Buying new is a fairly new idea

Historically, the norm was not buying new, but passing things on.

Before industrialization, a shirt was an asset. This wasn't due to the fabric, but the hours involved: flax or wool had to be hand-spun, woven, dyed, and sewn, and that labor was visibly reflected in the price. A simple garment could cost a craftsman several weeks' wages. People treated it accordingly.

Clothing was inherited. It was altered if it didn't fit, and turned inside out if the exterior was worn—since the inside of the fabric was still fresh. It was patched, passed on to servants, sold, resold, cut up into children's clothing, and relegated to cleaning rags. And when nothing else could be done, it ended up with the rag-and-bone men and was processed into paper. For centuries, paper was made from shredded textiles. In the end, a piece of clothing often had more owners than a house.

Trade in these items was not a peripheral phenomenon, but formally organized. Since the Middle Ages, Paris had the “Fripiers,” a dedicated guild for secondhand clothing with established rules, examinations, and its own professional pride. In German cities, their counterparts were called *Altgewandschneider* or *Altbüßer* and had their own market stalls. In London, secondhand clothes changed hands at the infamous Rag Fair as frequently as rumors did elsewhere. Those who shopped there could dress remarkably well for very little money—occasionally in items that had belonged to a lord just two weeks prior.

Just how much the economy depended on old textiles is illustrated by an invention from Saxony. Around 1840, paper became scarce because demand was growing faster than the supply of rags. The weaver Friedrich Gottlob Keller looked for a substitute and found it in wood: he developed a process to extract fibers from wood pulp. The modern paper industry was thus born out of a secondhand bottleneck.

It was only when machines took over textile production that the relationship shifted permanently. Factory-made goods became cheap enough to be the norm, ready-to-wear sizes emerged, and secondhand items slipped into the role of a stopgap for people who couldn't afford new things. Ironically, it was during this period, around 1900, that the secondhand shop with a fixed address emerged—mostly run by charitable organizations reselling donations.

The image of secondhand as a last resort therefore comes from a very short chapter in history. Before that, passing things on was simply how things worked.

Anyone buying secondhand today is not doing something new. They are doing what is older.

 

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