Almost at any major forum there is a section devoted to the resale of shoes and accessories. The so-called improvised show room on the soap dish against the background of borscht carpets and striped wallpaper is our closest analogue to the western garage sales and flea markets and the heir to the Soviet-style flea market where citizens quietly resold each other’s worn jeans.
The amounts in online ads are usually requested symbolic – a couple of times a blouse usually gives rubles for two hundred. The correspondent of SHE watched the big story of turning jeans at the price of a whole salary into an unnecessary thing for 200 rubles and found out how to get rid of the deposits in the closet for a reason and with satisfaction.
Your Torn Jeans
In general, the custom of resale of worn jeans has rich historical roots. Associate Professor of NSU and researcher of clothing culture second-hand Tatiana Barychunova reminds nostalgia that the spirit of consumerism in the USSR was more powerful than the West: the forces to get shoes and clothes, the consumer took much more, therefore, they were given a special meaning.
“In Soviet times, a man could buy jeans almost for all his salary, abuse and resell at a flea market quite a bit cheaper,” recalls engineer Larissa. – Branded things had a value that now seems absurd, but it did not decrease from second-hand. Sometimes they could stop on the street and ask if it’s impossible to buy an imported frame – right from the nose. ” In the 90 years, people rushed to catch up with the new consumer goods lost. At each corner opened second-hand:
In our time, the shops of second-hand clothes, according to Tatiana Barchunova, somewhat lost their former attractiveness. First, it is being undermined by cheap clothing supermarkets – prices there are the same, but things are new and also following the fashionable trends. In addition, affordable clothing increasingly tends to be disposable and the period of its wearing largely coincides with the short term of her stay at the height of fashion. “In the West, from where mostly second-hand items sold in second-hand are coming to us, there is also a reorientation from good-quality reusable goods, handed down from generation to generation, to conditionally disposable things,” explains Ms. Barchunova.
Thus, the myth of second-hand clothes, formed in the 90s as a source of quality clothing, is increasingly becoming a thing of the past.
About things and people
But a sign of zero years was the exchange of clothes on the Internet – for little money or “for a chocolate bar”. In private ads on the forums, things of low and medium price are prevalent, the degree of aging is “several times worn” and given for 100-500 rubles. Masks with “Hello Kitty” and skulls, which schoolgirls resell each other. Only once issued holiday dresses.
Ordered by European catalogs and not fit in the size of things. Brilliant pants with a huge logo D G (“bought for 1500 rubles, I’ll give for 500”) … Among the sellers are a lot of young mothers-housewives, that is, those who spend a lot of time at home and, therefore, can easily appoint meetings for fitting. The price in private announcements for a couple of times the put on thing will be on average lower than on the same in the second hand.
The fact is that for sellers this is usually not a way of making a profit, but something in between entertainment and getting rid of remorse for the already accomplished senseless waste.
In the online sales of the contents of cabinets, Tatyana Barchunova sees and imitated global practice – for example, eBay auctions – and the desire to optimize the circulation of things, “practical reason”, which seeks to use the thing to its fullest. True, eBay is usually looking for a vintage – which for us, for economic reasons, moms and grandmothers practically left. Things over 20 years old (this official requirement to define “vintage”, as well as the requirement for a thing to correspond to the recognizable style of the era) basically did not survive to this day, either being thrown out for the unattractive style of Soviet light industry, or worn down to holes. But with the arguments of reasonable optimization traders almost new dresses and skirts choir agree.
“I sell new things solely because the color or size did not fit (I order via the Internet, so many risks). Used in the past – because I order a lot and try not to litter the cabinets “, – says Svetlana, the head of the middle level on maternity leave.
“Several times I resold things through LJ and forums,” says Zhenya, a student. – At first it was awkward, but outweighed by the pleasant feeling that it was small but easy money. Better I’ll sell a dress that I bought by mistake for 3000 rubles, for 300 rubles and for this money I’ll take an extra portion of sushi than it will hang in the closet and make me sad. But the main motive is still very much realized: things should be beneficial, and not lie idle. We are already producing too much – the planet suffers.
And I also noticed that I bought all these things on sales and in sinks, having pozarivshis that it is cheap. ”
“I usually sell things that are not worn, but only take place,” explains Natalia, an advertising specialist on maternity leave. “But since they tend to accumulate many times faster than to be sold, then every few months I collect bags of things and give them to the needy, naturally free of charge. ”
Salvation Army
The idea that bored or “suddenly thin” jeans should be collected and given to the needy, visits many, but often it is not clear – where to carry them and whether they really need someone there. Those who need targeted help can be found on the same forums (for example, Sibmama.ru) – in this case you will know who helped. Simply, you can carry a bunch of things to religious organizations – traditionally such donations are collected at Orthodox churches, however, as advised by experienced, it is better to call in advance and clarify whether clothes are needed.
Quite a wide and diverse activities for helping needy clothes are carried out by the Catholic organization “Caritas”. “We need any clothes,” says Pyotr Sokolov, a public relations specialist at Caritas. – Except when people bring dirty, tattered, very old clothes. The main need remains for children’s clothing and household items.
We have a maternity home – for young women caught up with children on the street – and, of course, young mothers want to not just cover themselves up, but also look decent. Warm things we send to psychiatric hospitals – where people, of course, do not care whether it’s beautiful and fashionable. And, finally, we have a social warehouse, where people come to choose their clothes in the direction of social protection – this is another guarantee that the clothes will get really needy. “
