Don't buy Zara's new collection. Buy this instead.
Secondhand alternatives to fast fashion temptations.
I created this newsletter for those who want to shop more secondhand and less fast fashion. It is, among other things, meant to serve as a guide. As inspiration and motivation to slowly shift your relationship with fashion and shopping into a more carefully considered one. I hope that’s what I’m doing, anyway.
I used to shop at Zara nearly every month. When I was a teenager, my mum and I would go into their stores and sometimes come out with dozens of new items. We used to buy entire new outfits all at the same time: if I saw a shirt I liked, I had to find a pair of shorts to go perfectly with it. Why wouldn’t I? It was only, like, 15 euro. Plus, there was so much to choose from.
It’s now been a few years since I last even went into a Zara store to buy something. I’ve slowly, slowly, changed my mindset around shopping. Looking back on those shopping trips feels like a completely different version of me that does not exist anymore. In some other time dimension, there she still strolls, under fluorescent lighting… blissfully unaware of the fact that buying 30 pieces of fast fashion in one afternoon is not, in any way shape or form, normal.
So for this week’s paid issue, I decided to open up the Zara app. For research only, truly. To see if I could find secondhand alternatives to Zara’s new collection, in the hopes that, if you’re out there falling victim to their very enticing temptation, I might persuade you to buy something used instead. In the process, a few observations:
First of all, it really all is so tempting. The photography, the styling, the one day shipping, the prices. I almost nearly caved. These Zara people are good at what they do, I’ll give them that.
Second of all, I’ve only been preparing this issue for two days. The idea came to me yesterday, and I got a surge of excitement and motivation from it, so I decided to scrap the draft I was working on and do this instead. I opened the Zara app for the first time yesterday afternoon. I took screenshots of the items that I thought could work for this idea, and then closed it and went off treasure hunting on Vinted. After about two hours, I left it halfway done, closed my laptop and went to therapy, then dinner, then sleep. This morning, I got back to work. I opened the Zara app once again to retake a screenshot of a pair of crochet pants. I tapped on the ‘New’ section, and frowned. The pants were not at the top of the page, where I remembered them being the day before. No, instead I found hundreds, and I mean hundreds, of new items that had just been added.
This should have come as no surprise to me. I know Zara’s business model. Everyone knows it’s fast fashion. Anyone that has shopped there semi-regularly knows that Wednesdays are the days when new collections come out. And yet, I was surprised. It seemed jarring to me the sheer number of new clothes added to the app in a matter of hours. And then, the realisation that in 6 days’ time, it will happen once again. And that’s just for Zara.
I think when we engage with fast fashion on a regular basis, we get used to and desensitised to this whole business model. But once you make the conscious choice to step back from it all for a while, when you come back to it, it truly is shocking. There is simply no world in which producing this amount of clothing at this rate is justifiable.
This is not intended to shame you in any way if you do shop at Zara, or any other fast fashion brand; I used to do it too. I still do it sometimes. They just make it so easy, so convenient, so addicting. The clothes look so good. There’s anything you would ever want in there. And it’s so affordable (for you — as we know, if it’s cheap, then someone else is paying the price, somewhere). The truth is the fast fashion machine is built to cater to our brains’ biggest weaknesses. We want immediacy, dopamine, and status. We want it cheap. And we want it all the time.
Zara gives you all of this. But here’s something else that’s also true: everything you could ever find in the Zara app already exists in the back of someone’s closet, unworn, waiting for a new owner. You just have to look for it.
So here is a list of secondhand alternatives to fast fashion temptations. Every secondhand option I’ve picked is either cooler, better quality or cheaper than the new Zara option.
Now I’m off to yoga, then dinner, then bed. And I’ll probably be dreaming of a world where secondhand shopping is as easy and seamless and convenient as shopping at Zara. One day! Until then, that’s what I’m here for ;)
Crochet, macramé or knitted bags:
333Studio handmade macramé bag on Vinted, €33
Zara beaded knit bag (who says you can’t buy secondhand Zara?), €35
Mini black dresses:
Free People ‘Meet me in Maui’ black mini dress, €70, Size XS
Faithfull The Brand black mini dress, €89, Size XS
Cute lacy, crochet-y white tops:
VRG GRL crochet top,
€89 RRP€39, Size SGimaguas crochet top,
€120 RRP€60, Size SZara lace top, €22, Size XS
Handmade crochet crop top, €19, Size S
Zara silky top, €12, Size S
Island Fashion crochet top, €30, Size S
Crochet trousers:
Rotate ‘Calla’ crochet pants,
€400 RRP€145, Size S
Silky, sleek black crop tops:
Free People black satin crop top, €21, Size XS
Paloma Wool black linen crop top,
€125 RRP€50, Size M
Relaxed linen black trousers:
Djerf Avenue ‘Breezy’ linen pants,
€109 RRP€90, Size XSDissh ‘Jasper’ black silk and cotton pants,
€150 RRP€100, Size S
Breezy tie-dye dresses:
Alemais ‘Flash’ tie neck tie dye dress,
€395 RRP€275, Size SSienna yellow tie dye dress, €70, Size S
Satin slip dresses:
Massimo Dutti yellow satin dress,
€110 RRP€55, Size SGHOST London ‘Ivy’ satin dress in blush,
€150 RRP€59, Size SClosed satin slip dress,
€300 RRP€75, Size S
Faithfull The Brand hot pink set: ‘Vega’ shirt,
€104 RRP€40, Size S and ‘Elva’ shorts,€150 RRP€125, Size SFaithfull The Brand blue print set: ‘Charlita’ shirt,
128 RRP€85, Size S and ‘Eridani’ skort, €100 RRP€63, Size M
I hope you enjoyed this! If you’d like me to keep doing this sort of thing for other brands and collections, then let me know! This was very fun for me.
Until next time <3
Love,
Bea