बॉलीवुड एक्ट्रेस जाह्नवी कपूर (Janhvi Kapoor) बीते कई दिनों से अपनी फिटनेस ट्रेनर नम्रता पुरोहित संग मालदीव में छुट्टियों का लुत्फ उठा रही थीं, जहां से वह अपनी लगातार खूबसूरत तस्वीरें फैंस के साथ शेयर कर रही थीं। हालांकि, एक्ट्रेस अब वापिस लौट आई हैं, जहां उन्हें देर रात मुंबई एयरपोर्ट पर स्पॉट किया गया।
For a lot of shoppers, convenience is of the utmost importance — sometimes at the expense of the environment. That is likely why fast fashion is such a successful model, despite its environmental impact. But, online secondhand shopping, more so now than ever before, provides the best of both worlds: sustainability and convenience. Online, you don't have to worry about stressful, overstuffed (and therefore germ-infested at the moment) vintage shops, thrift stores, and flea markets. Instead, they can simply scroll, click, and purchase.
This Earth Day, we're making the process even easier, by scouring the secondhand market to scrounge up some of the best pre-loved and vintage items on the World Wide Web right now. From Y2K halters and ’90s Helmut Lang tops to Loewe loafers with tiny heart decals and Jean Paul Gaultier baby tees — if you haven’t yet given secondhand fashion a try, this is the perfect place to help get you started.
Click on for 13 secondhand fashion items that are not only Earth-friendly but will also fill your wardrobe with pieces that can’t be found anywhere else.
At Refinery29, we’re here to help you navigate this overwhelming world of stuff. All of our market picks are independently selected and curated by the editorial team. If you buy something we link to on our site, Refinery29 may earn commission.
Vintage 50s College Champion Jacket, $, available at Moth Food Shop
For its latest star-studded campaign, Gucci gathered the likes of Diane Keaton, Dakota Johnson, Serena Williams, and, yes, frequent collaborator Harry Styles for a Guccified version of James Corden’s The Late Late Show. On this fictional television segment, though, the guests didn’t promote their latest films, athletic wins, or music accomplishments. Rather, the hot seat was occupied by Gucci’s most beloved handbag styles, from the Marmont to the Dionysus. Of course, Styles had our favorite one.
For his appearance, the “Watermelon Sugar” singer wore a fluffy fur coat with an untied pussy-bow blouse, ‘70s-style wide-leg jeans, and an impressive lineup of cocktail rings. Strewn across his shoulder was his go-to black Jackie bag, a style that was first introduced by the brand in the ‘60s before being reissued by Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele in his fall ‘20 collection. The bag, named after First Lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis, has, of late, become a staple in Styles’ wardrobe.
Styles first took a liking to the Jackie bag in February 2020, when he was spotted outside of BBC Studios in London with one worn over his shoulder. With it, he wore a teal, embroidered jacket from Bode, black Vans, chestnut-colored corduroy pants, and his signature pearls. Later that year, in October, he was spotted in Los Angeles in that same jacket again, but this time, he took the look a step further, pairing the lightweight outerwear with a matching teal Jackie bag.
This latest look only proves what we already knew: Styles is a bag man. It’s too bad that the Jackie bag is already named after a style icon, or, like his Éliou necklace, we’d be calling it the Harry bag in no time.
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Rihanna isn’t the only one taking her pajamas out for a night on the town. On Tuesday night, Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner wore a purple, check print pajama set for date night at Nobu in Los Angeles with husband Joe Jonas. Toning up the bedtime look, she opted for white, block-heeled mules, a matching ‘90s-style shoulder bag from Staud, and a lace bra that peeked out from underneath the low-buttoned top. With a beaded necklace topping off the ‘fit, she looked like an Instagram ad for It Girl-favorite indie retailer Lisa Says Gah.
Turner’s checkered sleepwear set is in fact from the San Francisco-based online boutique, which has its own in-house brand and carries a bevy of other Instagram fashion favorites like Paloma Wool, House of Sunny, The Series, Just Female, Loolios, and more. The Bailey set is part of the brand’s Holiday 2020 collaboration with KJP designer Katherine Plumb, who used her signature Purple Warp Check print for the piece, as well as a handful of other items, including a tote bag, a bucket hat, and a short-sleeved version of Turner’s top.
