem, but it’s now being consumed at the same speed and urgency as fast fashion.

‘Online, secondhand and vintage shopping has become both competitive and performative – a status symbol shaped by algorithms and trending aesthetics,’ says Yawen Yuan.

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‘The rush lies not just in what you wear, but how you found it: scoring a ‘deal’, beating others to it and replying to a compliment with ‘Thanks, it’s vintage.’

Combine this with Gen Z’s already healthy appetite for haul culture online, and you’ve got a recipe for overconsumption. This – no matter how you frame it – is never good for the planet.

‘While many Gen Zers are conscious of overproduction of fashion and its impact on the planet, it’s a constant ‘push pull’ between how they say they want to consume and their actual behaviour,’ says Julia Peterson, senior insights strategist at US-based youth culture agency Archrival.

Apps like Depop and The RealReal are exacerbating this trend, with highly gamified interfaces complete with push notifications, limited-time sales and ‘just dropped’ features that drive purchase urgency similarly to your average e-tailer.

The labor of secondhand shopping once acted as a natural speed bump to overconsumption. You had to work for the good stuff. Now, with curated feeds and algorithmic suggestions, everything is a click away.

The truth is, social media is hardwired to reward excess. The more we buy, the more we post; the more we post, the more we influence; the more we influence, the more we’re shown – and ultimately sold.

There’s no easy route out of this cycle. But maybe the solution lies not in what we buy, but how we think. Fashion writers like Orsella De’Castro have reframed our clothing as an extension of the self, an object with a biography that maps various moments in our lives.

Thinking about the things we consume in this way forces a slow, un-performative, and inherently personal approach. Considering how long we wear something, the lives it has lived before it stepped into ours, and how deeply we weave it into our lives – all of these things are what make owning an item of clothing really rewarding.