Tillmann Prüfer is a member of the editor-in-chief of “Zeit-Magazin”.
The other day I was handed an envelope with a large plastic bag inside. It is from the company Sellpy, a subsidiary of H&M. It’s about selling your own used clothes. It’s a big thing these days – second-hand fashion.
On the one hand, people have overflowing wardrobes and the feeling that they have too much rather than too little. At the same time, we usually only wear a fraction of our own things, the rest of the closet is cluttered with bad buys. Pants that don’t fit as well as you thought. Shirts that are unfortunately a bit too colorful or too unusual.
Too bad to throw them away, but also a permanent reminder that I have bad taste in fashion. Why did I access it? Why didn’t I know my limits when I bought this patterned jacket? And shouldn’t I have known beforehand that green just doesn’t suit me?
Such things used to end up in the old clothes collection at some point, but meanwhile it has become established that we want to turn old clothes into money again. And not just by giving a sack of clothes to a second-hand shop, but by becoming a sales force ourselves.
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How do I fill the space in my closet?
We can do that through platforms like Vinted and answer prospects’ queries, put the neon yellow t-shirt in an envelope and then take it to the post office. But I would be uncomfortable with such questions. I was afraid someone would ask me why on earth I thought such a color would suit me.
So actually, the best thing for me would be if I could just put my stuff in a bag and send it to a middleman like Sellpy. Sellpy lures them by saying that they have experts who would then go through my pieces and determine what still sells and what doesn’t. I will then share in the proceeds.
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When the experts then opened my bag, they might be surprised who has so many things that don’t all go together. They might put their fingertips on my extra wide pants, which I once thought were cool. Maybe there would be a laugh or two at Sellpy headquarters. I could bear that.
A bigger problem would be that there would be new space in my closet. Space that I would fill with shirts, sweaters and pants that overwhelmed me in terms of fashion. Maybe that’s why I need to keep my stuff. So that they continue to block the space in the closet and prevent me from making further bad purchases. Sometimes it is better if a piece of clothing is not bought in the first place.
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