Since the launch, the checkered print has been spotted all over Instagram’s finest, with Turner being the latest celebrity to wear the style. And while the set is currently sold out, according to Lisa Says Gah, the brand is preparing for a restock of it — and the one in Kermit green — come the end of April. To be the first one to get your hands on them (you know, before they sell out again), sign up to be notified about their restock. By May, you could be on a date at Nobu in Turner’s same exact outfit. That, or eating takeout sushi from the comfort of your sofa. Either way, the ‘fit fits.
In the meantime, shop the Lisa Says Gah x KJP pieces that are still available below.
At Refinery29, we’re here to help you navigate this overwhelming world of stuff. All of our market picks are independently selected and curated by the editorial team. If you buy something we link to on our site, Refinery29 may earn commission.
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Two summers ago, I sat in the basement of my house writing “East Coast Demerara” in Sharpie on barrels waiting to be shipped. I’d only been to my parents’ birthplace twice (once as an infant and again as a teenager), but despite the physical distance from Guyana, my Guyanese ancestry has been a close and powerful force throughout my life. Family conversations are peppered with vocal inflections and, between mouthfuls of peas and rice, puri, and chicken foot, we speak slanted English, patwa. My relationship with Guyana mirrors Guyana’s relationship with the Caribbean; though the country is technically a part of South America, culturally, it has more in common with Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago. Even from afar, we remain close.
Without making annual trips to Guyana, I still have a constant connection with the country through an unexpected channel: hand-me-down clothing. Over the years, tall brown or blue cylinders with plastic covers have taken up space in my basement. We pack them to the brim with new and worn clothes, as well as toys, school supplies, and household items. Even my Grandma Ruby, at 82 years old, makes sure to send barrels back home to the Nabaclis village where she raised my uncles. In 1970, when she was 32 years old, Ruby left her children in Guyana to come to America to find work so she could earn enough money to send for her entire family, a labor trend that has contributed to the influx of Caribbean immigrants in New York City that now makes up at least two-fifths of the City’s population, according to a study referenced in Nancy Foner’s Islands In The City.
My family, like many other immigrants, grew up in a country where the opportunities were scarce but the talent abundant. That ecosystem equipped them with frugality mindsets. They turn off lights behind their American-born children because, back home, they were lucky if they had a flambo, a kerosene lamp. They fret over their children’s needs to own more than two pairs of shoes because they remember what it was like to share shoes with their siblings. Sustainability is not a cute word used to describe the plastic bags balled up under sinks or the tomato sauce jars used to store green seasoning and achar. They are simply the patterns of necessity many families have grown up with, a flex of their creativity and ability to preserve. “Caribbean immigrant families are being sustainable without even knowing,” explained 20-year-old Kaliyah Bennett, whose family is from Jamaica. Bennett remembers her grandmother helping her and her cousins step on top of their barrel to shut it.
Clever marketing and slick fashion campaigns can lead us to believe that sustainable fashion is new, luxurious, and justifiably overpriced. But Caribbean families and other immigrant groups in the States have been practicing it for generations. This “new age” of fashion sustainability is unfashionably late to the party.
For many Caribbean families, practicing sustainability “the American way” has become a trap. Wear the “right” sustainable clothes and receive praise; wear the “wrong” ones, and be seen as pitiable.
When we treat sustainability as a luxury commodity, instead of a cultural practice, we make it less accessible. Visible displays of sustainability — and the moralistic high horse that comes with them — has become yet a status symbol. Compounded with the increasingly cheap prices of fast-fashion, sustainability becomes a practice that only the privileged can engage with. The message the industry sends is cynical: If you can’t afford to be sustainable, you are inconsiderate, even immoral.
For many Caribbean families, practicing sustainability “the American way” has become a trap. Wear the “right” sustainable clothes and receive praise; wear the “wrong” ones, and be seen as pitiable.
