A real fur coat at less than a tenth of the original price. A Champion hoodie, sought after for that famous little logo. Polo shirts, usually reminiscent of bland school uniforms, cropped into fashionable streetwear. A consumer can find all of these things and more, not at Nordstrom or Forever 21, but at the most unexpected place: a thrift store. In the past few years, thrifting has become extremely popular with the rise of social media stars, although repurposing old clothes has been relevant since humans decided to start clothing themselves.

The author of From Goodwill to Grunge: A History of Secondhand Styles and Alternative Economies, Jennifer Le Zotte, says “…with the influx of immigrants looking for a job and the industrial revolution in the late 19th century, clothes were being churned out with the speed of lightning.” People’s mindsets went from saving every scrap they could to throwing out a piece of clothing whenever the fashion season was over. Throughout all of this waste, shops arose to find new uses for these items.

These shops were owned by Jewish immigrants, and Anti-Semitism stopped many people from shopping at these stores, along with the stigma that came with wearing someone’s old clothes. But soon after this, Christian ministries realized that there was money to be made in this business and opened shops of their own in order to fund outreach programs. And so thrift stores like Goodwill and Salvation Army were created, in 1902 and 1897 respectively.

The fact that ministries were opening thrift stores and the change of name from “junk shops” to “thrift shops” helped reduce the bad reputation the shops had. America was in the Great Depression at this point, and people could no longer afford to buy new clothes and throw away old ones. The popularity of thrift stores grew sky high, a pattern that continued in the post war posterity of World War II.

Fast forwarding to the 21st century, online stores have materialized and thrifting is more popular than ever. The thrill of buying something at a tenth of the price has never faded, something Emily Tanner, a sophomore at Tahoma High School, can attest to.

Tanner says that she started thrifting because she thinks that “buying new clothes is a waste and they’re typically way overpriced.” Another advantage to thrifting is that a buyer can “thrift…once or twice per month since the clothes are cheap” compared to a shopper that goes to malls semiannually.

People bragging about how expensive their clothes are is a thing of the past, at least for high schoolers, but thrifting also hasn’t been fully assimilated into society. Fashion has evolved- or rather devolved back into a style that was popular in the 80s and 90s, which is why stores like Urban Outfitters sell ridiculously overpriced clothes that could be found at a thrift store for a fraction of the price. However, with the way that social media has influenced trends in the past few years, there’s no telling if thrifting is here to stay.