The Right to Repair

Written by Helena Dauverd

The Goodwill Industries of Eastern North Carolina released their new prices for 2026: $8.49 for a sport coat, $4.19 for a vest, and $5.29 for a dress. These high prices feel like a slap in the face for anyone who purchases clothing at a discounted rate. Especially knowing that these items may be damaged, poorly made, or outdated – especially knowing that there is cheaper, new clothing available at a Walmart in the same parking lot. I’ve accepted that I trade my time for hunting for bargain deals, but these hardly feel like deals anymore.  

While vintage may be a new phenomenon, the curiosity with worn and used items from other eras remains a fixture as civilizations have always collected antiques (pieces that are at least 100 years old). Our newer interest in vintage, which are items that are at least twenty years old, can be found in a 2021 article from The New York Times, titled “Pandemic Driven Love Affair With All Things Vintage.” The author reflects on how COVID-19 forced us all to reminisce on the past while influencing purchasing power. The internet expanded this market by deregionalising items and broadening the commerce available to shop. Now, social media feeds are flooded with hauls from thrifting as much as they are with videos about buying new from retail stores. Some remark that there won’t be any clothing not made by fast fashion in the future to come, and that it seems like vintage collections will never be unique again. 

However, according to “A Complete History of the Antiques Trade, Abridged” by Ed Welch, this occurred in 1972 with vintage furniture and the first Arab Oil Embargo. Prior to the 1970’s, antique dealers worked primarily with items produced and found in their regions, and everything else was shipped in with careful consideration. Welch describes it best: 

“A good example is turn-of-the-century oak furniture. Before 1972, the hot market for turn-of-the-century oak in America was in Colorado, Texas, and California. During this period, truckers came to New England with 40-foot tractor-trailers and literally loaded up with turn-of-the-century oak furniture. Dealers had no other market for oak furniture except the long distance haulers.”

The oil embargo made gasoline an expensive commodity and sent many of the known antique houses out of business with large foreclosing sales. This created a generation of novice collectors, who, rather than being forced to sell through show rooms or established dealers, could sell directly to customers instead. The restriction of this economic event reshaped how the antiques market functioned, similarly to how the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic developed a global exposure to the world of vintage. People were now more inclined to shop for vintage, and they were given the opportunity to shop from the security of their homes through reselling websites like Ebay and Poshmark. However, second-hand shopping is no longer a trend and didn’t go away with masks or PPE. 

According to the Business of Fashion’s “Profitability Hurdles Haven’t Slowed the Growth of Resale,” the global secondhand market is expected to double by 2029 (Kent, 2024). Despite these projections of expansion, the resale market is notoriously difficult to succeed in. While traditional retailer brands can leisurely dip their toes into reselling to meet sustainability quotas or diversify with this growing economic sector, most of them are hardly breaking even. Kent mentions that TheRealReal finally turned a profit in the fourth quarter of 2023, despite having been selling since 2019. A huge resale giant like TheRealReal may be able to afford a few years of losses to develop their stock, clientele, and brand image – but a small business owner certainly cannot. So, why should mom-and-pop stores continue selling vintage? 

Perhaps the societal benefit of collecting vintage clothing, homegoods, and tools is what drives the local second-hand economies. Vintage items speak a language without using any words: they act as symbols to explain a person's emphasis on style, utility, and history. This recent spark in collecting vintage can be seen as a reaction to the take-make-waste model that produces the majority of new items. Rather than buying new things that are likely to break in the next few years, people can buy older items that were designed to last a lifetime. Purchasing and reusing older items acts as resistance to this model, but it also comes with the skills of mending and repairing. 

The idea of longevity used to be its own marketing tactic but this has since been forgotten due to planned obsolescence, the act of designing an object to break quickly so that another one has to be purchased in its place. When people buy vintage pieces for the purpose of using them in their daily lives, they will realize that when something breaks, there is often a way to fix it. This requires the right to repair, an idea originally developed for automotive consumers that reflects on the legal right of owners to freely maintain, modify, or repair their machines. While this construct sounds simple and even innate, the right to repair is often purposely deterred by restrictions on tools, supplies, software, and manufacturing information. Even without a car or a tractor, you still use your right to repair. An older tea kettle may not sing the right way after a few years of use, but can easily be brought back to song with a few screw turns. Jeans from the 60s and 70s were often ordered as bulk sewing supplies through a catalogue and you’ll find many with extended hems that were meant to be taken out for the next wearer. However, this emphasis on vintage and repair requires disposable income and time, and a lack of these resources often forces people to buy new and thus buy again. 

As we cease mass-producing items that can last a lifetime, people will continue collecting vintage items for durability rather than their aesthetic appeal. This response will continue to grow within Gen-Z as the most “sustainability” oriented generation, and it can no longer be considered a trend. Ideally, while we grow into the next era of creating and designing, we can include repair instructions and materials along with our products. If you can afford to decrease spending at second-hand conglomerates like Goodwill or avoid buying new altogether: shop small business, mend, and utilize your right to repair.

Resources

Kaysen, R. (2021, March 5). A pandemic-driven love affair with all things vintage . The  New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/realestate/vintage-furniture-instagram-pandemic.html

Kent, S. (2025, August 21). Profitability hurdles haven’t slowed the growth of resale. The Business of Fashion. https://www.businessoffashion.com/news/retail/thredup-resale-report-us-market-20-billion/

Welch, E. (2006, August 3). A complete history of the antiques trade, abridged. The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles. https://journalofantiques.com/misc/a-complete-history-of-the-antiques-trade-abridged/