For Imani A Islam whose family is originally from Trinidad, secondhand clothes came to represent an otherness to non-Caribbeans she couldn’t shake. Even though thrifting has become a fad for many who can afford to shop elsewhere, Islam still associated pre-worn clothes with being un-American. Being the child of immigrants is a balancing act: We teeter between embracing our parents’ cultural quirks and disavowing them for trends that obscure our otherness. Like many, she was more impressed with new clothes over “knock-offs” but her thoughts changed when she realized secondhand clothes came with a responsibility to treasure the memories woven into them. “Now, hand-me-down clothes make me feel that I’m receiving something that could potentially have been lost. I’m [not only] excited about how I’ll be able to add it to my wardrobe to enhance an outfit I plan on wearing, [but also about] passing it on later on when I have my own children,” she explained.
To the diaspora, secondhand clothes are much more than an act of goodwill. They’re a tether to culture. “I always marveled at the urgency at home when we knew the ‘Barrel Man’ was coming to tape and pick up our barrel to send off to the DR,” said Delanisse Valdez, a 22-year-old Domincan who grew up in Brooklyn, who learned about sustainability from her family. “It felt like we were teleporting emotional parts of ourselves to another country.” Her grandmother, with her seamstress skills, reimagined old clothes into new styles. Her consciousness regarding sustainability wasn’t just tied to ecological and economic reasons, but also cultural ones. Used clothes were an opportunity to sustain a connection with her family in the Dominican Republic.
“Growing up in Brooklyn was basically like growing up in a mini Caribbean. All of my friends at school were from St. Lucia, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Dominican Republic, and other islands. We’d always talk amongst each other about the intersection of our family experiences regardless of being from different islands in the Caribbean. I’d later come to understand what the Black Diaspora was and how these small interpersonal interactions like shipping barrels out to family, are happening on such a grand scale as well,” said Valdez.
When 27-year-old Mani Claxton, whose family is from St. Kitts, moved in with her boyfriend in 2016, whose family is from Haiti, she wanted to ingratiate herself to this new family. In Caribbean culture, it’s damn near sacrilegious to show up to someone’s house for the first time without a gift of some kind; you grow up knowing not to show up with your two long hands, and Claxton’s grandmother made sure her granddaughter didn’t arrive empty-handed. But when Claxton showed up with a trash bag full of clothes, it turned out that her boyfriend’s grandma already had four barrels to send back to Haiti. Claxton knew she was home.
[Secondhand clothes] is about knowing you are provided for; that there is always someone in your corner looking out for you to make sure that, at the bare minimum, you look your best — because, if nothing else, you’ll go out in the world looking like your people.
For some, receiving secondhand clothes and wearing them is a loud proclamation of what you lack, but for the Caribbean women who immigrate to the city, these clothes are a proclamation of all that they have — namely, their rich community. When Camryn Bruno, of Afro-Trinidadian descent, was growing up, she knew that before she went shopping at clothing stores like Rainbow and Dresses for Less on Merrick Boulevard and Jamaica Ave in Queens, her first destination for a new outfit would be her step-cousin’s closet. “It’s really a joy to repurpose clothes back into our communities so we can reduce waste. Thrifting is becoming the cool thing to do nowadays.” Barrel children like Bruno are also equipped to tap into the skill inherent in reusing clothes: “[It’s provided] youth with an option to create small businesses and get revenue,” she says. In her eyes, seeing Gen Z take an active part in this cultural experience is a big step in the direction of financial literacy and building community.
And the beauty of passing down clothes flows in both directions. It’s common for my aunt to rush me into her room to pull out a shirt, skirt, or shorts that don’t fit her anymore. The excitement on her face as she envisions the piece on me makes it clear that this practice, at its core, is about love and selflessness. It is about thinking of someone outside yourself and wanting to enrich their lives. It is about knowing you are provided for; that there is always someone in your corner looking out for you to make sure that, at the bare minimum, you look your best — because, if nothing else, you’ll go out in the world looking like your people.
While Caribbean immigrants have been finessing their fashion on a budget, fashion should take notes from afar. Sustainability is not a “trend” or exclusive product. It should be an expected, accessible, community-based practice that feels good to participate in.
“People need to understand that everything you buy or eat is brought to you by centuries of colonization,” explained the writer Aja Barber, whose work exposes the many interconnected faults within the fashion industry that keeps people — especially poor Black women — on the margins. “For so long, sustainable fashion has been incredibly white. It has highlighted people with the most amount of privilege and power for seemingly good deeds while ignoring that people of color and those without funds are harmed the hardest by the system and not even doing the bulk of the damage.”
Barber’s heritage also primed her for her work. “I have family in St. Thomas Virgin Islands, and [sending barrels home] was definitely a practice we engaged in. But it wasn’t just the Caribbean family, it was all of our family up and down the Eastern Seaboard. We grew up wearing so many hand-me-down from cousins and family friends as well. A friend recently posted a photo of herself on Facebook wearing pink shortalls and I remarked that I had the same ones — and they were hers! I generally think people with the least amount of privilege and power have always engaged in this practice, and nobody gave it a title. Unfortunately, throughout much of my life, secondhand clothing made you the butt of many jokes. I’m glad it’s becoming more of the norm, but we probably need to talk about how the world demonized so many marginalized people for this practice.”
Sustainable fashion should not be overpriced or marketed as a new phenomenon. My family proves it works when it’s not. When your community is taken care of by its members, there is incentive to look out for those growing up after you. The pride I have in my culture is evident in my speech, my mannerisms, and every pre-worn garment I put on. Sustainability, in homes like mine and the people I spoke to, was born out of necessity, appreciated as a sign of success, and nurtured through generations as a symbol of unlimited care and inventiveness. Sustainability works and sticks when it’s tied to real communities, real families, and real cultures instead of just an expensive badge of moral superiority. For sustainability to succeed — and we need it to succeed — we have to be real about the spaces where it’s already flourishing and where it has not.
After all, it’s my community, not the fashion establishment, who unequivocally sees a barrel of used clothing as a thing of beauty, because it truly is.
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For the latest JW Anderson x Uniqlo collab, which launches on Thursday, Anderson focused his attention on designing items that he would like to wear when the world fully opens up again. “I wanted something that was a bit crisp and subtle,” he says. “I always think you have to subtly get back into things.” To help shoppers transition out of the sweatpants they’ve been living in for more than a year and into the forthcoming season, he also “wanted [to create] something that felt timeless.”
This manifested in baby soft, boxy T-shirts hemmed with chain stitches; oversized, linen polo shirts; and baseball caps made of vintage-looking denim and detailed with embroidered daisies. To fully round out spring’s lineup of essentials, he also included chambray dresses, smocked midi skirts, and rigid denim in light blue and oatmeal.
Like many people these days, Anderson says that he’s become “very obsessed with handcraft.” (According to fashion search engine Lyst, search for “crochet” items and “beaded” jewelry is up 45% and 21%, respectively.) Craftcore-esque chain stitches and embroidery, therefore, became mainstays throughout the collection. “I love the subtlety of detail,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be so loud in the very beginning.”
The JW Anderson x Uniqlo spring ‘21 collection will be available at Uniqlo.com and in select Uniqlo stores on Thursday.
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Over the past year, our lives have become increasingly digitalized in ways that were once hard to imagine. In-person meetings have been replaced by Zoom calls, we shop nearly exclusively online, and even learning has become virtual. It comes as little surprise then that digital fashion — which includes everything from live stream runway shows and 3-D collections to fashion you can buy in digital formats (in video games and crypto art) — has also accelerated.
While years ago, all these would have seemed like nonsensical concepts, these digital expressions of fashion have widespread appeal these days. We’re now accustomed to virtual fashion influencers like Lil Miquela, who has over three million followers on Instagram, digital Fashion Month shows, and new collections that debut within video games (see: Balenciaga’sAfterworld: The Age of Tomorrow). If this trend continues, could parts of the fashion consumption process, from production to wear, become entirely digital, too?
Given fashion’s role in the environmental crisis — projections show that the industry could be responsible for a quarter of the earth’s carbon budget by 2050 if nothing changes — the digital-first method of production and consumption presents an interesting opportunity. With this in mind, the University for the Creative Arts announced the launch of its first digital-only fashion course earlier this year. “Digital fashion has three applications: virtual fashion, e-commerce, and the digitalization of production,” Jules Dagonet, the head of its school of fashion, tells Refinery29. “[When] sustainability and digital fashion go hand-in-hand, and everyone wins. For the brands, it’s faster to produce and you’re producing garments only when a customer needs it. It’s also better for the environment.”
We produce almost twice the amount of clothing today compared to over 20 years ago. Dagonet believes that digitizing fashion production has a unique potential in addressing issues like overproduction. But, first, young designers need to be educated in these fields. “What’s keeping [companies] from embracing digital fashion technologies is the talent gap,” she explains. That’s where she says programs like UCA’s will have an important role to play.
Stephy Fung, a 3-D designer based in London, agrees. Because of the lack of targeted educational programs, many of today’s digital fashion designers are self-taught. “Digital fashion is set to increase in the future, and we need to have places, institutions, or online courses which help to teach or nurture the younger talent,” she tells Refinery29. Fung began working in the digital fashion space because of the possibilities it offered — “The fact that you can create something out of nothing really intrigues me” — and confirms that digital fashion has the potential to be more sustainable than physical fashion. “We do not need to source fabrics for testing, we don’t need to have fabrics to be made or to be sampled.” This, she says, allows designers to change cuts, colors, or fabrics without waste.
And while it can seem that digital-exclusive fashion — the kind of “clothing” that you can only enjoy via a screen — is only a consumer novelty, social media habits say otherwise. In an era of one-off social media “‘fit pics,” in which users sometimes only wear an item once for an Instagram post, retailers like DressX believe that here’s a market for clothing that doesn’t need to be produced at all. The company currently carries 200 digital items by 25 designers. Shoppers buy looks, which DressX then superimposes on an uploaded photo of the person.
Obviously, this process is greener than typical manufacturing. While compiling a report, DressX owners Daria Shapovalova and Natalia Modenova found that the production of their digital garments emits 97% less CO2 than physical garment. They also found that a digital garment, on average, saves 3300 liters of water per item.
The duo feels hopeful of the role that digital fashion can play in addressing the industry’s responsibility to the climate crisis, and believes that more brands will adopt the practices. “We are in the very early days of digital fashion but there is this curve of adoption,” Modenova told Refinery29. “Digital fashion is opening a big category that every brand will eventually have in their line.”
Though the environmental benefits are clear — most digital-only models require no manufacturing, packaging, delivery vehicles, or use of natural resources — Céline Semaan, the executive director of Slow Factory Foundation, points out that data itself can leave a carbon footprint. The rise in NFT art sales has spotlit how incredibly energy-consuming and ecologically destructive blockchain technology can be. “Digital is not necessarily always less impactful on the environment,” says Semaan.
According to Semaan, going digital also doesn’t help solve fashion’s sustainability problem: “We are producing far more than we actually need, and producing more digitally does not resolve that issue.” According to her, fundamental change can only be achieved by producing less.
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इंटरनेट सेंशन नेहा कक्कड़ (Neha Kakkar) ने हाल ही में अपने इंस्टाग्राम पर अपनी कुछ फोटोज शेयर की हैं, जिसमें उन्होंने अपने फैंस से पूछा है की 'साड़ी उन पर कैसी लगती है।' हालांकि, शेयर्ड की गई तस्वीरों में वह नीली साड़ी पहने हुए नजर आ रही हैं, जिसमें वह काफी खूबसूरत लग रही हैं।
करिश्मा तन्ना (Karishma Tanna) टीवी टाउन की सबसे स्टाइलिश एक्ट्रेसेस में से एक हैं। करिश्मा न लाखों लोगों के लिए फैशन आइकॉन हैं बल्कि उनके कपड़े पहनने का तरीका इजी तो फॉलो भी है, जिन्हें वह बहुत ही खूबसूरती से स्टाइल और एक्सेसराइज़ करती हैं।
अनन्या पांडे को अपनी मां के साथ मुंबई इंटरनैशनल एयरपोर्ट पर स्पॉट किया गया। इस दौरान इस अदाकारा का लुक ऐसा था, जो स्टाइलिश होने के साथ ही कम्फर्ट का भी पूरा ख्याल रख रहा था। सबसे अट्रैक्टिव पार्ट उनकी हुडी और कंधे पर दिखने वाला बैग था, जिन पर से नजरें हटाना मुश्किल हो रहा था।
